I’m just going to come right out and say it: being a young adult is tough stuff. Learning to transition from being dependent on your parents, to creating a life of your own with your own income has really been quite the challenge for me. And then when you get married, it’s almost like you have to start over because you have a new person in your life with different priorities and habits that can make a budget hard to stick to. Our priorities aside, something that my husband and I have always agreed to regularly putting on our calendar are date nights.

We both love to explore the new restaurants, stores, and cocktail bars that Nashville has to offer, but it definitely adds up. There’s no room in our budget to hit the town every week. But, considering we are both creative-minded people, we thought of some ideas to keep the magic alive while also going easy on our wallets. Here are our favorite nine money-saving date ideas.

1. Head to the Outdoors

If we’ve never met, this is your first time to the blog, and you don’t know a thing about me, here’s the first thing you should know: I ADORE the outdoors! I need it. It fills my soul and calms my mind. And there’s literally nothing I don’t love that’s part of the outdoor “activities.” You name it! There’s so many possibilities with this one that are super easy and cheap, such as: going for a bike ride, going for a hike, have a picnic in the park, rent electric scooters, plan an overnight camping trip, play a game of Frisbee golf, or, Plain Jane regular golf. There are an endless amount of options that can suit any kind of weather, season, or budget.

2. Geo-caching

If you’ve never heard of geo-caching before, you’re in for a real treat. If you are not planning on being a pirate, and/or having a career similar to Nicholas Cage’s character in the movie, “National Treasure,” then geo-caching is probably as close to a treasure hunt that reality may ever bring you. This is an outdoor activity, but I wanted to highlight this specific one because I think it’s definitely underestimated. Believe it or not, geo-caching has been around for almost 20 years. And now that satellite GPS is simply an app on our phones, geo-caching is much cheaper and easier to do than in the early 2000’s. The app we use is literally called Geocaching and is FREE to download with an option for a premium membership to have access to find any geo-cache in the world among other perks.

If you’re interested in learning more about how Geo-caching works, check out the video HERE.

3. Seasonal Bucket List Activities

This one is probably my favorite date idea considering I love getting in the holiday spirit…by which I mean any holiday. I love to have a reason to celebrate and a reason to make the day different than the one before. For every holiday or new season, I have a little something I like to look forward to, and getting excited with my husband is definitely a fun perk. Here are some examples for a few holidays/season:

Winter

Have a snow day at least once, even if that means planning a day trip to find some snow. Make snow-cones with your fresh snow
Celebrate Valentine’s Day with home-made cards or hand-written letters to each other (download these for free), make chocolate-covered strawberries, plan a visit to a local chocolate-tier

Spring

Hike a trail with wildflowers in bloom
Dye Easter eggs
Visit the local farmers market

Summer

Get into some kind of flotation device and get out onto some body of water
Go to a local 4th of July parade
Have a big backyard BBQ

Fall

Have a bonfire in the backyard with s’mores
Carve pumpkins for Halloween
Go apple-picking

4. Learn something new (free-resources only)

This one is kind of a fun challenge. It could be a contest between the two of you or something you do together. Maybe it’s learning to cook or bake something new, learning how to play a song on an instrument, learning a few words from a new language, or how to build/fix something for your home. My recommendations on where to start are YouTube and the App-Store.

5. Day TRIP to explore a nearby town

This is one of my husband’s personal favorites. We love to travel together, but we hardly ever take the time to explore our own city, yet alone our state. And considering we’re both pretty new to Nashville, we still have quite a bit we haven’t explored yet inside the city as well as out. Every time we venture out of our house, we will either have a destination in mind, or just be open-minded, and simply pick a road to turn down.

6. Game Night

Honestly, this is our biggest go-to date night. We love staying in, ordering some pizza, and having a good ole fashioned game night. Some nights, it’s a new video game we’ll try to beat together, and other nights, it’s a card or board game. You could even have an Olympic Game night where you play multiple games. Don’t have any games in the house? Check out my DIY where you can learn how to make your own Chinese Checkers board game.

7. Make a meal together

Making a meal together is not only fun and productive, but it also can be very romantic. By setting the mood, you can create an ordinary meal into something extra special. For example, changing the location of where you normally eat (on the patio, in a park, in bed), adding special lighting (hanging bulb lights, lighting candles), and adding some light background music can make all the difference.

8. Sign up to Volunteer

Volunteering is not only 100% free, but it’s also very rewarding to be able to lend a helping hand for the greater good. If you’re interested in volunteering but don’t know who needs the help, or where to start, a great place is signing up for a local volunteer hub like Hands On Nashville. I use to be apart of Hands on Phoenix when I lived there as well, and both non-profits really helped me get connected with other local non-profits that needed a little extra help. What’s also great about Hands on Nashville is that they have a search engine to find volunteer work that may be more specific to your interests, such as working with animals, maintaining hiking trails, or helping the homeless. Just a little insider information, I’ve never crossed paths with a non-profit that wasn’t looking for free help. Volunteers are really the gears that keep a non-profit turning.

9. DIY Project

Any guess as to who likes to do this money-saving date idea? And better yet, you’re on a DIY-er’s blog! Whhhhhhaaat?! Yes, true story. My husband isn’t so much into the DIY’s as I am, but every now and then, I’ll get his help with a project on our house. If you’re interested in keeping up with my weekly DIY’s you can sign up to receive my monthly newsletter. It summarizes the previous month’s DIY’s, blogs, as well as some extra fun things exclusive to my subscribers. And trust me, they’ll be extra fun!

9 Money-Saving Date Ideas