What is better than finding a great price on an item at a garage sale? Finding it for FREE! After sitting in the sun all day on Saturdays, most people in our city will place a FREE sign in front of all their garage sale leftovers that didn't sell. We have found some really great stuff when digging through the leftovers. A lot of times if you look on your local freecycle or craigslist boards on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, you can find the listings for the FREE leftovers.

Once or twice during the summer our older kids enjoy a float trip down the local river. Instead of purchasing expensive life jackets to only be used a few times a year, we use our cities free life jacket rental system. Each of our local fire departments loans out life jackets in all sizes to community members for floating/boating trips. They are easy to pick up and there are drop off boxes all over town for them to dropped off after you finish using them. If there is something you won't use on a regular basis, why not see if you can borrow it from someone, rather than spend money for it and then have to find the space to store it?

Our city has an annual fireworks show. They charge $10.00 per vehicle to park near where they shoot them off. Rather than pay that money AND get stuck in the worst traffic jam our state sees all year, we opt to walk to a hill near our house and watch from there. No, they aren't as BIG and SPECTACULAR as being "right there" but the kids love them just the same and we get home before most people pack up and make it out of the parking lot. Works for us!

Each week I put the new release DVD's on hold online at our local library. We usually have a steady stream of DVD's to pick up each week and it costs us nothing.