How I became an Internet free loader

OK so picture the scenario, my employer is going down the tubes, losing customers every week.

So the workers are standing around doing nothing waiting for work to come in, only it doesn't.

Now none of us are stupid and we all know this can't continue, so do we wait for the inevitable or do we jump ship.

I jumped ship to a rival company.

Now this seemed like a good move. I got a pay rise and the company I jumped to was getting most of the work my previous employer had lost.

Anyway, wind time forward a little.

I suffer a period of ill health and my new employers merge with my old employers and there is job duplication - so there will be job losses.

Given the amount of time I have had off through illness (about 3/4 of the year on full pay), I don't reckon my chances of surviving this cull are very good.

So I decide to take early retirement and go to university.

So there I am, a mature student at university with wife and kids and a small redundancy check that is quickly running out.

I could have got a part time job, but that wouldn't have worked because I was still ill - it would have killed me and being a student was very easy for me.

Now we are just about surviving on the student loans but no money for the kids Christmas presents.

And that's when I started seeing what we could get for free, just to get the kids some presents.

No charity mind you, or begging, or lying. All just from people who wanted to give stuff and money away.

It worked and I intend to share the thing I found in this blog to help others.

Note I am in the UK, so I will focus on things UK resident can get for free, but some will be international or have equivalents in other countries.

And if you know of anything I don't mention let me know and I will check it out, but don't spam me because I only intend to cover things that I have personally tried and know to be genuine.