saving money and making life easier with a slow cooker

I knew nothing about slow cookers until after I was married and working full time.  One of my coworkers told me how she some times used a slow cooker so she'd have a meal ready when she and her husband got home from work.  I actually didn't get around to buying a slow cooker until after I was home with my new baby because my husband and I weren't comfortable with the idea of running an appliance all day when we weren't home.  But when the baby started getting fussy every day around dinner time, I realized what a help it would be to be able to prepare the ingredients at my convenience instead of while trying to comfort a crying baby.  Later, I checked recipe books out of the library and discovered recipes online.  One woman blogged about using the slow cooker every day in the year 2008 at A Year of Slow Cooking. I also learned that hams and roasts come out delicious in a slow cooker and are easy to keep moist and seasoned.
Another thing which is making my life much easier is the "keep warm" function on the crock pot.  Not only can I set the crock pot to "keep warm" if some one is going to be home late, I can put food in the cooker that I have cooked by other means as long as the cooker and the food are already heated up.  This is a great help when I get a call just before dinner that someone is running late and I don't want the food to dry out.  One caution: this doesn't work well with crispy food.