13 Tax Day Freebies and Summer Fitness Savings

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By Elizabeth Mayhew, TODAY contributor

With tax day fast approaching, some retailers want to give you a fiscal boost by treating you to something sweet (made even sweeter because it’s free!). Other companies are jumping on the “free” bandwagon just to get you in their doors.

Here is the latest round up of freebies — from photos to personal training sessions — that are easy to get and VERY affordable.

Tax day freebies for April 17:
Stop by any Office Depot and they will shred up to five pounds of paper and make 25 single-sided black and white copies for free. It’s a smart way to get rid of old bills and receipts and get a copy of your tax forms before you send them off.

Cinnabon is giving away two Cinnabon Bites to every customer between 6 and 8 p.m. on tax day. It’s their “Tax Day Bites” promotion.

MaggieMoo’s Ice Cream & Treatery and Marble Slab Creamery are both giving a scoop of their new yogurt from 4 to 7 p.m. It’s their “Yogurt Yo-bate” promotion. The frozen yogurt flavors include lemon crème, decadent birthday cake and forest berry.

Get fit for free before summer:
Gold’s Gym offers a free seven day membership that allows anyone try out the facilities free of charge and with no commitment to purchase anything more. The membership comes with an opportunity to consult with a trainer.

Gaiam TV.com is offering a 10-day free trial to their new streaming video service, which is usually $9.95 a month. You will find hundreds of fitness, health and wellness videos that you can watch online and on portable devices.

Free apps to help you lose weight:
The Lose It! app let’s you set your daily calorie goal and helps you stick to it by tracking your caloric intake and burn rate. Using the searchable database, you can log the foods you eat throughout the day and subtract calories burned during exercise.

There’s nothing worse than being in an unfamiliar location and not knowing where to find a healthy meal. The GoodFoodNearYou app uses GPS to recommend nearby healthy food options based on your current location.

For runners who want to keep track of their progress, RunKeeper offers plenty of options for storing stats on the duration, distance, pace and speed of each run. It also uses a built-in GPS to map and record running paths plus it uses a web-based history tool to show your improvement over time.

Other freebies this month:
Need a jolt of coffee after getting your taxes finished? Head over to any Sur la Table store where they will whip up a free espresso, cappuccino or latte made from premium coffee manufacturers like Jura, Nespresso and Breville.

Sign up for an account at the Walmart Photo Center and you will receive 25 free 4×6 prints. Plus once you are a member you get free unlimited secure photo storage.

Viggle is a new free app that gives you rewards for watching TV! All you do is tap your smartphone while you watch your show and you start racking up points. You can use points to buy items including DVDs, movie tickets and Starbucks lattes. Watching TODAY just got even more valuable!

Pretzelmaker is offering free soft pretzels on Thursday, April 26th, which is National Pretzel Day. But there’s a twist: you have to sing or dance in the store to cash in. (If you are really too shy to sing or dance, just mention that it’s National Pretzel Day and you will still get a free pretzel.)

Nordstrom has what they call “Sample Saturdays.” Shoppers just need to follow Nordstrom on Facebook and click on the Beauty Central tag or follow @NordstromBeauty on Twitter. Once you’re a “follower,” you will get a sneak peak each week of what’s being given away that coming Saturday.

For even more freebies, be sure to click here.