Activities

3 ideas for how to have fun when you have no money

It’s a Saturday night and all your friends want to do something. You haven’t done anything all day besides homework, you’re in college so homework is all we ever do, so you need a change of scenery. Then the reality sinks in, you don’t really have any money to anything “fun”.

From what I have learned over the past few years, you don’t always need to spend money to have a fun time. Yes, usually the activities that cost money are more fun, but you can’t always do that. Sometimes you can only spend $20, but everyone else wants to do something that costs $40. What do you do? It gets kind of old when you have to say no to everything your friends want to do. Hopefully, if your friends are true friends, they will understand that you can’t always afford to do these activities and will be willing to do other, cheaper things.

Below I have 3 suggestions for how to have a fun night with friends, but at a low cost.

Cooking a meal together: Everyone always is asking me to go out to dinner, but that can start to add up. One thing you could suggest is instead of going out, you could stay in and make dinner. Not only will it cost less, but it can be a fun social activity. Everyone will be gathered in the kitchen and the room will be filled with talking, laughing, and maybe even crying (tears of joy or from laughing too much).

Go for a walk or hike: I personally am not an avid hiker, but I do enjoy a nice, easy walk. When the weather isn’t being bipolar and stays nice enough after work/classes, I am always down for a walk. My friends and I usually just walk around our campus and even sometimes through a small nature area right outside of the campus. It’s a great time to catch up with each other and make us not feel as bad if you didn’t make it to the gym that day. A hour walk with friends can be exactly what you needed after a long day.

Movie night: I am a HUGE movie junkie. Crime, drama, scary, romance, comedy, you name it, I’ll watch it. Thankfully, the people I hang around are the same way, so we have movie nights on a regular basis. We use to do one every Wednesday night, but will our schedules getting busier, that doesn’t always happen. Now, we’ve started to compile a list of movies that we think everyone will enjoy and gather as often as we can to watch them. It may only be a few times month, but some nights we power through 2 or 3 movies! We definitely talk way too much during the actual movie, but it is so worth it to be around everything and not be spending money (unless it’s on food or wine).

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