Free and Cheap Date Ideas
Frugal Romantic Fun for Couples on a Budget
Whether you and your date are impoverished students or mortgaged-to-the-hilt parents, cheap or free date ideas can often seem to be in short supply. Remember, these ideas are only as good as the company and laughter make them!
Free Date Ideas
Ruthlessly exploit your friends! DVDs are cheap to hire, but free to borrow. Find out if your friends have board games, sports equipment, dartboard, kayaks, a Playstation, tandem bike or fondue set you can borrow, and be sure to return the favour.
Take a picnic to a park and watch ducks.
Challenge yourselves to complete a sizeable household project together – making a raised bed, building a birdhouse or painting a room – and reward yourselves at the end with cheesecake or an ice-cream sundae.
Tour your local art gallery or museum.
Make up a drinking game for your favourite movie. Traditional drinking games can be found online for classics such as Star Wars (“take a shot every time someone has a bad feeling about this”) or The Lord of the Rings (“drink every time Frodo falls on his back”); but you can customise the concept for your own much-loved film. Don't forget to add in non-drinking elements such as flinging popcorn, kissing or shouting the line along with the character.
Get online together and Google a culture with which you're unfamiliar – maybe Polish, Turkish or Tongan. Then find a recipe online for a traditional food from that culture, and have a spontaneous "ethnic food night"! Bonus points for watching a film about that culture or finding some traditional music to listen to during dinner.
Faintly on the same theme, look for ethnic festivals and holidays and celebrate them in your own home. Consider a harvest festival, solstice celebration or Chinese New Year.
Read a book out loud to each other. This can be a nightly ritual, or serialised into installments for a weekly date. Choose a book neither of you has read before, but which comes highly recommended – an epic such as The Lord of the Rings can give you a huge sense of achievement!
Sneak into a school or public playground at night and rediscover the joys of swinging, sliding and climbing.
Make candy together. Choose something which you can eat the same night, such as pulled taffy.
Cheap Date Ideas
Going out for brunch or lunch is cheaper than dinner. If your favourite restaurant meal always leaves you too full for a second course, try a dessert-only meal. Sharing an appetiser and main dish is cheaper and more intimate than paying for two main dishes. And of course, take full advantage of any coupons, free birthday meals or cheap nights!
Instead of buying a meal out, cook something at home using fancy ingredients. Buy luxury pesto, top-range steak or fresh pasta and you'll still spend less than a restaurant would charge.
If cooking isn't your forte, inquire at a cooking school or Polytechnic to see what happens to the cooking students' creations. Many institutions sell meals cheaply, frozen or fresh, on a first-come-first-served basis; a great opportunity to find restaurant-quality takeout.
Universities often show student plays and films cheaply or even for free, and they can be surprisingly good. Keep an eye on your local campus for entertainment by the next generation of famous people!
Take an evening class together – dancing if you want to be romantic, or something as prosaic as Japanese or pottery if you prefer! Community college classes are cheap and will give you plenty to talk about.
Go out for coffee in your local bookstore.
Some couples thrive on routine, while others like to try something new every date. Adapt these ideas to your own relationships and never lack for a fun date idea--no matter how broke you are!
A Couple Spending Quality Time
|
What do you think about this article?
More in Partners & Parents
Latest Articles