Key takeaways
- Money spent every weekend on eating out and other entertainment can add up to five or ten thousand dollars over the course of a year.
- Spending money every, or almost every, weekend can make it harder to save money for a future goal like making a downpayment on a house.
- Entertainment and having fun doesn’t have to cost a lot of money.
- Think about some free or very low cost ways to have fun on the weekends to save more money, get to where you’re going faster, and have fun in the process.
When I was a child, my parents took my siblings and me to the state park every Sunday. We all had a great time swimming, boating, and picnicking. This weekly outing was very inexpensive and it allowed our family (with a lot of kids) to do something fun with a small amount of money.
Our inexpensive weekly family outings come to mind when I think of young people out there, working hard to save money. Often they’re struggling to save amidst accumulated debt and all the other unavoidable expenses that come up. Most actually do have a fairly good savings mentality, but there are some who will spend $100 to $200 every weekend on eating out and enjoying various entertainments that cost a quite a bit of money. If you think about it, over a year, that can add up to $5,000 or $10,000; over five years, that money could be a downpayment on a property. It makes a big difference, especially over time.
How can you address the issue of overspending, looking at it from the standpoint of saving for something big? Like my family did and whether you have kids or not, you can plan weekend picnics at the different accessible public parks. There are a lot of other things you can do inexpensively too. Streaming video services cost about $8 to $10 a month. You can refresh and recharge by doing something active together like going on walks, taking nature hikes, biking, swimming. Lots of people have game nights where they get together with others and play board or card games.
If you put some thought and creativity into it, you’ll find that there are countless other inexpensive or free things you can do that are a lot of fun. Having fun is important, but it doesn’t have to cost very much money, if any at all. Inexpensive fun allows you to save more money to use for other things. In the future, when you’ve saved enough, you can use it in any number of ways like: take a longer, more luxurious vacation; use it to fund certain events, like a wedding; pay cash for a reliable car, so you won’t have a car payment; put a downpayment on a home; tuck more away in your retirement accounts, or any number of other things.
Often the most memorable and joyful times involve simply getting together with others and trading stories about the past week. Saving for future, large purchases, or other long-term goals will help get you where you want to go in a faster manner and you can still have a great time in the process. Consider this the next time you’re trying to change spending and saving habits, especially on the weekends if you see that you’ve been allowing disposable income to go out the door. Get creative and come up with new ways to have a great time, but that don’t cost very much money. Until next time, enjoy.
Gary
