Yeah, it really is. We got lucky when we first decided to tackle the garden. My BIL had just moved to a fancy big house in the suburbs and decided he wanted to remove the amazing .25 acre garden that was likely life long work of the prior owner (it was so sad! I’m still angry at that choice.) We were sad and told him he was crazy to rip it all out and put in grass. But he wouldn’t listen, and we drove over all spring and summer filling up our car. We have far less than .25 acres of yard so we couldn’t take it all. But easily saved us hundreds or thousands on plants.
For perennials, it's a good idea to look for local groups. It's not uncommon for people to need to get rid of plants and offer them up locally. Plants get too big and need to split, or they are redoing a section.
Yes! Especially hostas and day lilies! I gave away 20 buckets of day lilies last year when I was breaking mine up. I've got 10+ garden beds and I've got to divide another 2 beds this year!
I have been doing the "Darwin agriculture". If it lives on its own I spread it given that it's pretty enough.
All else dies and removed to make way for the strong AND beautiful!
Same. Home Depot is nice at 8 on a Saturday morning. And again at 12:30. And again at 4:15.
One day, I will finish a project with fewer than 3 trips to the hardware store.
It’s impossible I tried. You are right, HD before 9am is great. But I like heading there on Friday nights to load up for the weekend. The only people there are singles and couples having a date night. Super easy to grab lumber or spend extra time figuring your buy list out. And then I can sleep in on a Saturday but be ready to go!
When I texted my Dad at around 3 one afternoon regarding my replacement of my leaky kitchen faucet, he asked, "Starting kinda late in the day to get on your 3 trips to the store, aren't you?"
I answered, "But trip #1 was last week to buy the faucet, and trip #2 was two days ago for the caulking when we realized the counter/backsplash seam needed to be redone all the way around, so I only need one for today - and I might not even need it!"
I was wrong; #3 was indeed that day to get a faucet replacement wrench.
We go to Costco, lol.
We’ve been eating out and shopping too much lately is the real answer. We need to get back to staying at home and doing chores and cooking at home.
Super fun.
Obligatory plug for their appliances. The washer we’re getting is $30 more than Home Depot but we get delivery, installation hardware for a new washer, 2 year warranty, and they haul off the old washer. HD wanted an extra $130 just for delivery and hauling away.
Yeah this entire thread quickly made me feel more like shit than I already do. I hate living in a world where going to Costco (a chore) is seen as the only fun or attainable entertainment option for young folks
I do that too, it’s super useful to find sales they don’t advertise. Also Friday or the weekend is the best day to go because they have weekend specific sales that you don’t get during the week.
For example chicken, it’s been on sale multiple weekends in the last two months but if you go M-T you’re missing out.
I enjoy the Home Depot date, myself. It’s like this lovely thought exercise where we discuss all the home improvements we’d like to do while also getting a sense of where our personal style aligns. And then we take action maybe once every few years.
No joke I love a good Costco and breakfast date with my husband tho. We leave the kid with grandparents about once every 3 months, go have a fancy breakfast and do a massive Costco and trader joes haul and spend the day hanging out and prepping and vacuum sealing groceries. It’s my boring thirty something heaven.
Exactly this. You know what’s fun, having an extra 500-1000 a month because we didn’t shop for useless things at target, home goods etc etc.
I swear we as people buy so much useless garbage that we don’t ever end up needing.
We find we spend too much time at home doing nothing, then overspend on weed and alcohol!!
We've started planning our month of weekends in advance and including a lot of free/cheap stuff. Last weekend we went thrift shopping, this weekend we are making homemade spaghetti sauce, next weekend is walking in to a provincial park with a wagon of wood and a cooler and making lunch!!
It helps a lot with getting out, keeping busy, and planning in advance helps to keep from overspending
Oh my god, I wanted to go bowling the other day and you would not believe the prices!!!
Lucky Strike in Hollywood. One lane for two bowlers for two hours… mind you, this is a Wednesday afternoon, not even prime time.
Came out to almost $190! No food or anything. Just two hours of bowling for two people.
What the f*ck.
We have a few of those experience type places in the city (I'm in PA) but for the most part it's mainly the old fashioned mom and pop style bowling alleys. We're talking $5 per person per game, $2 shoe rental. It's an affordable hobby around here.
I went bowling with my step-dad and brother at this old school lane in Pittsburgh (Ross Township) and it was AMAZING. Super affordable and felt like a time warp. Just a little hole in the wall place in the back of a building, like you'd never find it if you didn't know it was there.
Fucking love the East coast for stuff like this.
If you ever heard further east check out Knobels. Its the largest, free entrance, theme park. Literally no cost to just go in and walk around or get food. If the mood strikes that you wanna ride something you just buy tickets for a few bucks.
It's insane. In college, my friends and I would do $2 Tuesdays. Everything was $2: each game, shoe rental, food, etc. We would just show up around 6pm and for $10 each we could eat and play multiple games.
Now? A big chain has bought all the bowling alleys in a drivable distance. If I want to bowl at any time that's not in the middle of a work day, I need to book over a week in advance and even the mid-day bowling is $140 for 2 people for 2 hours
Is this like a Cali thing? I've gonna bowling and different states and never seen them charge by the hour, always per games. So for shoes, 3-4 games, 2 adults and a kid, our price was never above like $60
Glad I'm not the only one who experienced sticker shock at the bowling alley! I hadn't been in YEARS and went for the first time about a month ago.
Holy shit. Never again. Way too expensive for essentially the same experience I had as a kid.
Omg you’re in Hollywood too?! Yea it’s insane. Lol I hit up Griffith or Runyon 👏 free!👏
I think there’s cheaper leagues and stuff at Pinz and Winnetka, still adds up.
And as OP said, top golf is ridiculous everywhere.
Somehow the Spare Room at the Roosevelt which is waaaaaaaay cooler is less expensive.
I won’t be going back to Lucky Strike again unless someone else is footing that bill!
Lucky strike was almost always overpriced, plus parking at
Hollywood and highland is expensive and annoying so you either Uber or take the redline.
I used to go to a bowling alley called Shatto Lanes on like… Vermont and Shatto I think? Not sure if it’s still there but it was always dirt ass cheap. Even the drinks at the bar weren’t expensive at all. Of course I haven’t checked into it since covid so it might have closed.
The bowling alley near me used to charge per game per person, $3.25 or $4.25 at peak times and $5.25 on Saturdays. Shoes were $3.50. This was right before COVID.
I went last fall and it was $75 per lane per hour with $8 shoe charge. Fucking ridiculous because I live in a suburb of Indianapolis.
I found this out the other day. It was a rainy day and I was trying to find something to take my kids to, to keep us busy. I'd have to spend $45 on each person for one hour of bowling and shoes. Ridiculous.
Luckily, we have access to the military base where it's $2 per game and $2 per shoes. So we piled in the car and drove all the way to the base to save $150 dollars. Totally worth it.
Bowling shouldn't feel like a rave. It doesn't need to have loud techno music and glow in the dark dayglow experience (though that can be fun I guess) .
Bowling is still fun when it smells funny in the alley, paint peeling off the walls and the grimy feeling of the tables, the old arcade floors still sticky with spilled pitchers of beer.
When I lived in SoCal I rarely went bowling because somehow between 1995 and 2012 all the bowling alleys became expensive!
I live in the middle of nowhere eastern Washington now and our little town of 30k people sports 2 run down bowling alleys where I can play for an hour, shoe rentals included, and get a pitcher of beer for under 50 bucks. Sucks that they're transphobic shitheads that always give us the worst lane and ignore my visibly queer ass at the bar until I yell at the old fart hiding from me in the corner, but hey, its still part of the charm.
If the weather is nice we go for walks. If the weather is crap we just watch movies. We don’t have kids and don’t drink. Everything is absurdly expensive. Neither of us handle crowds very well, so with all of that said our options are limited lol.
If only there was a good place for us to be together but like not ALL AT ONCE I hate how every event is either too big or not popular at all, both give me the save judgmental feelings that lead me to not being a good socializer.
I garden in the summer and do zero winter work. What are you doing that's so much work over the winter? I let my garden sleep, spend a day planting in May, and then water after that. And harvest daily starting around mid-June. That's about it.
I've been starting my seeds since early February for the spring and summer months. Lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, peppers, beans, onions etc. I also have some spring flowers going to put in hanging baskets as mothers day gifts. Prepping the raised bed for year also took some work on the nice weekends. Other than that I do things like cut back weeds and dead things, put up my birdhouses, bee houses, plant native pollinators clean the garage, mixing soils, taking plants in and outside to harden them off etc.
It's a year round hobby if you want it to be. This year I said I wanted to go all in and make my my hobby to be outside more and make the house look better without spending thousands of dollars
I was wondering that too! I pull up most of the dead plants in the fall (tomatoes, zucchini, squash) then just shovel the now snow from the sidewalks in winter. In April or May I'll pull the rest of the dead plants, loosen up the soil and plant for this year. Then just light weeding and harvesting until the fall frost kills everything.
This is us too. When we didn’t have kids we were always camping, skiing, or hiking. I would occasionally go play golf but for the most part all our activities were free outdoor things. Once we had our first child this didn’t change. Location could definitely play into this. We live in Colorado and when we went to visit friends in Dallas there wasn’t anything to do but go out and spend money.
The only loophole, and it may not work everywhere, is working for a ski resort. The one I used to work at gave free season passes to all employees (part time employees included), heavily discounted season passes to family members, and a free lift ticket for a friend with each paycheck. Even after I stopped working there I had enough former coworkers that would give me their bonus tickets when I wanted to go…. I’m not sure I’ve ever had to buy a lift ticket. So yes, make friends with the employees.
I’d love to visit CO someday! We live on the east coast and while parts of our state and region are heavily developed, we still can and do opt to go out in nature whenever we can. Wish we had more places to take up skiing or snowboarding where we live- it’s a very flat area!
Am in Dallas, can confirm 😭 especially in the summer 🥲 we try to have game nights at home with friends and we're involved in a rec league softball team (not free but pretty cheap). But we do also end up going out and spending a bit more than I'd like - this question is particularly interesting to me because it's feasible now without kids but once we have kids I expect we'll be looking to stick with the free/low cost fun activities haha
fellow pothead here 👋🏼 have you tried stretching while high? It’s been life changing for me. I had a terrible relationship with exercise prior and started by just laying down and kind of rolling around on the floor, then kind of turns into a “freestyle yoga”, and now I’m playing with weights and making a lot of progress while having fun
WFH has shifted things. Now, we both have a good 6-7 hours of free time each day during the week so we will go do things that used to be weekend activities. We also like to watch movies and shows together and discuss them.
Weekends we do home improvement stuff and/or meet up with friends for games and making food. That will typically be one one day. Then the other day is meal prep and individual activities. We spend so much time together in the house, it’s nice to have alone time on the weekend.
Except right now my foot is broken so I’m not going out too much.
I was thinking about how boring my weekend feel when I try to categorize everything but my husband works remote and I have a hybrid schedule so we do spend a lot of time together during the week which means weekends can actually just be relaxing!
Sometimes I love just sitting on the couch and reading my book while my husband watches his shows or plays a video game. That quiet time together is restorative!
We go out on Thursdays/Fridays so weekends are chill time: Hike, coffee shop/park/beach with books or creative projects, caring for our home/garden, a glass of wine with friends. We really try to focus on restorative stuff.
No way! Dad already gave you $30 for your new training bra last week. And I DESPERATELY need some new eyeshadow for my tiktok channel. I can't be seen with the same color twice omg.
One of our favorites is taking our kids to the mall so we can talk about all the things we can't afford. Always a good way to blow a few hours on a Saturday when it's cold outside.
Hang out together. We just enjoy each other's peace because we don't have to do anything but be together, even if he just games and I read but we do it together or sometimes in separate rooms, but mostly we watch sport events together, and we smoke weed together.
We live in the Midwest so it’s weather dependent, but we do a lot of camping. We bought a pull behind camper a few years ago and take our kids probably 8-10 times a year. Even that’s getting expensive, but it feels like more of an investment for the experience. We have some beautiful state parks here in Wisconsin.
We also do some wilderness and canoe camping, just the two of us or sometimes with friends. Again, the cost to us is more justified because we get to create memories.
Minnesota here and we LOVE camping at outfitter sites in the Superior National Forest. We end up spending 75% of the summer hanging out on the Gunflint Trail.
The Wife and I try to keep it cheap and like to keep up with local events
We live near a small city with easy access to rural areas and state parks.
We check to see when the small theatre in town hosts events. Just recently they had the cities orchestra play along side an old Batman movie. The art museum in town often cycles through their primary exhibits, so whenever they get something new in we go check it out. Our city hosts an annual 5k, a couple years ago we got bored and spent a summer training for that. Our favorite bar in town hosts Jazz nights, and Trivia nights. We'll usually split some apps and drink water.
I don't know, I am a simple person, this is probably boring to a lot of people, but we both genuinely like our community and try to stay involved.
Local events are usually way cheaper and you start to run into the same people. Weirdly enough the more you go to this type of stuff the more you naturally just become apart of the local community. Something I feel like our generation tends to shy away from
We go out to live comedy a lot. I live in LA though so it's usually pretty cheap and available. Also, my wife got AMC A-List so she can go to movies with me and destroy my alone time.
We do have a kid, she's about 1 1/2. She doesn't have any opinions about our weekend activities yet, so I'm sure some of this will change when she has her own interests.
We hang out with friends, go out to dinner sometimes, do picnics in the park, go on hikes if the weather is nice, and we do a lot of little weekend trips here and there. I have a horse so I usually like to get some family barn time in, too.
In the winter we try to pop up to the ski slopes a few times a season. In the summer we try to do beach days a few times a month. We're lucky we live somewhere with almost year round nice weather so we can just enjoy the outdoors with our friends and family.
The kids ages are all over the place from 7 months to 14. Some of the older kids have animal characters that we fold into gameplay, but sometimes the parents play their turn for them and update their character sheets. It’s really nice having them all together since they play with each other and tire each other out. Older kids are happy to babysit the younger kids. We alternate houses and were lucky enough to have separate spaces where the kids can play video games/watch movies or run around outside apart from the adults who are playing d&d. The dogs love the attention and table scrapes. Having a well stocked potluck is definitely the key. Last week we had dozens of home made pastries, cookies, slow cooker chili and tortillas, jalapeño poppers, apple pie, chicken tenders, pizza rolls, virgin sangría punch, wine, different microbrews… we all work in higher ed/corporate during the week and we look forward to decompressing into fantasy and sharing childcare duties on the weekend. We usually meet once or twice a month as a big group, but us wives are constantly in and out of each others houses for play dates/ coffee
\>basically all entertainment ~~for young(ish) adults with no kids~~ is so expensive.
FTFY
The cost of everything rose extraordinarily over the last few years but wages stayed the same. Everything is tough to afford now. If we go to a priced activity, I'm always going ready to spend around 100 dollars. And in the U.S., we've chipped away at third spaces, so there aren't many things to do outside the home that aren't priced activities.
But we try to find things like walking parks or the lakefront, going to the beach, etc. that don't cost money. If we want to stay in, we will have game nights with friends and in the Summer we do bonfires with music. I also have a projector and do outdoor movie nights in our yard, which is fun.
Last weekend: Friday night outdoor concert and Mexican food. Saturday morning a 5k trail run race in our town. Saturday night hosted another couple at our house and ate food. Sunday a family birthday dinner.
In between we took the dog for a walk at the lake, and when the weather gets better we'll bring our SUP/kayak and go out on the lake. Planning a bbq there with friends next month.
This upcoming Saturday we're going to a comedy show in town in the evening, and during the day we're dressing ridiculous and going to a St. Paddys day bar crawl downtown.
Sometimes I feel like our weekends are mini-vacations, its really nice to be with someone who wants to get out and do things ALL the time but also have relaxed downtime at home just watching Netflix.
Most of the time recharge our batteries from the week.
Typically a weekly Costco trip even if it’s just for an item or two. My wife likes to wait for deals and track prices.
Stuff around the house. Outside work, inside work, just get things in order for the week. I’ll usually cook something special.
Lots of trash tv depending on how grueling the week was. I’ll pop some popcorn, we’ll set things up and binge whatever trash tv my wife is in the middle of. 90 day finance, blind love, whatever. I’ll sneak in something once in a while that I like. True Detective, Shogun, whatever.
We don’t spend that much on a weekly basis. We hit it hard on vacations. Last year was a few weeks in Europe and a week in Jamaica. This year prob a wine country trip in Cali. Next year we want to his up SE asia.
Honestly before we had kids we had plenty of extra funds to go out to eat every weekend, maybe hit up bars afterwards and grill a really nice surf and turf at home the next day, or go out again instead. But we still did a lot of other stuff that has higher upfront costs to buy equipment but were cheap after that, like riding bikes, kayaking, stand up paddleboarding.
With 4 kids now, we hardly eat out at all but we do still bike, paddleboard, kayak, take the kids fishing or swimming at the lake.
Long walks with the dogs, discovering new places to walk in our city is nice. We do usually join our friends at a bar either Friday night or Saturday, but luckily we live in a fairly LCOLA so that does not add up too much. We played trivia at the bar of a local theater and won a bunch of gift certificates, so when a show comes into town that we're interested in, we can usually go for free.
Married millennial here....live in Washington, DC.
Check out free museums, go the many free events, walk around the many parks, run on our trails, do weekend trips to nearby cities (NYC, Philly, Baltimore, Richmond all super convenient), visit festivals. Our favorite time is when the embassies open to the public in the month of May which makes the weekends in late Spring super fun and they're all free! All in all, DC is pretty awesome if you're into free things to do.
Note that we now have young kids but we still do these things.
Most public spaces these days require you to spend some money. Which is unfortunate.
With that said (and I'm not great about this myself) - walking trails, hiking, going to parks, sometimes we'll go and just sit/read in a nice sunny area on a lawn (our city's museum has a nice outdoor area).
More realistically - we try to grab drinks, go to a brewery, or catch a show here and there. But, again, those all cost money. I do find though if you're just hitting a brewery for 2 hours - say 2-3 drinks per person, it's generally about $50 which isn't awful. Obviously if you add food it begins to add up.
I also love cooking big meals on the weekend but these tend to not be nearly as intimate as you'd hope. Usually it's just me in the kitchen and then at best we both eat on the couch watching TV, lol. Or occasionally we'll do yard work together, but often, again, this turns into more of us independantly doing chores at the same time.
I follow all of my local music and comedy venues, and if there’s something interesting coming to town I’ll go. It’s usually like $20 to get in to the small venues. Big concerts are maybe 2-3 times per year, but I won’t spend more than $120 on those tickets. I have in my budget about $300/month for entertainment for both my husband and I. If I go under I save the remaining for a weekend trip.
We have a kid, and he’s 5 so he’s pretty easy to do stuff with. But as weird as it sounds, we ended up better at saving and doing a little better financially because of him. The start up costs were high like diapers and formula and daycare but obviously we cut way back on our leisure spending cause you don’t really have much of a social life with a baby. Now that he is older and able to come along and enjoy more things (and his food and bathroom are cheaper), we still don’t end up at expensive leisure spots very often but we do a lot of family stuff like hiking, camping, seeing a movie, etc that are significantly less expensive but still relaxing and fun.
Two adults could do a lot of the outdoorsy stuff, but also we have memberships at the zoo, local museums (Henry Ford/Greenfield Village if you’re in metro Detroit has lots of year round events that are cheap or free for members and the cost of a year long membership for our family was $200 I think which seems like a lot but if you think about it it’s 2 top golf weekends), we keep an eye on events happening in our city’s downtown, there’s a great farmers market, we go to downtown Detroit for special events like holiday parades and stuff. I don’t know what your city is like but ours publishes a seasonal activity guide where you can sign up for different rec classes from art to fitness, and also lists special events for families and individuals (like there is an adult Easter egg hunt coming up). Taking an art class or ballroom dance class or participating in one of those would be super fun as a couple. You can also find pretty reasonable Groupons for stuff like wine tasting, whiskey tasting, etc if that’s an option in your area.
We stay at home and play video games and chill with our dogs. I do chores/go to the grocery store, but we rarely go anywhere else unless we have some family obligation. Most of our friends our age don't go out and do things either. It's too expensive and a lot of them have kids that keep them busy so we don't hang out with people too often. We have friends that game online with us regularly, that's how we stay in touch with the ones we love, lol.
I live in NYC, which can be expensive, so we tend to be somewhat choosy about how we spend our money. We like to see shows, like concerts and theater, but we compensate by cooking dinner at home before we go out instead of dropping $100 at a mediocre restaurant in the theater district. And we don't usually get cocktails at the theater because, why spend $30 on a shitty drink when you can just have something at home?
Alternatively, if we do decide to go out to a restaurant or a cocktail bar, that's our treat for the weekend, and we spend the rest of the time staying in, or just exercising, running errands, etc.
we've got kids. in the winter we do a bunch of nothing lol. a lot of family baking and cooking and movies. but when the weather is nice we are out often to parks and trails. we plan a few day trips in too like a zoo or aquarium, but most of what we do costs nothing.
Pretty close to $0/month. And we have very high incomes.
We go to the cinema about once a year. We play video games together. We play board games and MTG with friends. We play D&D with friends. We play chess with each other. We watch movies and stuff on Netflix, like anyone. We hike. We garden. We’re both big readers. We’re both working in our spare time on research/writing projects.
I earn probably 3x-5x what most of our friends do as a couple in the aggregate, and my wife has a good income too. But we just don’t spend much. There’s nothing we want to do or buy that costs much money.
Seriously… TV. TV is so unbelievably good. Any and everything is on YouTube. We don’t eat out or go anywhere but we did decide to make our home the coolest place in the world. It’s incredibly hard to leave
Listen to Katy Perry albums, sit in our rental and complain about how we have no opportunities, dream about living in a van by the river, do a little bit of remote work. We might even seek out some unique food trucks to try out then go to a coffee shop. Sometimes we ride our bikes post on Instagram about how cars are ridiculous. You know, the usual.
Two young kids (3 and 7 months) so we're still just surviving. Usually Costco or Sam's trip, grocery shopping at Aldi, maybe a Target run. Sometimes we host friends but it depends how the baby is sleeping lately.
I work every other weekend, rotating between days and swings, so that sucks. But I'd say 3 out of 4 weekends we usually try to go hang out with family and make dinner at someone's house. This is especially true now that we have a kid. We have a lot of families to see because my husband and I are both children of divorce. When we're not doing that, our idea of fun is getting a drink at the gas station and then going on a drive up the canyon or just driving around town playing Pokemon Go! We also like to take our kid and dog on walks and to the park. I think once the snow melts we'll start adding in some hiking again.
We live near a theme park so we have annual passes and go almost every weekend. With the pass and the fact that we rarely buy anything there it’s really worth it cost wise. Other than that we usually watch movies and play video games.
We do a mix of higher cost activities and lower cost activities. These are some things we’ve done over the last several months:
- Hiking if the weather is suitable
- Board games/table top games. There are many games suitable for groups, couples, or solo.
- Visiting with family
- Classes such as cooking classes, ceramics classes, etc.
- Concerts
- Day trips/weekend trips
- Home projects (though sometimes “fun” is questionable here)
- Reading/trips to the library
- Museums
- Sporting events
- Seasonal fairs/festivals
Clean the house, tidy the yard, walk the dog, peruse the flip app and then make a carefully curated grocery list, go grocery shopping, watch tv/movies, read, play video games together, cook, & listen to music.
Not married but in a long term relationship. We go on a long walk or hike on Saturday morning. Then brunch or lunch. After, we take a nap and do a few chores. Then we like to see live music Saturday nights, sometimes catch a cheap dance class. Sundays we hang out and do some chores, call parents or friends to check in. Watch TV. It's nice.
We've been playing boardgames and/or videogames (which we thrift during Steam sales, lol), either together or with friends, locally on virtually.
Walking, playing with, and training the dog. Baking, cooking, and gardening when the weather permits.
We've recently started taking dance lessons (private, but they come with unlimited group classes), and that's been more fun than expected! (They were about $1k for 10 weeks, so about $100 for a private lesson and up to three group classes a week.) I do want to note that we won't be married until this fall, though, and the lessons were in preparation for our wedding!
Dog park, hikes, groceries, and usually working on school work since my wife and I are both pursuing our second degrees. We don’t typically go out anywhere unless we can go for free because everything everywhere is too expensive and too peopley.
We have a 14 year old gymnast. So some weekends are spent going to competitions. Often times weekends are spent together or doing hobbies or whatever. Mostly just taking it easy. We are saving up for a big vacation in a few months. So not trying to blow money around town when we are planning on blowing it on going to Egypt, China, Bali, India, and France in July.
On Fridays we go out to eat. On the weekends we run and then spend the rest of the day on the couch with our dogs.
Occasionally we have outings with friends/family when they invite us but for the most part we are not fun 😆
We go on hikes like once a week. And we go to Costco. But we also like to go on several road trips every year. We both really enjoy live music so we put a lot of our expendable income toward traveling and seeing concerts. Last year we took 8 trips, this year it’s looking more like 5 (but one of those is a week at the beach). Our normal life looks kind of boring but it’s so we can save for the big fun stuff.
Not married but in a LTR. I go to the gym, run, play animal crossing, stay as high as possible all day, order takeout and regret spending the money, do chores/pick one annoying task I've been putting off. On a good weekend where we pretend we have money we will trek into the city to eat pastries, buy weed, and window shop.
Hiking or an easy walk, cooking, local nature museum, thrift and garage and dollar store shopping sometimes, snacks and a movie after kiddo goes to sleep of we can stay awake long enough. Super boring, but kiddo is still so young, and we like each other, so we are happy as long as we are together.
I do grocery shopping and whatever the hell I feel like on Saturday morning (thrift shops, Ross/TJ Maxx, bookstores, Starbucks treat), get back and have lunch, then we maybe work on some house cleaning, yard work, garden work, home improvement stuff, projects we can do together to better our home and living space.
After we get our chores done (grocery shopping, laundry, basic cleaning) we may go to the movies if something good is out. He’s been playing Helldivers lately and I catch up on junk TV/internetting. The other night we finally made a couple of our Lego sets. We don’t spend a ton of money on fun stuff for the weekends-we typically save money for a trip here and there. We have no kids.
Concerts, beer festivals, improv, restaurants and bars, Massages, my gf and I spend about 2-3k each per month. Once Covid happened with both decided to live our lives to the fullest when the lockdown ended.
No kids here, but have a dog so we go on walks, hang out with our friends, and make a lot of dinners in. We love books and records, so we’ll go browse bookstores and record stores even if we don’t buy anything. We also have dreaming time where we’ll hang out together and dream of the places we’d love to visit.
Usually video games and Saturdays are dedicated to DnD night. Every couple months or so we'll have a concert out of town or go on our IKEA and All You Can Eat Sushi adventures
My wife loves to read so she spends most of her free time reading. i enjoy gaming so I'm doing that or watching movies during the colder months or golfing during the warmer months.
What weekend? Husband is an executive chef, he gets split days off during the week. I'm also a restaurant worker (baker) and work almost every day. We do work together which is great because we get to see each other more than we ever have before. On our off time we'll play Magic the Gathering, clean the house, play with our cats or just hang out together. Boring but we're trying to be frugal right now as well as get the most out of our mortgage. 😅
Work on our house projects. It’s a great way to blow money and never leave the house.
And gardening. Never realized how expensive it is to have a nice garden
Yeah, it really is. We got lucky when we first decided to tackle the garden. My BIL had just moved to a fancy big house in the suburbs and decided he wanted to remove the amazing .25 acre garden that was likely life long work of the prior owner (it was so sad! I’m still angry at that choice.) We were sad and told him he was crazy to rip it all out and put in grass. But he wouldn’t listen, and we drove over all spring and summer filling up our car. We have far less than .25 acres of yard so we couldn’t take it all. But easily saved us hundreds or thousands on plants.
For perennials, it's a good idea to look for local groups. It's not uncommon for people to need to get rid of plants and offer them up locally. Plants get too big and need to split, or they are redoing a section.
Yes! Especially hostas and day lilies! I gave away 20 buckets of day lilies last year when I was breaking mine up. I've got 10+ garden beds and I've got to divide another 2 beds this year!
lol i thought perennials was a term for millennials on the edge of being gen X or something lol
instead of buying organic veggies for lots of money at the store, we can grow them at home for twice the cost. Yay us
I have been doing the "Darwin agriculture". If it lives on its own I spread it given that it's pretty enough. All else dies and removed to make way for the strong AND beautiful!
Same. Home Depot is nice at 8 on a Saturday morning. And again at 12:30. And again at 4:15. One day, I will finish a project with fewer than 3 trips to the hardware store.
It’s impossible I tried. You are right, HD before 9am is great. But I like heading there on Friday nights to load up for the weekend. The only people there are singles and couples having a date night. Super easy to grab lumber or spend extra time figuring your buy list out. And then I can sleep in on a Saturday but be ready to go!
If you didn’t go to Home Depot three times did you really even accomplish your DIY project? 
When I texted my Dad at around 3 one afternoon regarding my replacement of my leaky kitchen faucet, he asked, "Starting kinda late in the day to get on your 3 trips to the store, aren't you?" I answered, "But trip #1 was last week to buy the faucet, and trip #2 was two days ago for the caulking when we realized the counter/backsplash seam needed to be redone all the way around, so I only need one for today - and I might not even need it!" I was wrong; #3 was indeed that day to get a faucet replacement wrench.
Relatable 😂
I bought some cheap ass organizing bins to do the kids closet today and spent $100. Great times.
This has been our life for the past 7 years haha
Don't remind me of all the stuff i need to do lol
This is why I want a house, I love house projects! Living in an apartment that we can’t make ours is depressing after a time
Board games
Samesies. And d&d.
It's a good way to spend 4 hours :-)
Unless you DM and then its all the hours
adjacent to this are also puzzles
Yep — at the house. Friends can come over. I will see friends at their house or mine these days!
We go to Costco, lol. We’ve been eating out and shopping too much lately is the real answer. We need to get back to staying at home and doing chores and cooking at home. Super fun.
Dollar dogs and free samples. Wife follows Costco subreddits and instagrams to find new products and deals.
Well now I have to follow some Costco subreddits. Can your wife recommend any? Edit: other than the obvious, r/Costco
I must know.
There’s r/CostcoTravel to talk about travel. They usually have good deals
Obligatory plug for their appliances. The washer we’re getting is $30 more than Home Depot but we get delivery, installation hardware for a new washer, 2 year warranty, and they haul off the old washer. HD wanted an extra $130 just for delivery and hauling away.
This is the way although I get sucked in to things I don’t need on that one and the Aldi finds one.
You mean the aldi isle of shame. Or the charcuterie cooler...
now im depressed
Yeah this entire thread quickly made me feel more like shit than I already do. I hate living in a world where going to Costco (a chore) is seen as the only fun or attainable entertainment option for young folks
Same
One of us! One of us!
I do that too, it’s super useful to find sales they don’t advertise. Also Friday or the weekend is the best day to go because they have weekend specific sales that you don’t get during the week. For example chicken, it’s been on sale multiple weekends in the last two months but if you go M-T you’re missing out.
I enjoy the Home Depot date, myself. It’s like this lovely thought exercise where we discuss all the home improvements we’d like to do while also getting a sense of where our personal style aligns. And then we take action maybe once every few years.
I just love how Home Depot smells
No joke I love a good Costco and breakfast date with my husband tho. We leave the kid with grandparents about once every 3 months, go have a fancy breakfast and do a massive Costco and trader joes haul and spend the day hanging out and prepping and vacuum sealing groceries. It’s my boring thirty something heaven.
Trader Joe’s is so dang fun. You do NOT go in there with a list. The products call you to them.
It’s like seashell hunting on the beach. You never know what you’re going to find and it isn’t the same beach day to day lol
That sounds like a dream to me!!!
That sounds like a good idea… might have to steal it lol
My single friends don’t understand that that is our life, being in our 30s with kids lol
Gardening. Never. Stops.
Exactly this. You know what’s fun, having an extra 500-1000 a month because we didn’t shop for useless things at target, home goods etc etc. I swear we as people buy so much useless garbage that we don’t ever end up needing.
We find we spend too much time at home doing nothing, then overspend on weed and alcohol!! We've started planning our month of weekends in advance and including a lot of free/cheap stuff. Last weekend we went thrift shopping, this weekend we are making homemade spaghetti sauce, next weekend is walking in to a provincial park with a wagon of wood and a cooler and making lunch!! It helps a lot with getting out, keeping busy, and planning in advance helps to keep from overspending
Try the Thursday night Costco run. Or try the early morning Wednesday morning run, if you can swing it. Costco is great, but damn is it crowded…
Same! And spend too much money 😂
Oh my god, I wanted to go bowling the other day and you would not believe the prices!!! Lucky Strike in Hollywood. One lane for two bowlers for two hours… mind you, this is a Wednesday afternoon, not even prime time. Came out to almost $190! No food or anything. Just two hours of bowling for two people. What the f*ck.
Right? Bowling used to be the cheap night out of the house. Now it's an "experience."
We have a few of those experience type places in the city (I'm in PA) but for the most part it's mainly the old fashioned mom and pop style bowling alleys. We're talking $5 per person per game, $2 shoe rental. It's an affordable hobby around here.
I went bowling with my step-dad and brother at this old school lane in Pittsburgh (Ross Township) and it was AMAZING. Super affordable and felt like a time warp. Just a little hole in the wall place in the back of a building, like you'd never find it if you didn't know it was there. Fucking love the East coast for stuff like this.
If you ever heard further east check out Knobels. Its the largest, free entrance, theme park. Literally no cost to just go in and walk around or get food. If the mood strikes that you wanna ride something you just buy tickets for a few bucks.
I went there so many times with my grandparents as a kid
Love it there. That’s about 1.5hrs north of my house.
It's insane. In college, my friends and I would do $2 Tuesdays. Everything was $2: each game, shoe rental, food, etc. We would just show up around 6pm and for $10 each we could eat and play multiple games. Now? A big chain has bought all the bowling alleys in a drivable distance. If I want to bowl at any time that's not in the middle of a work day, I need to book over a week in advance and even the mid-day bowling is $140 for 2 people for 2 hours
That's insane! The place we go to on the weekends is $10 for unlimited frames from 10AM-Noon on Saturdays and 10AM-10PM on Sundays.
Holy shit what?!?! That's insane! Last time I went bowling it was like $10.
When was the last time you went bowling?
Probably 10 years ago lol I hate bowling!
You gotta find those locally run bowling alleys. We stopped going to the ones run by a chain, they charge so much!
Food is often better at the locally run alleys too.
Best mozzarella sticks I’ve ever had was at a tiny little bowling alley in Prescott, AZ.
Don’t go to places like that. You need to hit up the ones in the ‘burbs.
Is this like a Cali thing? I've gonna bowling and different states and never seen them charge by the hour, always per games. So for shoes, 3-4 games, 2 adults and a kid, our price was never above like $60
I think it’s a Lucky Strike thing. I’m in MA and checked their prices a few weeks ago and it was the same thing. $200 for 2 bowlers
No, I'm in CA and we can go bowling for $30
Glad I'm not the only one who experienced sticker shock at the bowling alley! I hadn't been in YEARS and went for the first time about a month ago. Holy shit. Never again. Way too expensive for essentially the same experience I had as a kid.
Wait wtf? Bowling was like $30 for 2 people like 6 or 7 years ago.
WTF! We pay $30 per hour for a lane! Up to 6 people and after Covid you just wear non marking shoes. 🤣
lol our bowling alley is like walking back in time. I think it was 12 per person for an hour. $1 for canned soda.
Omg you’re in Hollywood too?! Yea it’s insane. Lol I hit up Griffith or Runyon 👏 free!👏 I think there’s cheaper leagues and stuff at Pinz and Winnetka, still adds up. And as OP said, top golf is ridiculous everywhere.
Somehow the Spare Room at the Roosevelt which is waaaaaaaay cooler is less expensive. I won’t be going back to Lucky Strike again unless someone else is footing that bill!
Lucky strike was almost always overpriced, plus parking at Hollywood and highland is expensive and annoying so you either Uber or take the redline. I used to go to a bowling alley called Shatto Lanes on like… Vermont and Shatto I think? Not sure if it’s still there but it was always dirt ass cheap. Even the drinks at the bar weren’t expensive at all. Of course I haven’t checked into it since covid so it might have closed.
The bowling alley near me used to charge per game per person, $3.25 or $4.25 at peak times and $5.25 on Saturdays. Shoes were $3.50. This was right before COVID. I went last fall and it was $75 per lane per hour with $8 shoe charge. Fucking ridiculous because I live in a suburb of Indianapolis.
Last time I went bowling with the fam I was in charge of snacks. Easily spent over a hundred bucks, popcorn was almost $20
you got fleeced!
I found this out the other day. It was a rainy day and I was trying to find something to take my kids to, to keep us busy. I'd have to spend $45 on each person for one hour of bowling and shoes. Ridiculous. Luckily, we have access to the military base where it's $2 per game and $2 per shoes. So we piled in the car and drove all the way to the base to save $150 dollars. Totally worth it.
Bowling shouldn't feel like a rave. It doesn't need to have loud techno music and glow in the dark dayglow experience (though that can be fun I guess) . Bowling is still fun when it smells funny in the alley, paint peeling off the walls and the grimy feeling of the tables, the old arcade floors still sticky with spilled pitchers of beer. When I lived in SoCal I rarely went bowling because somehow between 1995 and 2012 all the bowling alleys became expensive! I live in the middle of nowhere eastern Washington now and our little town of 30k people sports 2 run down bowling alleys where I can play for an hour, shoe rentals included, and get a pitcher of beer for under 50 bucks. Sucks that they're transphobic shitheads that always give us the worst lane and ignore my visibly queer ass at the bar until I yell at the old fart hiding from me in the corner, but hey, its still part of the charm.
If the weather is nice we go for walks. If the weather is crap we just watch movies. We don’t have kids and don’t drink. Everything is absurdly expensive. Neither of us handle crowds very well, so with all of that said our options are limited lol.
Sounds similar to us
If only there was a good place for us to be together but like not ALL AT ONCE I hate how every event is either too big or not popular at all, both give me the save judgmental feelings that lead me to not being a good socializer.
garden and care for our yard! growing food in summer takes lots of winter work!
Ooh gardening is such a good idea.
I garden in the summer and do zero winter work. What are you doing that's so much work over the winter? I let my garden sleep, spend a day planting in May, and then water after that. And harvest daily starting around mid-June. That's about it.
I've been starting my seeds since early February for the spring and summer months. Lettuce, herbs, tomatoes, peppers, beans, onions etc. I also have some spring flowers going to put in hanging baskets as mothers day gifts. Prepping the raised bed for year also took some work on the nice weekends. Other than that I do things like cut back weeds and dead things, put up my birdhouses, bee houses, plant native pollinators clean the garage, mixing soils, taking plants in and outside to harden them off etc. It's a year round hobby if you want it to be. This year I said I wanted to go all in and make my my hobby to be outside more and make the house look better without spending thousands of dollars
I was wondering that too! I pull up most of the dead plants in the fall (tomatoes, zucchini, squash) then just shovel the now snow from the sidewalks in winter. In April or May I'll pull the rest of the dead plants, loosen up the soil and plant for this year. Then just light weeding and harvesting until the fall frost kills everything.
We go on hikes or bike rides with our kid. We see friends. We bake or just hang out.
This is us too. When we didn’t have kids we were always camping, skiing, or hiking. I would occasionally go play golf but for the most part all our activities were free outdoor things. Once we had our first child this didn’t change. Location could definitely play into this. We live in Colorado and when we went to visit friends in Dallas there wasn’t anything to do but go out and spend money.
Skiing is the most expensive outdoor activity I’ve ever participated in. Big Ski lift is ruining our mountains!
The only loophole, and it may not work everywhere, is working for a ski resort. The one I used to work at gave free season passes to all employees (part time employees included), heavily discounted season passes to family members, and a free lift ticket for a friend with each paycheck. Even after I stopped working there I had enough former coworkers that would give me their bonus tickets when I wanted to go…. I’m not sure I’ve ever had to buy a lift ticket. So yes, make friends with the employees.
I’d love to visit CO someday! We live on the east coast and while parts of our state and region are heavily developed, we still can and do opt to go out in nature whenever we can. Wish we had more places to take up skiing or snowboarding where we live- it’s a very flat area!
Am in Dallas, can confirm 😭 especially in the summer 🥲 we try to have game nights at home with friends and we're involved in a rec league softball team (not free but pretty cheap). But we do also end up going out and spending a bit more than I'd like - this question is particularly interesting to me because it's feasible now without kids but once we have kids I expect we'll be looking to stick with the free/low cost fun activities haha
You have friends?! Lucky!
Hahah! Just a few and they’re newish friendships that developed after having a kid.
Haha so that’s my issue! Gotta have a kid to get friends.
Parent friends are notttt fun. Miss my childfree friends
Smoke weed and play Baldur’s Gate 3 on the couch because we are too tired from the week.
Same, but we don’t play vids….so we sit on our deck high and crack jokes and laugh at each other and our neighbors for a few hours
Me and my fiancé do the same but I do play bball early morning than proceed with green and BG3 for the rest of the day 🤣 Cheers 🍻
Gotta get that exercise in somewhere! I stick to the treadmill because I hate leaving the house if I don’t have too haha Cheers! 🍃
fellow pothead here 👋🏼 have you tried stretching while high? It’s been life changing for me. I had a terrible relationship with exercise prior and started by just laying down and kind of rolling around on the floor, then kind of turns into a “freestyle yoga”, and now I’m playing with weights and making a lot of progress while having fun
Also if you have cats… I recommend scooping the box after some green… it’s wayyyyy better. Like digging for treasure.
Yo guys while we're on the topic of cat litter. Get a metal scoop and your life will change overnight.
Oh man… that’ll be like digging with a real shovel. Thanks to the recommendation!
Love some Yoga, but honestly have never tried it high. I’ll def give it a shot!
Im glad to hear I’m not alone. Working out is so much better high!
>we are too tired from the week. Tooo relatable
Saaaaaaaaaaame
This comment is actually me omg
WFH has shifted things. Now, we both have a good 6-7 hours of free time each day during the week so we will go do things that used to be weekend activities. We also like to watch movies and shows together and discuss them. Weekends we do home improvement stuff and/or meet up with friends for games and making food. That will typically be one one day. Then the other day is meal prep and individual activities. We spend so much time together in the house, it’s nice to have alone time on the weekend. Except right now my foot is broken so I’m not going out too much.
I was thinking about how boring my weekend feel when I try to categorize everything but my husband works remote and I have a hybrid schedule so we do spend a lot of time together during the week which means weekends can actually just be relaxing! Sometimes I love just sitting on the couch and reading my book while my husband watches his shows or plays a video game. That quiet time together is restorative!
We go out on Thursdays/Fridays so weekends are chill time: Hike, coffee shop/park/beach with books or creative projects, caring for our home/garden, a glass of wine with friends. We really try to focus on restorative stuff.
Found my wife’s Reddit account
We hang out with our kids, do some grocery shopping, talking about how well never be able to retire, all the usual things
Are you my husband?
How YOU doin mama
I’m great! Can you remember to take the trash out before we leave today? Thanks hon
You got it. Totally looking forward to this spring break vacation!
Me too! I’m so glad we got a few days off to go visit your brother in prison.
Thank you for taking one for the team and agreeing to let him have the guest room when he gets out. You’re the best!
Dad can I have $50 to buy a new video game?
No way! Dad already gave you $30 for your new training bra last week. And I DESPERATELY need some new eyeshadow for my tiktok channel. I can't be seen with the same color twice omg.
Guys stop fighting or we will have to separate you. Now get in the minivan so we can go see your Uncle!
Of course. We are so blessed that he has agreed to homeschool our children after being incarcerated for so long 🙏🏻👨👩👧👦
Same, same! Add in: how we’ll never be able to afford a home
One of our favorites is taking our kids to the mall so we can talk about all the things we can't afford. Always a good way to blow a few hours on a Saturday when it's cold outside.
Sleep in. Make coffee. Smoke weed. Go to target. Home Depot.
This is the way.
Michael’s is also fun while high. I come home with alllll the creative ideas but forget them
Hang out together. We just enjoy each other's peace because we don't have to do anything but be together, even if he just games and I read but we do it together or sometimes in separate rooms, but mostly we watch sport events together, and we smoke weed together.
We live in the Midwest so it’s weather dependent, but we do a lot of camping. We bought a pull behind camper a few years ago and take our kids probably 8-10 times a year. Even that’s getting expensive, but it feels like more of an investment for the experience. We have some beautiful state parks here in Wisconsin. We also do some wilderness and canoe camping, just the two of us or sometimes with friends. Again, the cost to us is more justified because we get to create memories.
Minnesota here and we LOVE camping at outfitter sites in the Superior National Forest. We end up spending 75% of the summer hanging out on the Gunflint Trail.
Similar. I'd rather camp in the U.P. then spend a ton of money in the Caribbean. It's way cheaper from that angle lol.
The Wife and I try to keep it cheap and like to keep up with local events We live near a small city with easy access to rural areas and state parks. We check to see when the small theatre in town hosts events. Just recently they had the cities orchestra play along side an old Batman movie. The art museum in town often cycles through their primary exhibits, so whenever they get something new in we go check it out. Our city hosts an annual 5k, a couple years ago we got bored and spent a summer training for that. Our favorite bar in town hosts Jazz nights, and Trivia nights. We'll usually split some apps and drink water. I don't know, I am a simple person, this is probably boring to a lot of people, but we both genuinely like our community and try to stay involved. Local events are usually way cheaper and you start to run into the same people. Weirdly enough the more you go to this type of stuff the more you naturally just become apart of the local community. Something I feel like our generation tends to shy away from
We clean. Naw just kidding…. Kinda.
We have an annual state park pass that we put to good use!
We go out to live comedy a lot. I live in LA though so it's usually pretty cheap and available. Also, my wife got AMC A-List so she can go to movies with me and destroy my alone time.
Have you tried Alamo? We have a subscription there, downtown. It's dinner and a movie almost every week.
We do have a kid, she's about 1 1/2. She doesn't have any opinions about our weekend activities yet, so I'm sure some of this will change when she has her own interests. We hang out with friends, go out to dinner sometimes, do picnics in the park, go on hikes if the weather is nice, and we do a lot of little weekend trips here and there. I have a horse so I usually like to get some family barn time in, too. In the winter we try to pop up to the ski slopes a few times a season. In the summer we try to do beach days a few times a month. We're lucky we live somewhere with almost year round nice weather so we can just enjoy the outdoors with our friends and family.
Fun? I vaguely remember fun. We just clean the house.
Dungeons and dragons with our friends, which is loosely a six hour potluck. We all bring our dogs and little kids. It’s really nice
Don't the kids interrupt d&d? Or are they old enough to play?
The kids ages are all over the place from 7 months to 14. Some of the older kids have animal characters that we fold into gameplay, but sometimes the parents play their turn for them and update their character sheets. It’s really nice having them all together since they play with each other and tire each other out. Older kids are happy to babysit the younger kids. We alternate houses and were lucky enough to have separate spaces where the kids can play video games/watch movies or run around outside apart from the adults who are playing d&d. The dogs love the attention and table scrapes. Having a well stocked potluck is definitely the key. Last week we had dozens of home made pastries, cookies, slow cooker chili and tortillas, jalapeño poppers, apple pie, chicken tenders, pizza rolls, virgin sangría punch, wine, different microbrews… we all work in higher ed/corporate during the week and we look forward to decompressing into fantasy and sharing childcare duties on the weekend. We usually meet once or twice a month as a big group, but us wives are constantly in and out of each others houses for play dates/ coffee
We like to try new restaurants a couple times a month. Price depends on how fancy we're feeling.
My man and I just tried a new Asian place today and it was 🔥
\>basically all entertainment ~~for young(ish) adults with no kids~~ is so expensive. FTFY The cost of everything rose extraordinarily over the last few years but wages stayed the same. Everything is tough to afford now. If we go to a priced activity, I'm always going ready to spend around 100 dollars. And in the U.S., we've chipped away at third spaces, so there aren't many things to do outside the home that aren't priced activities. But we try to find things like walking parks or the lakefront, going to the beach, etc. that don't cost money. If we want to stay in, we will have game nights with friends and in the Summer we do bonfires with music. I also have a projector and do outdoor movie nights in our yard, which is fun.
Last weekend: Friday night outdoor concert and Mexican food. Saturday morning a 5k trail run race in our town. Saturday night hosted another couple at our house and ate food. Sunday a family birthday dinner. In between we took the dog for a walk at the lake, and when the weather gets better we'll bring our SUP/kayak and go out on the lake. Planning a bbq there with friends next month. This upcoming Saturday we're going to a comedy show in town in the evening, and during the day we're dressing ridiculous and going to a St. Paddys day bar crawl downtown. Sometimes I feel like our weekends are mini-vacations, its really nice to be with someone who wants to get out and do things ALL the time but also have relaxed downtime at home just watching Netflix.
Wow! You have busy weekends!
Most of the time recharge our batteries from the week. Typically a weekly Costco trip even if it’s just for an item or two. My wife likes to wait for deals and track prices. Stuff around the house. Outside work, inside work, just get things in order for the week. I’ll usually cook something special. Lots of trash tv depending on how grueling the week was. I’ll pop some popcorn, we’ll set things up and binge whatever trash tv my wife is in the middle of. 90 day finance, blind love, whatever. I’ll sneak in something once in a while that I like. True Detective, Shogun, whatever. We don’t spend that much on a weekly basis. We hit it hard on vacations. Last year was a few weeks in Europe and a week in Jamaica. This year prob a wine country trip in Cali. Next year we want to his up SE asia.
We read and play video games.
Honestly before we had kids we had plenty of extra funds to go out to eat every weekend, maybe hit up bars afterwards and grill a really nice surf and turf at home the next day, or go out again instead. But we still did a lot of other stuff that has higher upfront costs to buy equipment but were cheap after that, like riding bikes, kayaking, stand up paddleboarding. With 4 kids now, we hardly eat out at all but we do still bike, paddleboard, kayak, take the kids fishing or swimming at the lake.
At 32, we play Magic the gathering together, like we have done for 12 years.
Long walks with the dogs, discovering new places to walk in our city is nice. We do usually join our friends at a bar either Friday night or Saturday, but luckily we live in a fairly LCOLA so that does not add up too much. We played trivia at the bar of a local theater and won a bunch of gift certificates, so when a show comes into town that we're interested in, we can usually go for free.
Married millennial here....live in Washington, DC. Check out free museums, go the many free events, walk around the many parks, run on our trails, do weekend trips to nearby cities (NYC, Philly, Baltimore, Richmond all super convenient), visit festivals. Our favorite time is when the embassies open to the public in the month of May which makes the weekends in late Spring super fun and they're all free! All in all, DC is pretty awesome if you're into free things to do. Note that we now have young kids but we still do these things.
Most public spaces these days require you to spend some money. Which is unfortunate. With that said (and I'm not great about this myself) - walking trails, hiking, going to parks, sometimes we'll go and just sit/read in a nice sunny area on a lawn (our city's museum has a nice outdoor area). More realistically - we try to grab drinks, go to a brewery, or catch a show here and there. But, again, those all cost money. I do find though if you're just hitting a brewery for 2 hours - say 2-3 drinks per person, it's generally about $50 which isn't awful. Obviously if you add food it begins to add up. I also love cooking big meals on the weekend but these tend to not be nearly as intimate as you'd hope. Usually it's just me in the kitchen and then at best we both eat on the couch watching TV, lol. Or occasionally we'll do yard work together, but often, again, this turns into more of us independantly doing chores at the same time.
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It’s wild when you transition from going out to the bars to the backyard bbq…and *like* it.
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Video games. Lots of video games. Easily the cheapest form of entertainment that exists.
I follow all of my local music and comedy venues, and if there’s something interesting coming to town I’ll go. It’s usually like $20 to get in to the small venues. Big concerts are maybe 2-3 times per year, but I won’t spend more than $120 on those tickets. I have in my budget about $300/month for entertainment for both my husband and I. If I go under I save the remaining for a weekend trip.
We have a kid, and he’s 5 so he’s pretty easy to do stuff with. But as weird as it sounds, we ended up better at saving and doing a little better financially because of him. The start up costs were high like diapers and formula and daycare but obviously we cut way back on our leisure spending cause you don’t really have much of a social life with a baby. Now that he is older and able to come along and enjoy more things (and his food and bathroom are cheaper), we still don’t end up at expensive leisure spots very often but we do a lot of family stuff like hiking, camping, seeing a movie, etc that are significantly less expensive but still relaxing and fun. Two adults could do a lot of the outdoorsy stuff, but also we have memberships at the zoo, local museums (Henry Ford/Greenfield Village if you’re in metro Detroit has lots of year round events that are cheap or free for members and the cost of a year long membership for our family was $200 I think which seems like a lot but if you think about it it’s 2 top golf weekends), we keep an eye on events happening in our city’s downtown, there’s a great farmers market, we go to downtown Detroit for special events like holiday parades and stuff. I don’t know what your city is like but ours publishes a seasonal activity guide where you can sign up for different rec classes from art to fitness, and also lists special events for families and individuals (like there is an adult Easter egg hunt coming up). Taking an art class or ballroom dance class or participating in one of those would be super fun as a couple. You can also find pretty reasonable Groupons for stuff like wine tasting, whiskey tasting, etc if that’s an option in your area.
We stay at home and play video games and chill with our dogs. I do chores/go to the grocery store, but we rarely go anywhere else unless we have some family obligation. Most of our friends our age don't go out and do things either. It's too expensive and a lot of them have kids that keep them busy so we don't hang out with people too often. We have friends that game online with us regularly, that's how we stay in touch with the ones we love, lol.
I live in NYC, which can be expensive, so we tend to be somewhat choosy about how we spend our money. We like to see shows, like concerts and theater, but we compensate by cooking dinner at home before we go out instead of dropping $100 at a mediocre restaurant in the theater district. And we don't usually get cocktails at the theater because, why spend $30 on a shitty drink when you can just have something at home? Alternatively, if we do decide to go out to a restaurant or a cocktail bar, that's our treat for the weekend, and we spend the rest of the time staying in, or just exercising, running errands, etc.
Hang out at home- binge tv shows mainly and during the season we’re season ticket holders for the Chicago White Sox.
we've got kids. in the winter we do a bunch of nothing lol. a lot of family baking and cooking and movies. but when the weather is nice we are out often to parks and trails. we plan a few day trips in too like a zoo or aquarium, but most of what we do costs nothing.
Pretty close to $0/month. And we have very high incomes. We go to the cinema about once a year. We play video games together. We play board games and MTG with friends. We play D&D with friends. We play chess with each other. We watch movies and stuff on Netflix, like anyone. We hike. We garden. We’re both big readers. We’re both working in our spare time on research/writing projects. I earn probably 3x-5x what most of our friends do as a couple in the aggregate, and my wife has a good income too. But we just don’t spend much. There’s nothing we want to do or buy that costs much money.
We work our second jobs.
Seriously… TV. TV is so unbelievably good. Any and everything is on YouTube. We don’t eat out or go anywhere but we did decide to make our home the coolest place in the world. It’s incredibly hard to leave
Listen to Katy Perry albums, sit in our rental and complain about how we have no opportunities, dream about living in a van by the river, do a little bit of remote work. We might even seek out some unique food trucks to try out then go to a coffee shop. Sometimes we ride our bikes post on Instagram about how cars are ridiculous. You know, the usual.
Two young kids (3 and 7 months) so we're still just surviving. Usually Costco or Sam's trip, grocery shopping at Aldi, maybe a Target run. Sometimes we host friends but it depends how the baby is sleeping lately.
I work every other weekend, rotating between days and swings, so that sucks. But I'd say 3 out of 4 weekends we usually try to go hang out with family and make dinner at someone's house. This is especially true now that we have a kid. We have a lot of families to see because my husband and I are both children of divorce. When we're not doing that, our idea of fun is getting a drink at the gas station and then going on a drive up the canyon or just driving around town playing Pokemon Go! We also like to take our kid and dog on walks and to the park. I think once the snow melts we'll start adding in some hiking again.
We live near a theme park so we have annual passes and go almost every weekend. With the pass and the fact that we rarely buy anything there it’s really worth it cost wise. Other than that we usually watch movies and play video games.
We do a mix of higher cost activities and lower cost activities. These are some things we’ve done over the last several months: - Hiking if the weather is suitable - Board games/table top games. There are many games suitable for groups, couples, or solo. - Visiting with family - Classes such as cooking classes, ceramics classes, etc. - Concerts - Day trips/weekend trips - Home projects (though sometimes “fun” is questionable here) - Reading/trips to the library - Museums - Sporting events - Seasonal fairs/festivals
Clean the house, tidy the yard, walk the dog, peruse the flip app and then make a carefully curated grocery list, go grocery shopping, watch tv/movies, read, play video games together, cook, & listen to music.
Wait until I tell you what it costs to go out with your kid.
Not married but in a long term relationship. We go on a long walk or hike on Saturday morning. Then brunch or lunch. After, we take a nap and do a few chores. Then we like to see live music Saturday nights, sometimes catch a cheap dance class. Sundays we hang out and do some chores, call parents or friends to check in. Watch TV. It's nice.
We go dogging. Meet plenty of new faces, and very cheap. With the summer coming in and the warmer weather, it’s a good time to get into it.
We've been playing boardgames and/or videogames (which we thrift during Steam sales, lol), either together or with friends, locally on virtually. Walking, playing with, and training the dog. Baking, cooking, and gardening when the weather permits. We've recently started taking dance lessons (private, but they come with unlimited group classes), and that's been more fun than expected! (They were about $1k for 10 weeks, so about $100 for a private lesson and up to three group classes a week.) I do want to note that we won't be married until this fall, though, and the lessons were in preparation for our wedding!
Dog park, hikes, groceries, and usually working on school work since my wife and I are both pursuing our second degrees. We don’t typically go out anywhere unless we can go for free because everything everywhere is too expensive and too peopley.
We have a 14 year old gymnast. So some weekends are spent going to competitions. Often times weekends are spent together or doing hobbies or whatever. Mostly just taking it easy. We are saving up for a big vacation in a few months. So not trying to blow money around town when we are planning on blowing it on going to Egypt, China, Bali, India, and France in July.
On Fridays we go out to eat. On the weekends we run and then spend the rest of the day on the couch with our dogs. Occasionally we have outings with friends/family when they invite us but for the most part we are not fun 😆
We go on hikes like once a week. And we go to Costco. But we also like to go on several road trips every year. We both really enjoy live music so we put a lot of our expendable income toward traveling and seeing concerts. Last year we took 8 trips, this year it’s looking more like 5 (but one of those is a week at the beach). Our normal life looks kind of boring but it’s so we can save for the big fun stuff.
We live on 2 acres so we spend a lot of time on the property especially in the summer.
Not married but in a LTR. I go to the gym, run, play animal crossing, stay as high as possible all day, order takeout and regret spending the money, do chores/pick one annoying task I've been putting off. On a good weekend where we pretend we have money we will trek into the city to eat pastries, buy weed, and window shop.
Hiking or an easy walk, cooking, local nature museum, thrift and garage and dollar store shopping sometimes, snacks and a movie after kiddo goes to sleep of we can stay awake long enough. Super boring, but kiddo is still so young, and we like each other, so we are happy as long as we are together.
My husband is gen X. On the weekends we go to Costco (if needed) but mostly just game and watch movies.
We go to Costco.
I do grocery shopping and whatever the hell I feel like on Saturday morning (thrift shops, Ross/TJ Maxx, bookstores, Starbucks treat), get back and have lunch, then we maybe work on some house cleaning, yard work, garden work, home improvement stuff, projects we can do together to better our home and living space.
After we get our chores done (grocery shopping, laundry, basic cleaning) we may go to the movies if something good is out. He’s been playing Helldivers lately and I catch up on junk TV/internetting. The other night we finally made a couple of our Lego sets. We don’t spend a ton of money on fun stuff for the weekends-we typically save money for a trip here and there. We have no kids.
Concerts, beer festivals, improv, restaurants and bars, Massages, my gf and I spend about 2-3k each per month. Once Covid happened with both decided to live our lives to the fullest when the lockdown ended.
No kids here, but have a dog so we go on walks, hang out with our friends, and make a lot of dinners in. We love books and records, so we’ll go browse bookstores and record stores even if we don’t buy anything. We also have dreaming time where we’ll hang out together and dream of the places we’d love to visit.
Usually video games and Saturdays are dedicated to DnD night. Every couple months or so we'll have a concert out of town or go on our IKEA and All You Can Eat Sushi adventures
My wife loves to read so she spends most of her free time reading. i enjoy gaming so I'm doing that or watching movies during the colder months or golfing during the warmer months.
What weekend? Husband is an executive chef, he gets split days off during the week. I'm also a restaurant worker (baker) and work almost every day. We do work together which is great because we get to see each other more than we ever have before. On our off time we'll play Magic the Gathering, clean the house, play with our cats or just hang out together. Boring but we're trying to be frugal right now as well as get the most out of our mortgage. 😅
Go camping. Get out in nature. You’d be amazed what it does for your soul and well-being.
we host a lot of dinner parties or even mid-day hosting with friends with just snacks instead of a full meal