Outside of moving to a Spanish speaking country, what's a good way to learn Spanish on the cheap?

Any good apps?

Are paid teachers/translators worth the money?

TIA

If you're in the US, I would suggest getting a job in a kitchen. You'll even get paid while you're learning.

Best free way to learn is probably find a native Spanish speaker who's interested in learning English and just write to them or speak with them on Skype 50% in each language. There are a couple sites/apps to do this: italki, speaky, conversationexchange, etc. I used them all to get my Spanish to a decent level before moving to Mexico (and also improving my French before moving to France). Depending on your area, there are probably easy ways to find people to meet up face to face for a beer or coffee and have a language exchange.

Duolingo and/or reading the ads on the NYC subway

Dunno how effective they are but I noted my local library has a variety of courses available. I'm going to give one a shot, price is certainly right.

this is what i did (altho not to learn spanish, just happened) but this place was also massive and probably 50 of the 100+ employees were mexican. i was one of the couple that tried to learn other than ways to give orders so it was pretty fun, on top of 3 years in hs. wish i didnt get so rusty in the years after

Watch Spanish language TV, like Telemundo.

There is a number of language learning podcasts, for example Coffee Break Spanish.

There are a number of sites where you can find a skype partner or teacher. Italki's probably the most popular, you'd be able to find some excellent teachers there. Some are cheap and some are pretty expensive.

If you are doing it for travel most community colleges and university extension classes start with that stuff then move towards more advanced conversation. You don't have to go through the transcript process with the uni extensions, not sure with CCs. It may be too slow of a pace for you though.

Watch the simpsons in spanish. Assuming you know all episodes verbatim like most mid 30s males you should learn quickly.

pay your housekeeper and extra $5 an hour?

Just use Netflix. I've watched most of their Spanish language original series and they're almost all very good.

Date a native Spanish speaker.

I was going to say construction job.

Or watch Telemundo on tv and switch on SAP. You might get English subtitles. I'm not sure how to work SAP, I've only done it by accident.

Just add a "o" to the end of everything.

If we're learning Spanish for free-o, how are we going to do that in a kitchen as suggested?

DuoLingo + Tandem + Spanish-speaking girlfriend = fluency

What are some good ones? The only one I've seen is La Casa de Papel which I liked but thought could have easily been even better.

I liked Elité and Club de Cuervos a lot. Ingobernable is pretty good. Narcos is great. I'm a couple eps into Distrito Salvaje and it's good. La Casa de Flores is another solid comedy and Las Chicas del Cable is supposed to be good, but I haven't watched it yet.

Probably my favorite series ever in any language is Lady Vendedora de Rosas, which is set in Medellín. It was on Netflix not too long ago, but I think it's off now. All the characters and the soundtrack are incredible and it has some stunning shots of Medellín. If you can find it, then definitely give it a watch. Guarantee you'll be hooked quickly.

Thanks for the recs. Haven't seen any except for Narcos, which I wouldn't really put in the same category, though it would help one get better at Spanish.

I'm personally not really interested that much in improving my Spanish. I just like good shows, so I'll check some of these out.

Out of curiosity, how much did learning Spanish **** up your French. My French used to be quite good, but I haven't had to speak much in a long time except for the odd trip to France or Quebec, where it came back pretty quickly. However, in the last few yrs I've made a half-assed attempt to learn some Spanish. My Spanish still sucks and it has just made my French deteriorate even faster.

My French was on the threshold of being advanced when I left France about 14 months ago, and now I can barely even form a decent sentence b/c I haven't used it basically at all. When I try to speak my brain just defaults to a lot of Spanish words, especially connecting words. I think I could get it back to a solid level with a week or 2 of refreshing, but I definitely can't just pick up where I left off after not using it awhile. I do still understand it at close to the same level and sometimes watch soccer matches in French. So for some reason the brain retains most of the listening skill, but little of the production skill.

I feel like my French helped me learn Spanish a lot faster though. I've reached the same level in Spanish in a year that probably took me 2.5 years to get to in French. I think you just learn shortcuts and the brain is more used to learning once you move on to a 3rd language. Plus the sentence structures in Spanish are way more similar to French than English.

I really love learning languages though and would like to add 1 or 2 more, probably something easy like German, Italian, or Portuguese, not anything Asian. It's gratifying to think that at 27 I was monolingual and at 34 I can connect well with people in 3 languages.

Yeah, that's basically me over a longer time scale.

it's a better idea really effective, accompanied by a reading of the books in Spanish, without separating you from a dictionary to facilitate the translation