How To Live For Free: The Definitive Guide

You can live for free, be anywhere, do anything. Deepak Tailor, the author of #1 Amazon Personal Finance best seller How To Live For Free blows preconceptions about free living out of the water. Use Twitter to get free food. Receive free gym passes automatically via email. Learn to sail and travel the world for free. You can do it all and in this blog post, Deepak shares a few tips exclusively.

“Do you really think you can live for free?”

This was the question posed to Deepak Tailor, CEO of LatestFreeStuff and author of my first published book, How To Live For Free. Voted in the top 100 entrepreneurs of 2014 and generating six figures per year with a business that only gives away free stuff, Deepak is known to millions as Mr. Free.

How To Live For Free hits the #1 Amazon Best Seller list in Personal Finance

Deepak and I first met in a hustling London bar. He came to my Meetup event, London Startups, and told me about his company and how he made money from giving away free stuff. He shares where to get free things: Free perfume, free make-up, free gym passes, free cinema tickets, free trials, free everything (take a look now at LatestFreeStuff, now the UK’s most popular freebie website).

At that time I was working with BR, a corporate communications agency and Deepak asked me about how he could increase authenticity and give a personal touch to his business. I asked him whether he thought it possible to really live for free. He replied,

“Food, I’ve sorted. Accommodation is the hard part. I haven’t cracked that yet, but it’s possible. I met a guy who built his own floating island from recycled plastic bottles, and I’m going to experiment with living on a farm in Argentina at the end of the year.”

I challenged Deepak to learn how to live for free and that if he succeeded, I would help him share the story with the world.

For the last three years, Deepak has researched and experimented with free living, and learnt to travel, get food, accommodation, products and more for free. How To Live For Free is the result of hundreds of interviews, learning how to sail a yacht and visiting thirty-seven countries. It combines everything Deepak knew from LatestFreeStuff, and has gone much further, answering the question of whether it’s possible to live for free without compromise.

Deepak discovered free living does not imply frugality. Free living can compliment your life, help you achieve your goals, and make your aspirations reachable. The techniques Deepak learned can help you get these things directly for free, or by supplementing other activities and using money saved to reach your goals.

He traveled to thirty-seven countries, learnt to sail on other people’s yachts, became a professional drummer, interviewed hundreds and compiled it all into How To Live For Free.

Here, he explains his instant top tips anyone can do to start living for free and to get free food. If you enjoy the tips, consider buying the book for much more.

Deepak and I brainstorming for the book many moons ago

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The first thing everybody asks me about free living is how do you get free food? People have heard of freegans and bin-divers, but is there a way to get free food that’s good, healthy and en par if not better than what you’re currently eating? The answer is yes, and it may only be a tweet away.

In How To Live For Free I cover food, travel, accommodation, shopping, beauty, fitness, health, learning, tech & gadgets and more (it’s 270+ pages) but here I’m going to give you a selection of tips on how to get free food:

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Twitter is where people and businesses go to talk about themselves. When a new restaurant, bar or café opens, they very often turn to Twitter to shout about their opening, trying to attract new customers and kick-start their business successfully. On the first day or during the first week, many do a food tasting. This is where they allow you to come and try the food and drinks for free, and tell them what you think. Many chains also do this when they make a new menu.

Head to Twitter and search ‘food tasting’, or ‘wine tasting’ or some such variant. Be sure to see ‘All Tweets’ and filter by your location (note, doing an advanced search often helps with location). A quick search now reveals a free food tasting at The BBC Good Food Show at Kensington Olympia (which is a big expo place), the Hampstead Butcher & Providore giving a free food and wine tasting at the weekend. Both of these are in London.

You can usually find two or three free food tastings per week in major cities, and expect canapés and many small portions to be served. Who said living for free meant being scrimpy?

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After attending a hundred networking events and recording data, I discovered law and finance networking events are the most likely to have free food and drinks on offer. Meetup is a free online platform of groups that gather for many interests. It’s how I learnt to sail, become a drummer, and one method of how I learnt to eat for free. Sign up and search for networking groups in your area.

A tip is to search for events which are not happening at a bar or somewhere that serves food. If it’s a networking event at an office, for example, they nearly always provide food. A second tip is to look for sponsored events. Sponsors primarily pay for refreshments which usually include sandwiches, pizzas, canapés and drinks (wine, beer and soft drinks). In major cities there are networking events every weeknight, and you can also join networking groups hosting by your local council and on other platforms. Search also on Eventbrite and at co-working spaces (offices that share their premises with many businesses, such as Club Workspace and Rainmaking Loft; London examples).

Words of caution: Don’t just turn up and devour the food. Talk to people, engage in the event, and enjoy the opportunity to expand your professional network for free too.

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Less than a hundred years ago, foraging and fishing used to be a regular past time. I still remember blackberry picking as a child, and running around chestnut hunting. Today, while Italians are still keen mushroom pickers and Norwegians keen fishermen, most have accepted the daily walk to the supermarket (or “grocery store” in American) is the only way to get food. Not so.

For the adventurous wanderer, there is a treasure trove of fresh fruit, vegetables, roots, nuts and fish to be foraged and caught for free. In most places (including the UK), it’s legal to forage on public land and along public footpaths: through forests, fields and anywhere else they may take you. To find your nearest path or public forest, use Bing maps, and then switch to Ordinance Survey view. Here’s an example of York which is where Tom is a suit tailor. You can see there’s loads of footpaths and public forests, alongside a river, bound to have plenty to forage and fish from (here’s a key to read the OS map symbols).

Learning to fish is easy. There are many free fishing groups on Meetup, hundreds of videos on YouTube which you should now think of as the world’s largest free education site, and there’s always someone in the family who know how to fish (in the UK, to fish you must have a fishing license from the Government’s environment agency. This costs £27 p/year and there’s no way around this. Catch five fish and you’ve made your money back).

Learning what to forage is also easy after a bit of practice. I talk about how to get free books in How To Live For Free, but these titles are excellent resources to learning how to forage for free.

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Here are some of my favourite books and videos on foraging and fishing:

Books

• Wild Food: A Complete Guide for Foragers by Roger Phillips
• Food For Free by Richard Mabey
• Mushrooms by Patrick Harding
• Booze for Free by Andy Hamilton

Videos

• How to catch wild fish in rivers (kicks off at 8m 40s)
• Fly fishing for beginners (playlist: Produced by the same people as above)
• Catching Giant Pollock off the South Devon Coast (this is a similar kind of trip to many free Meetup groups)

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The book covers much more than free food. Deepak interviewed people who make their own petrol, upgrade free cars, travel the world constantly for free, get furniture, baby clothes, beauty products and clothes all for free. Dozens of case studies, it’s the perfect blend between a how-to and a story with actionable lists and a central narrative. Download it today on Kindle (remember there are Kindle apps for smartphones and iPad) or in print.

How To Live For Free is the first book I’ve published and one that will make a big impact in people’s lives. What do you think of the concept? Is free living something your interested in? What would you most like to learn how to do for free? Write in the comments and Deepak has kindly agreed to share any tips he has with you.