EATING FOR FREE!!!

BY: HEATHER

As you all probably know by now, I am OBSESSED with finances, budgeting, saving money, penny pinching, scrooging, whatever you want to call it! In fact, according to the high school career tests, I should pursue a degree in finance. I, however, am not a fan of math so I will stick to finance as a hobby. Since most of you also love free food, I thought I would do a post on how you can eat out for cheap or free! I don’t eat out very often, but I have found some tricks to make it free or super cheap. Share your ideas too because I love me some free food!

TOP 6 TRICKS FOR EATING OUT CHEAP OR FOR FREE!

11.       LOOK AT YOUR RECEIPT – Almost every fast food place (and some nicer places) will give you free food for filling out a quick survey. Subway – free cookie, Costa Vida – free chips and Queso, Chick-Fil-A – free regular chicken sandwich. These can add up to a lot of free food and don’t take a lot of time. Most are done online or over the phone and you just fill out a Likert-scale survey about your experience. (BONUS:  If you can get your co-workers to buy the food and then give you their receipt, it is absolutely free! Thanks Kimber and Grace J)

22.      REWARD CARDS – Much like the receipt, a lot of places have reward cards. Now, I realize you have to initially pay for items (like buy 10 get 1 free) but if it is somewhere you frequent anyway, you might as well get rewarded, right? I have had many free Jamba Juices in my day thanks to my buy 6 get the 7 free card. Subway, costa vida, café rio, jamba juice, (notice I eat on campus a lot??), sensuous sandwich, etc. all have reward cards. Bonus tip: sometimes you can get even more bonus points by doing certain things. For example, Subway recently gave me 30 bonus points (that is the equivalent of a six in sub!) just to register my reward card online.

33. SPEAKING OF CAMPUS – For those of you who still work here, you are lucky! There is always free food options around campus. Waffle Monday, Flippin Friday, free pizza, club rush, Wolverine Wednesday etc. Almost every option is a “no strings attached” come and eat options which is the BEST!

4. THE INTERNET IS YOUR FRIEND – If you are going out to eat anywhere, google the restaurants coupons! You can almost always find a coupon online for most “Big Chain” restaurants.  Pizza Factory almost always has free bread twists coupons, you can usually find a free chips and salsa at Chili’s, etc.

55.   HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!! – Sign up for any and every birthday club you can! Some are better than others, but almost always there is a free element. Free meal at Tucanos (with the purchase of another meal), free ice cream at Baskin Robins (actually free!), Free burger at Red Robin, etc. You can even spread these out throughout the year by entering different birth dates (is that dishonest? Maybe…don’t quote me on that. I may be having some inner conflict with it) 

6.       SURVEY WEBSITES – Thank you Evelyn for cluing me in on these! So, you have to do a little work for the free food (which isn’t that hard; giving your opinion about stuff? Easy enough for me!) but it is totally worth it. I do both mysurvey.com and opinion outpost. After you have earned enough points, you can trade them in for gift cards to your favorite restaurants! (Opinion outpost actually gives you the option for paypal or amazon gift cards, but you can buy food there as well! MySurvey also gives you options for DVDs, other prizes, etc. but I almost always do the food gift cards! In fact, that is what I have given out as birthday gifts, babysitter presents, etc. and have not had to spend a dime! Even better) If you are interested, sign up through me or Evelyn so we can get the bonus points! J EXTRA BONUS: Some of the surveys require you to test products, which they send to you for FREE! I have done toilet paper, baby wipes, diapers, paper towels, and shampoo surveys. Got all of these things for free AND earned points for trying them out. WIN/WIN/WIN (As Michael Scott would say!)

Anyway, that is my 2 cents worth. I love free food and I love saving money so any tips you have on either subject, I’d love to hear from you!