Free Milk. Purchase of Cow Not Necessary.

One of my favorite expressions is “why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” Not that I’ve ever entertained buying a cow. After all, I’ve only lived in large cities and vapid, strip mall-laden nearby suburbs my whole life. In none of those fair burgs did I once see a cow. Well, that’s not entirely true. The city zoos do have a few rather fetching bovines that are nothing if not exemplars of the species. I admit that that’s not nothing. But pet cows? Nary a one. And cows for milking and/or slaughtering? Nope. Never saw one of them, either.

Now, where was I?

Oh, yes! Free milk. Now, when I say free milk, I’m talking figuratively here, as I’m wont to do from time to time. You may already have picked up on that Dear Reader. Because my Dear Readers are nothing if not whip-smart and keen at sussing out this sort of thing.

Free rider

I’ve never been one to shy away from taking advantage of free things when they were offered to me. For example, the occasional free lunch at work (here, I’m being literal, just to, you know, mix it up a bit). Also, free offers of premium channels when we subscribed to satellite TV, and free lodging offered by friends and family when we’ve been on vacation. All good. But relatively rare and mostly mere sips of milk minor.

But one great thing I’ve found from reading FIRE blogs is learning about ways to get more—and more valuable—free milk. (Dear Reader, I’m so definitely probably going to torture this cliché, so let me beg for forgiveness extend my deepest apologies in advance). Sometimes the ROI is minor. Other times . . . not so much.

Below are a few examples. Please add your own in the comments section below.

Hack saw

Let’s start with maybe the biggest free milk dispenser: travel hacking. I knew about airline/hotel points before discovering FIRE. But when I learned about hardcore travel hacking, I was intrigued. Vvvvery intrigued.

It took me a while (and some due diligence) to dip my toes in the milk (eeewwww!) water. But once I did, it didn’t take long for me to take a full-on milk bath jump all the way in. I happened to then have something going on for which travel hacking could potentially save me money. Lots of monies. I wrote about it here. The long and short of it is that I took advantage of a Marriott hotel + air package (sadly, these deals have changed since I took advantage, and generally are no longer worth it). Bigly. I’ve been smitten with travel hacking ever since.

I’ve since done plenty of travel hacking, including by way of both me and The Missus getting Southwest’s companion pass, otherwise using points for free air travel, and using points and free anniversary nights awarded via credit cards to secure free hotel stays. In the less than five years I’ve been travel hacking, I estimate my savings to be $30,000. And during this time was the ‘rona, which put the kibosh on at least five travel events we had or would have planned. What’s more, at least some of the money we’ve saved by travel hacking was invested and since has grown in value. If my one-time free lunches were drops of milk small savings, travel hacking has been a full-on milk bar an all-day buffet.

Bank shot

I also discovered bank sign-up bonuses, mostly via Financial Panther. It took me far longer to get into this than with travel hacking. Probably because it seemed like too much work, and a lot to keep track of. But get into this I have since done. I won’t lie. It is a fair amount to keep track of, and there’s work involved. But with the benefit of experience, I’ve concluded that it’s not much more tracking and work than that for credit card travel hacking. In some ways it’s more. In others, less.

While not (yet) as valuable as credit card travel hacking has been for me, neither have my bank sign-up bonuses received to date been insignificant. Last year, the first year I made a concerted effort to secure bank sign-up bonuses, I earned a healthy chunk of change. Considering that the minimum balances required to qualify for those particular bank bonuses were pretty low, my ROI (which here ought to be read as rate of interest), was sky high. This year, I hope to double the amount I earned in 2020.

Trial court

Now onto smaller milk cartons things. I’m not sure where I saw it first, but somewhere along the line I read about people signing up for free trials of things they knew they wouldn’t want long-term but really, really wanted short-term. I happened to be doing that as I wrote this blog post.

You see, Dear Reader, my four favorite days of television all year are, without question, the first four days of the NCAA basketball tournament. Switching between multiple games to catch all sorts of excitement (including the inevitable upsets) is loads of fun. When we subscribed to satellite TV, doing this was easy. But eventually we dropped satellite TV. Not wanting to miss the first four days of the 2021 tournament, I looked around for free trials for streaming TV. After about 15 minutes of searching, I found what I was looking for. As I wrote this blog post, I was watching/switching between four basketball games. Bliss. Oh, and free, of course.

Just do(ing) it

I’ve also discovered, ways to get free stuff for doing things I’d be doing anyway. So, for example, I learned from Mr. Tako Escapes about getting free gift certificates for using a search engine (Bing, in this case). I’ve since gotten free gift certificates from AMC Theaters, Sephora, and REI, for example. I also discovered websites like, among many others, Rakuten (formerly Ebates), which give users discounts when buying things on any number of websites.

Simple and seamless.

Mystery man

FIRE blogs also greatly expanded my knowledge of mystery shopping and dining programs. Actually, it was a podcast—FIRE Drill Podcast specifically—that really piqued my interest. Some programs require a decent amount of time and work. But others . . . not so much. I’ve since taken advantage of this new knowledge to get free meals and various items. Nothing major yet. But this is another one of those slow burns for me. I suspect that as with bank bonuses and travel hacking I’ll eventually get more into this and realize greater benefits.

Maintenance free

This may be stretching things a bit, but renting our house has also been a free milky way (Sorry. Even I groaned at that pun.) way by which we’ve sort of gotten some things for free. Sure, our rent should have built into it the cost of things like average annual repairs, and maintenance of our yard. But our rent is fffffar cheaper than a mortgage payment on a place like ours would be (assuming we put the standard 20% down and went with a 30-year fixed mortgage, which was our standard when we used to buy property). So, I’d argue that given that our landlord takes care of any maintenance we need, and all our lawn and lawncare—in terms of doing it and not charging us anything for it over our rent payment—we’re making out like bandits. I credit FIRE blogs for this because it was reading them that attuned me to the fact that the conventional wisdom (which I’d theretofore followed like a lemming) that buying is always the smart play over renting isn’t always so. Or, at least, it’s not always right for everyone and/or in every situation.

And in the end . . .

Dear Reader, if you’re an intrepid travel hacker like me, you’ve surely noticed that since the ‘rona upended our lives struck, credit cards and awards programs have pivoted. They’ve since started allowing users/members to accumulate points in (more) non-travel-related categories, and greater numbers of points per dollar spent in existing categories. Generally, this is a very good thing. But beware. Not all point redemptions are created equal.