Try These Inexpensive New Year Socializing Ideas
After a year or two of increasingly frivolous spending, one of my goals ahead of the New Year is to save as much money as possible. In some areas of my life, such as eating out or shopping for clothes, it is obvious that I need to trim, and there are many easy ways to save money.
The only area that I foresee will get me in trouble is hanging out with friends. When you go for an evening stroll at a bar or dine in a new restaurant, a night or two can break your budget, especially when your friends don’t care about money as much as you do.
This is why we crowdsource low cost hanging options. This option, suggested by Audrey Gonzalez from the financial diet , sounds especially funny:
One of my friends came up with the idea to open a culinary club. Each month, a group volunteer demonstrates how to make a favorite meal, be it chicken pie, paprikash, or black bean and spinach enchiladas. We’ve even had people demonstrating simple cake decorating techniques or teaching the basics of creating your own home garden. We are planning a culinary club several weeks in advance due to the busy schedule and small children, and since we are enough we only need to volunteer once or twice a year. The rest of the time you come to socialize, learn how to do something new, and eat for free.
What a great way to hang out with friends, provide comfort and showcase your culinary skills. You can also stick to a more traditional lunchtime situation.
Another suggestion, which we wrote about earlier, is to create a story club . It doesn’t take the time (or expense) of a book club, and as Nick wrote, you can get more creative and avant-garde by choosing your choice.
There is also a cinema club. Inspired by the Unspooled podcast, some family members and I are starting to work together on a list of AFI’s 100 Best Movies of All Time. Every week we choose one film, watch and discuss. You can also tweak something like this by adjusting the timeline to suit your needs. What’s great is that you can find many movies online for free or rent them for less than a cup of coffee.
Do you have any original, cheap activities that you would like to do with your friends and / or family? Let us know in the comments.