Recent good idea's to save $

[ArkTinkerer]

This!

It drives me nuts that so much software is now on subscription basis. My son wants some rendering program - but it's a monthly subscription... I've told him that's against family policy. My other son wanted to get a minecraft server... again, a monthly subscription. Even with him paying, I refused to let him do it...

I bought a couple server class rack mount PCs from the state surplus website for under $100 (but you can do this with a regular desktop PC..). Showed boys where to download Linux from. They got into building their own minecraft and game servers and hosting them for their friends. One son did spend his allowance/lawn mowing money to build his own "super" server. I consider it funds well spent. One is now in college studying engineering and math. Other one will hopefully be going to state sponsored residential math and science school for his last two years of high school.