By Laura Coffey

Why give money away when you can keep it stashed safely in your own wallet? In our ongoing effort to highlight freebies for readers -- check out our regularly updated feature "The free lunch lives! Our guide to fab freebies" -- here are a few new examples of free stuff that's out there for the taking:

-- As part of the promotion of the movie "Due Date," Waffle House is giving away free waffles between now and Nov. 1. Why waffles? Apparently because Ethan, a "Due Date" character played by Zach Galifianakis, hates waffles, so his are available for your breakfast-eating pleasure. Just print out this coupon and present it to your server when you order your dine-in meal. Chomp!

-- Starting this week, Starbucks is offering all sorts of free access to normally un-free music, movies, e-books and newspaper content to go with the free wi-fi it serves up in its stores. You have to be hanging out at a Starbucks to score the free access. The offerings include Apple's iTunes, the Wall Street Journal, Nickelodeon, New York Times Reader 2.0 and all sorts of books. To learn more about the offerings, check out this Technolog blog post all about it.

-- Maybe you've always wanted to learn more about quantum mechanics but you just don't have time to pursue that physics degree right now. Not to worry! Through Apple's iTunes U, you can access more than 350,000 free lectures, videos and other resources from more than 600 participating universities, including Harvard, Yale, Oxford and Stanford. Growing numbers of universities also are posting vast quantities of course materials and lectures online free of charge via OpenCourseWare. You won't get college credit for dipping into these offerings, but you can learn oh so much without paying a dime.

To learn more about these and other fabulous freebies -- including free credit reports and credit scores, free ice cream, free restaurant meals, free car washes and free prescription drugs -- click here.