Friday, September 17, 2010

Entertainment Budget

Our budget consists of a $100 entertainment fund each month.  This allows us to do whatever we want to for fun or to unwind.  We have gone putt-putt golfing, eat out at a restaurant, grab an ice cream cone, go wine-tasting, go to a carnival or fair, etc. 

We are always looking for things to do for little or no money.  Because Todd and I only have 2 weekends a month to spend the entire weekend together, we like to go out one of the days for lunch.  We choose lunch for a couple of different reasons. 

1.)    We are morning people.  We get up early and are usually on the road by 8 or 9 in the morning to go explore and do whatever we want to do.
2.)    Lunch at a restaurant is a lot less expensive than dinner.

Our favorite food (I must admit, I turned Todd onto it) is sushi.  Sushi is expensive. We have easily spent over $50 on a nice sushi restaurant.  We would go every week if we could, but we cant - it’s not in the budget.  So, our resolution is that we found a Chinese buffet in a nearby town that has really good sushi along with all the other cuisine.  Todd and I go there and load up on the sushi!  Because we go at lunch – we can get out of there for less than $15 for the two of us.  Oh, and did I mention that I LOVE ice cream?  Instead of getting a cone on the way home, I get it there.  They have hard ice cream for dessert at the buffet and it’s just as good (if not better) than the soft serve I’d get from the local DQ at nearly $2/cone!

We also like to go to the movies; however, neither of us is willing to pay $6.50-$9/person to see one.  We drive to another neighboring town about 30 minutes away and go to the dollar theater.  Due to inflation, the dollar theater is now $1.50/person to see a movie that is a month or two old, but we get the “theater” experience for a fraction of the price!  We usually make it a lunch & movie date for less than $20!

Todd and I also found out that we really like wine when we first got together.  Neither of us ever liked it until we went to a winery in the Thousand Islands, NY.  We were in love instantly, and found out that not all wine is dry! We like the sweet stuff.
Shortly after discovering wine, I found a place in Akron, Ohio that offers wine tasting and you can make your own batch of wine!  For our 1 year dating anniversary, I surprised Todd with this place where we tasted all of their sweet wines and then made a batch.  A month later, we went to go bottle it at this facility, and we’ve been making and drinking our wine ever since!  What’s the point of me mentioning this? 
We like wineries, but don’t like paying $4-6/glass of wine.  We now make our own wine (3-6 gallons/batch : 15-32 bottles/batch) for approximately $2/bottle!  1 bottle will give us 4 glasses of wine.  We make a couple of batches in the fall, and enjoy it year-round!

One last thing that we really enjoy – sight-seeing.
We enjoy going to museums around town, old houses, and just drive around through the country. Those are the best dates of all because we are focused on one thing and one thing only – each other!

What do you enjoy to do for little or no money?
Do you still go on dates with your significant other?

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