My wife and I wanted to get back into fitness. We were really into crossfit a few years ago but life kinda got in the way/made excuses, etc. Anyways, she went and checked out the local CF gym and she liked it but she also brought home the prices... it was going to be like $350/month for both of us. I was like hell no because she wants to keep her yoga membership too which I support, but our rym budget was not going to balloon 3x.
So we decided to start doing workouts on our own in our backyard. It's been fantastic. We do mostly bodyweight stuff, lots of burpees, situps, pushups, running up the hills in the neighborhood, etc. We are using old yoga mats, bought a jumprope, a few weights and a medicine ball. It has been a great experience. It's a great activity for us to do together and we motivate each other. We get to write our own workouts which is great because we can focus on what we want to. Our music too!
It's had other benefits too... I was not really happy with our backyard in our new house and now I see it's actually not that bad because it suits our workout needs really well. We have an elevated wooden platform that we are using. We have realized how well shaded, secluded and pleasant our lot actually is.
Also, because of my work schedule (I work nights) I end up doing workouts in the late afternoon or evening, in plenty of heat which I've always complained about. Ever since I've started working out and just embraced the heat instead of complaining about it, the warm temps just don't even bother me that much.
Our fitness has improved, I know I really feel better and we spent a minimal amount of dough to really improve our lives in a number of aspects.