Crazy Ways to Save Money

I just read this Article on Yahoo Finance about 'The Craziest Thing I Did to Save Money' and it reminded me about this Oprah show that I saw a month or so ago about "Freegans".  Freegans are individuals who essentially "dumpster dive" for political reasons.  They try to get all their food including:  Meat, Eggs, and Dairy Products out of the trash.  If you want to find out more about this, check out some of the youtube videos when you type in "Freegans" or "Freeganism".  I could not believe it that some individuals making a 6-figure salary do this in the evenings after they leave their corporate jobs.  I do respect these individuals for their passion about using less resources, especially after learning about the staggering amount of perfectly good food that is thrown away.

I think that the craziest thing my family does to save money, is that we don't use an air conditioner in the summer.  We open up our windows and use lots of fans.  At night we put fans in the windows to blow in the cooler outside air.  We have a 100-year old home that has no central air and it isn't very energy efficient either.  I have found that our bodies have adjusted to the heat in the summer and it does not seem so bad if you aren't used to air conditioning.  Of course I don't think everyone should try doing this, and if I had a baby at home, I would use an air conditioner.  I think about how new air conditioning is, and how long humans have been surviving without it. 

Can we not afford air conditioning?  If we really wanted to, yes, we probably could find room in our budget for air conditioning, but we would much rather save the extra $100 or more per month that it would cost to cool our home and apply it toward what we owe on our house, or pay for fun activities that we want to do.  This last year, we bought a family pool-pass with the money that we saved and spent a lot of time swimming.  Plus, during the summer we like to go to go on walks, bike rides, to the park, and hiking.  I realized this last summer, that if we were used to air conditioning that we probably would be shut up in our house a lot more because we would feel miserable outside. 

Feel free to share what you think is the "craziest" thing that you do to save money.  Would you "dumpster dive" for dairy products?  I won't judge you.