Cheap ways to learn a new language

budgetflyer

A free trial of Audible also. Downloaded part 1 of Paul Nolan Spanish.
Similar method to Michael Thomas, but he is not as bad tempered sounding.
So good I paid for parts 2 and 3 before cancelling subscription.

als1805

As others have said, the absolute best way is to speak with a native speaker. I have got to know some lovely people on italki, we Skype and practice both our languages, and we have met and become good friends in real life too, wonderful!

rich2

There is also a thing called Transparent Languages which is free and is run through local/county libraries.
I'm using this to refresh my French, not just for holiday use but it's a useful skill.
I'll be starting Italian after that.
Hope this post is useful to you.

Molillie

Duolingo is great for beginners and refreshers. They have a general tab for discussions, and also one under each question in a lesson, which really helps if you can't understand why you were marked wrong. (you can report mistakes, too, which occasionally occur because of the US English not always recognising other forms of English) Other people have mentioned the various other sites, and on Youtube "Lightspeed Spanish" and "Professor Jason" are both good, and Easy Languages for German I've found helpful. I also get free Transparent language blog emails, on a variety of topics. BBC courses are also still out there, even though the department seems to have been cut now, and all their stuff is excellent quality. "Mi Vida Loca" is great for Spanish, and "Ma France" for French.

I don't know whether anyone has mentioned U3A, our local one has no age restrictions now, and we have people of a range of ages attending classes, I take Spanish and German, and have native-speaker teachers for different classes, which I use to get a mix of conversational and grammatical learning. Some friends and I also used Gumtree to find a native speaker to guide us one evening a week, and share her fee, which is fairly small as she isn't a teacher, and it's just some pocket money for her.

Boring (to me) aspects of grammar, like Cases in German are so much easier with the many Youtube videos available, the combination of hearing and seeing native speakers really seems to help, when I just read that sort of stuff my mind wanders.

You can also stream TV, read newspapers and magazines etc, online, it's amazing how quickly fluency builds up.

The old rule still applies, I think, ten minutes every day is better than an hour a week. Good luck everyone.