Tomorrow marks 6 years of marriage for Tom and I. I can still remember the frigid, icy day we got married. We were married young. Tom had just graduated college, but hadn’t landed a job in his chosen career field and I was still finishing up my teaching degree. We lived in a small, cold duplex. As the old saying goes, “we didn’t have a lot of money, but we had a lot of love.”
Ever since Tom and I were married, we have been on a tight budget, sometimes more so than others. We are master’s of the frugal and free date nights. I will note that we are very much homebody’s and are often happier to do something together at home than go out and spend money.
However, from time to time we enjoy getting out of the house to spend time just the two of us. In honor of our 6th anniversary, here are 6 ways we enjoy frugal dates.
1. Out to Eat with Gift Cards
We usually get gift cards to restaurants for Christmas, birthdays, and our anniversary. We use these throughout the year to have cheap date nights. We will do our best to keep our meal within the gift card amount. This way we are only out of pocket for tip.
A few ways we save money at restaurants:
- Drink water! Restaurants majorly overcharge for fountain drinks. We try to stick to just water so we can spend more of our money on food.
- Take advantage of “2 for” meals. Many restaurants offer 2 for $20 meal deals where you can choose from a limited list of main dishes and an appetizer to share. We have found that we get more food this way and can usually take home leftovers.
- Go for lunch dates instead of dinner dates. Restaurants charge less for lunch portions. This also works better for our babysitter situation (aka: the grandparents) since both our boys go to bed by 7pm.
2. Bookstore & Coffee
We actually have a bookstore date planned for Christmas break and I couldn’t be more excited! We are planning to budget a few dollars for us to each get a coffee from the coffee shop and then spend time looking at books. We don’t usually buy any books this way, but it gives us ideas of books we want to check out at the library or put on our wish list for when we have amazon gift cards from Swagbucks.
3. Redbox Movie & Pizza
This is probably the date night that we take advantage of most often. We will swing by and get a movie at the Redbox, grab a pizza from Domino’s with a coupon, head home, put the kids to bed, and enjoy a fun date night at home. I realize this is not the most glamourous of dates. However, when you have little ones, you sometimes have to take what you can get! We can easily do this for under $10!
4. Hike a State Park
This one is completely FREE! We have three beautiful state parks that are all less than a hour drive from our house. When the weather is nice, we really enjoy spending time outside hiking through the trails these state parks offer.
I highly recommend checking to see if you have a state park near you. It’s not only a great date location, but also a great place to take your kids for free!
5. Take Up a Money-Saving Hobby Together
Our “Money-Saving Hobby” is woodworking. We both love the process, but especially the end result. It’s something we enjoy doing together. He is really good at the actual building of furniture while I’m good at the design and mathematical side of it.
Together we have built a handful of projects and have a couple more we want to complete. We usually do woodworking during the afternoon hours when our oldest is with the grandparents and our youngest is napping. It’s a great way for us to save money as well. We built a beautiful end table for less than $40. It’s solid wood and something that would have cost at least $300 had we purchased it from a furniture store.
As a bonus, we often times ask for Lowes, Menards, or Home Depot gift cards for Christmas so that we can put them towards our projects. We can oftentimes build a project without spending any money out of pocket.
6. Ice Cream & Bowling
The bowling alley near us offers $1 games and free shoe rentals on Tuesday nights. We don’t do this often, but we both really enjoy it when we can. We can go play two games each for $4.
We then head to a fro-yo shop where you pay by the weight. It’s 49 cents an ounce and they usually put out coupons for $1 off a $5 purchase. We usually try to get close to the $5 mark. We can go bowling and get ice cream for under $10 in an afternoon!
These are definitely our go-to dates when we get a chance. If we are very careful, we can do any of these fun dates for $10 or less! That’s definitely something that can be squeeze into even a tight budget!
What are your favorite frugal date ideas?
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