Saturday, March 19, 2011

SJ from Sacramento, CA wants free housing and free college courses

SJ from Sacramento, CA sent the following message to ActuallyFree.info:

"I want everything that involves free housing and free college courses."

OK, SJ, you got it.

The Free Housing page on Actually Free describes the different ways to get free housing. Much of it can also be thought of as productive housing, or getting paid to live in a certain place and do certain jobs. The only two ways that I know of where you can possibly get completely free housing is through HUD.gov, if you meet the qualifying criteria (low income), or you can try to get free land and live in a tiny house (not tested by Actually Free). See the Free Housing page for more details. My wife and I got free housing by working as apartment managers. All we had to do was collect rent, do some minor repairs and take complaints. The management company did the rest, including major repairs, finding the tenants, etc. This helped our budget tremendously and it was easy to work into our schedule. I've seen many other management jobs offer better perks than we had. Its not uncommon to get free rent, free utilities, free use of laundry room, free internet and a salary. However, some management positions require more work than others, and they always want some kind of previous "management" experience.

There are a couple of options for free college courses. The first is to get scholarships and grants for school. The scholarships directory lists free resources to find scholarships. Second, if you're just interested in learning, and don't need college credit, then there are tons of free educational resources online. Many accredited colleges and universities offer open courseware online. This means you can access videos and text of any classes that they offer for free. You won't get college credit unless you're enrolled (which costs a pretty penny without a scholarship).

Hope this helps. If I ever find any new material they will be added to the Free Housing and Free Education pages.

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