Every day, WalletPop will be bringing you information about a fantastic freebie. Like what you see? Check back tomorrow for more!

If you're in the mood for some stylish but affordable furniture, click here to print out a coupon that will entitle you to one free coffee and one free breakfast (a $1.98 value). The offer is valid October 11th through 13th.

IKEA has a Labor Day wake-up call for shoppers: free breakfast from Saturday, Aug. 30 through Monday, Sept. 1 until 10:30 am. On your way to shop for various Labor Day deals, you can pick up, free of charge, one small 99-cent breakfast and a cup of 99-cent coffee to fill up your belly before you fill up your shopping basket. You're out of luck, however, if you shop at the IKEA Houston, Long Island, Pittsburgh or Seattle. The offer is no good there. That still leaves quite a few locations as the chain now has stores in 19 states.

Among the deals you might see in the store are LACK side tables and DUDERO floor lamps for $6.99 and a POANG chair for $59.

Prices are rising fast on everything, but you can still get a lot of stuff for $1, from fast food to greeting cards to shoes. Shoes? Yes, shoes. We've found deals on just about everything, including shoes, in local stores, national chains and on the Internet, and all without setting foot in a dollar store.

• Fast Food: You better run fast to get the last $1 deals on McDonald's menu:The company is floating raising the price to $1.29 to off-set higher costs. But you can still find 99-cent items at most other fast-food chains, like Burger King, Wendy's, KFC and Taco Bell, which even has items as low as 49 cents.

• Kids Meals: Remember when kids used to eat free at many restaurants? And then there used to be plenty of places where they could eat for 99 cents? Not so much anymore. Even kids meals at fast-food restaurants are much more expensive these days (and loaded with calories, says a new study). But there are still some 99-cent deals around, like IKEA's 99-cent mac n' cheese, which also comes with a drink. Some chains also have seasonal deals, such as Denny's offering free kids meals, and local restaurants in your area may still have this throw-back price.

• Amazon.com: You're filling your shopping cart and need just a few more pennies worth of stuff to qualify for free shipping. What do you usually do? Amazon has long counted on people adding another item and spending much more than the $25 minimum. But there's another way to do with a web tool at Slickdeals.com. The tool lists over 1,000 items that you can choose from to add just a few dollars or cents to your order. Not all the items are very exciting – need a door knob or wooden dowel? – but you should be able to find something you need if you really want that free shipping.

Between the sofa that I inherited from my parents and the chairs that I accumulated in Virginia thrift stores, I've never really needed to worry about furniture all that much. However, now that the sofa has died an honorable death and we're living in a new place, my wife has put her foot down: we need to buy new furniture.

Of course, we'll probably end up going the IKEA route. Their pieces are fairly durable and looks nice, although a bit generic. My wife really likes the EKTORP series loveseats. Personally, I think that "EKTORP" sounds like the noise a cat makes when it's vomiting, but I have to admit that the furniture is blandly appealing. On the bright side, the slipcovers are really reasonable, which is a pretty big selling point, given that our 2-year old daughter has juice-spilling issues.

On the other hand, we recently came across HomeReserve.com. Like IKEA, HomeReserve sells furniture that is designed for self-assembly. It comes in a wide array of fabrics and colors, and (supposedly) only requires a screwdriver to put together. Also, like IKEA, Home Reserve sells an array of slipcovers. On the other side, Home Reserve's lines are all designed for shipping, and their costs are surprisingly reasonable. Best of all, their prices are significantly less than IKEA's.

Definitely something to think about...

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. His wife has made it abundantly clear that thrift store furniture shopping is NOT happening in New York.

Grand openings in New York are usually something to avoid at all costs, but yesterday, I had promised my 2-year-old a trip to the park and it was raining. So we all packed into the car for a 5-minute trip to the new IKEA in Red Hook, Brooklyn to check out their indoor play land.

In other towns, the opening of a big-box store might not be so game-changing, but IKEA has been controversial from the start because it is so not Red Hook, where even the shooting of "The Sopranos" was squashed by locals. A Fairway supermarket snuck in, just a few blocks away, but with its fresh produce and artsy feel, it has not engendered any bad feelings.

IKEA, on the other hand, is a giant blue and yellow monstrosity the peeks out from between abandoned factory buildings and loading dock cranes. It's parking lots cover wide swaths of shoreline and are ringed by low-slung townhouses in disrepair -- the gentrified converted lofts and luxury condos are still a few blocks over.

Judging by the crowd on opening day, it's going to be a huge success and a huge nightmare at the same time, just like the few other big-box stores in Brooklyn. Any time you mix huge volumes of people with discount merchandise, you're going to move a lot of product off the shelves and it's going to be messy.

Some deals only come around once or twice a year, but offer savings that justify the wait. This post is part of our series on such 'don't miss' sales.

If words like "Leksvik", "Malm" and "Hemnes" don't sound like an exotic type of pickled herring to you, chances are you are an Ikea shopper.

You also are probably an Ikea shopper if you are in your first apartment or live in a neighborhood where it's important to be trendy on a budget. Maybe you like the store's merging of cool Scandinavian design with functionality and the yummy Swedish meatballs in the cafeteria.

Regardless, you probably like the chain's "impossibly low" prices. I know I did when I worked there during the chain's early days in the U.S. I was there in Plymouth Meeting, Pa. when the store opened its doors for the first time. Throngs of people came in to gawk at the ultra-hip home furnishings. I was in the plant department even though I didn't know anything about them. However, I think I correctly advised one customer that his plants probably kept dying because he kept them on the radiator.

The prices are pretty reasonable on most things. Anyone looking for a real bargain can occasionally find them in the room where returned goods are kept though they are sometimes damaged. Ikea does run occasional promotions such as a $150 gift card with the purchase of any mattress. But anyone looking for real bargains, though, has to wait for the once a year twice a year sales.

Stores knock off 20 to 60% off selected merchandise. The company also has done clever promotions where people can "rent" Christmas trees and return them to the store to get recycled. Sometimes customers get cash back and gift cards.

The deals, though, are almost as sweet as Swedish lingonberries most of the year.

Every time I walk through the IKEA showroom here in Portland, I sigh and say something like, "I wish I could just move in!" Especially when my bathroom's a mess. And all the books and kitchenware and toys, so organized. I'm getting misty-eyed just thinking about it.

What if it were true? In a scene that seems something out of a movie starring Tom Hanks or Adam Sandler, Mark Malkoff is living in IKEA. His apartment was being fumigated, and he thought to himself, why not ask IKEA? Surprisingly, the Paramus, New Jersey store agreed, and he moved in Monday morning, January 7. He'll stay through January 12th, eating all his meals at the IKEA cafeteria and filming his sometimes-endearing, other times-discomfiting antics for his web site.

By my calculation, he'll save about $1,400 by staying in IKEA instead of a hotel in Manhattan (assuming he's fairly economical and eats on $50 a day).