21 Free and Frugal Date Night Ideas

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Here’s 21 date night ideas that won’t break the bank. Most of these date ideas are free, and the others cost less than $10.

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21-free-and-frugal-date-night-ideas

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, one can’t help but feel a little romantic.  While my husband and I don’t generally do anything to celebrate Valentine’s Day per se, we do try to plan a nice dinner at home.  This year we splurged for T-Bone steaks!  

This got me thinking about a present I made 2 years ago for my husband (and me) on our Anniversary. A Date Jar! I came up with 5 categories of dates–free, frugal (under $10), non-bank breaker ($10-$25), typical ($25-$50), and splurge ($50+). I came up with 52 dates total. One for every week of the year, but stayed focused mainly on the free and frugal categories.

I printed out all of the dates, cut each one out, and glued it to a color-coded piece of cardstock. Each color represented a different price category. Then I rolled up each piece of paper, tied it with twine, and placed them in a vase.  I’m only telling you this because I have no pictures to show you. I made the date jar before this blog even existed.  

The sad part? We used that jar once for a free date. Neither one of us really liked the idea of having our activities (or dates, if you will) already planned out for us, so it just never seemed very practical.  

So why am I telling you all of this? Well, I thought I would share some of those free and frugal date ideas I came up with, so if you were in the mood to make a date jar for your honey, you’d at least have a starting point. Who says a date has to cost a lot? In today’s electronic world, just powering off, and spending time together, is good enough. 

21 free and frugal date night ideas:

Free Date Night Ideas

  1. Play a board game.
  2. Play a video or computer game.
  3. Put together a puzzle.
  4. Have a picnic in the park.
  5. Go hiking.
  6. Plan a dream vacation.
  7. Give each other a back massage.
  8. Write out a bucket list.
  9. Make a list of what your dream house would have.
  10. Play 20 questions.
  11. Go for a bike ride.
  12. Go for a walk around the neighborhood and talk about your favorite houses.
  13. Watch the sunset in a park.
  14. Watch a movie on Netflix or from your personal collection.
  15. Have dinner in front of a lit fireplace. If you don’t have one, have a candlelit dinner.

Frugal Date Night Ideas (under $10)

  1. Go for a drive in the country (in frugal because using gas costs $$).
  2. Plan a dinner menu where each person can only spend $5–get creative!
  3. Paint a piece of art together (canvas, a block of wood, etc).
  4. Rent a movie and pop your own popcorn.
  5. Make homemade sundaes, only spending $10.
  6. Go to a used bookstore and each person spends $5. Make it even more interesting and spend the evening reading to each other.

Want even more date night ideas? Check out this post: 20 MORE Free and Frugal Date Night Ideas

And just in case you needed a few visuals for a date jar, here’s a few cute ideas I found browsing Pinterest.  Remember to pin from the source, and not from this post, if you like their idea!

Date Night Jar Ideas

Don’t forget to pin it!

6 Comments

  1. Hi Amanda 🙂 You will be my favorite link from last week’s Teach Me Tuesday party. This will be featured this week. 😉 Thanks so much for linking up with us and grab a “featured” button if you don’t already have one.

    Have a great week!!

  2. Wonderful ideas, Amanda! My husband is always happy just watching something on TV and eating a treat. I think it would be so fun to pick dates like this, but I don’t know if he would go for it!

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