Frugal Entertainment: How to Keep Yourself (and Your Family) Entertained

Keeping yourself and your family entertained seems like an expensive proposition. Amusement parks, video game arcades, and even home entertainment like DVDs are all getting pricier. Thanks to the frugal living movement, you can find ideas for frugal entertainment all over the Internet and keep yourself and your family entertained without going into bankruptcy.

Living frugal doesn’t mean living bored. The focus on frugality and simplicity doesn’t involve giving up the things you love, but instead asks you to think of new ways to enjoy them that help you save money and keep your life as simple as possible.

One way to save money on entertainment is to use movie coupons at your neighborhood movie theater. For whatever reason, most people who go to the movies don’t even stop to think that they can use the Internet to print out coupons to save money at the movies. Thanks to a new focus on couponing and saving money, movie theaters are releasing coupons at a surprising rate. You can save as much as half off by taking advantage of online movie coupons, especially if you are open to going to movies at specific times. Movie houses now offers special discount rates for matinees and for special viewings of films in the evenings, too.

But frugal entertainment isn’t just for family fun. Here are a few cheap date ideas keep dating frugal, simple, and inexpensive. Consider asking your wife on one of these cheap dates and letting the kids handle their own entertainment for the night.

1. Time Capsule Date

On the Time Capsule Date, you and your wife (or girlfriend, or you and your kids, it’s very adaptable) gather a few items that represent your current lives together. It could be anything from a beloved recipe to the lyrics of a favorite song. Put together a time capsule, including hand-written notes, predictions for the future, and anything else you like. Bury the time capsule in the backyard with plans to dig it up in ten years or so and look back on your life.

2. Visit a Nursing Home or Hospital

It costs nothing at all to visit people who are in a nursing home or hospital setting that may not otherwise have visitors. You can sing them songs, play music for them, play games with them, or just sit and talk. Not only is this a totally free date, but it is also a great way to help other people, a major aspect of simple living.

3. Sunset Hunting

Plan to start this date about forty-five minutes before sunset. Get in the car and chase the sunset, hunting down new locations to watch the sunset from. Besides a little gas money, this is a totally free (and totally romantic) date that exemplifies simple and frugal living.