COUPONS AND SAMPLES
There are zillions of online sites where you can sign on for product coupons or free samples. I don’t do this, because I’m afraid of getting on some mailing list that will send me hundreds of daily messages from Procter and Gamble – which seems a high price to pay for a free packet of shampoo.

VIVA LAS VEGAS
If you stay at a hotel in Sin City, chances are you’ll subsequently get some terrific offers. I’m not talking about those high-rollers who get everything comped. I’m just talking about your garden-variety buffet-eating craps-playing tourist. Last year, for our anniversary, our son invited us for a weekend at the Wynn. He joined us, and paid all expenses for two rooms. Six months later, the hotel offered him three free nights plus $150 in chips. He took the offer, and won $1200 in a poker tournament!

THRIFTY – NOT SHIFTY
There are some cheapies who have no scruples. I know one woman who convinced the owner of a local restaurant that she was a food critic in order to finagle a free dinner.

And then I met someone who bragged that she persuaded the Tourist Board of India that she was doing research on a travel documentary. The government agreed to pay for her ticket and first-class accommodations.

These people are lying, skuzzy thieves who give a bad name to honest cheapazoids like myself.

WATCH AND LEARN
Instructional websites like Expert Village offer a variety of no/cost mini-classes on any subject imaginable.

• How to Wax your Pottery before Glazing.
• Playing E Minor 7 in 3rd Inversion Arpeggios on Guitar
• Ending Off a Spiral Knot Hemp Bracelet.

I don’t know what a spiral knot hemp bracelet is, but if I were making one I would certainly want to know how to end it off. This site is a godsend for people like me, who never leave the house. I just practiced the basic salsa step, and I’m about to learn how to introduce myself in Japanese.
A more cerebral free learning center is TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. This site offers 15-minute talks on weighty subjects by the world’s great thinkers, plus entertaining pieces by off-beat performance artists. You can watch Stuart Brand, you can watch Jane Goodall, you can watch Bill Clinton – unless you’re me: I watched some very funny jugglers.

FREE LOVE
People pay big bucks to join dating services, but there are cheaper ways to make connections. You might start with friends. I was fixed up with Benni on a blind date. We met in February and got married in April, because he had just arrived from Copenhagen and needed a green card. My friends warned me that after he got his papers I might never see him again, but I felt we were a good fit, and decided to risk it. That was forty-five years ago, and we’re still going strong!

I know one woman who started attending AA meetings in Beverly Hills. She had no addiction problems, but she figured there might be some interesting single men there. I’m not sure I’d recommend that ploy. But there are plenty of classes, church groups, political and charitable organizations, etc. where you can meet people who are not battling substance abuse.

Michael, a theatre director, volunteered to be a mentor to a disadvantaged kid. At the training session, he met a young woman who was also being trained. They have now been married for twenty years.

My son, Jonathan, has a friend who joined the Peace Corps. While he was working in Haiti, he hooked up with another volunteer and – yes – the wedding took place a year later.

I’m not saying you have to join a do-good organization to meet your soulmate. I just think that if you’re someone with a lot of hobbies, interests, and passions, you just might come across Mr/Ms Right in the middle of your active life – without paying a fee!

If I were single in a big city, I’d get a puppy – and not just for companionship. Dog-owners are a very social sub-culture. I took a stroll with Sue and her Wheaton terrier, Daisy, in Manhattan’s Riverside Park. We couldn’t walk for two minutes without another canine-owner stopping to chit-chat. Maybe someone should start a business leasing dogs to singles: call it PuppyPimp.com. I see a film script here.