Don't Let iTunes Suck Up Your Savings

Book on tapes may be a thing of the past, however, audio books still prove quite popular. I know I have close to 100 on my iPod for those long drives or to help drown out the noise at work. Do I pay the premium price for these audio books? Of course not!

There are actually hundreds of books available for FREE online. Granted, these are classics or if not a classic a fairly old book. My favorite site to find books of every genre and language is librivox.org. This is a legitimate site and does not infringe on copyrights. All the books are in the public domain. I have used this to "read" a lot of the classics that I have never found time to actually sit down and read like Moby Dick, Great Expectations, or Les Miserables to name a few. Keep an open mind to the older novels, they are really quite good. This is a great way to be well read without the time of reading or the expense of buying the books.

Another option if you can't stand the thought of listening to a book older than you are is to check out your thrift stores or area garage sales. While book on tapes might have disappeared, book on CDs are still fairly easy to find. I know the CD doesn't load directly onto your iPod, but is it that much work to put the CD onto your computer and then put it onto your iPod? I didn't think so anyway. While this option isn't free, it is vastly cheaper than buying the books when they first come out. If you can manage to wait a couple months or even a year, popular books pop up all over the place.

If you're not into listening and would prefer to read the book, you can get free books online as well. I haven't really looked into different websites which offer books legally, but I know iTunes has books that are free to download. Once again, many of these are older books, but still amazing reads. They do have many newer options as well, but they are by lesser known authors. I don't have a tablet or kindle or whatever else they want you to have in order to read the books directly. There is a way around that though. If you download the free books on iTunes or other sites that are DRM free you can open them using a free program called calibre. If the books are DRM-protected, you can read them using Adobe Digital Editions. This is also a free download found here. I have downloaded free ebooks on iTunes, but the Adobe doesn't seem to open files consistently. I will post an update if I find a legitimate way to read these books on PC.

If you're not into books of any sort, you can still find free podcasts on iTunes. I haven't paid for a single podcast ever, yet haven't found time to run out of interesting shows to listen to.  Many people might already know about this, but it doesn't seem like that many are taking advantage of everything that is available. Getting free entertainment is an incredibly easy way to save money. It's also one of the few places where you don't lose much by spending less. Food can be more noticeable if you cut your budget in half and you won't ever be able to spend nothing on it. For entertainment, you can have something for nothing. iTunes also has a free song every week. This can be hit or miss though. Sorry to say, hit songs still have to be paid for unless you're into old classical music-then you might be in luck for free downloads. The free songs on iTunes are sometimes really good, but can be hit or miss.  This is a great way to boost or try to catch up on your yearly budget.