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According to themotleyfool.com’s article here, the average household in America spends over $2,900 per year on entertainment! That’s a lot of dough going toward fun. But we’ve got to have at a little bit of fun, so it’s important to find ways to save money on entertainment. In this post, we’re going to talk all about entertainment - why you need some fun things in your life, why it’s important to save money on entertainment, and 27 ways to save money on your entertainment budget. These are ALL of the ways that I personally use to save money on entertainment. So use a few or use them all. It’s completely up to you. Why it’s important to save money on entertainment 1. Entertainment can be expensive: inflation in the last year or two has hit everybody extremely hard. That means the cost of literally everything has gone up. So you have to find ways in your budget to cut costs. That could mean less fast food, coffee, or entertainment. For this post, we’ll focus on how to save money on entertainment. 2. You need to have some fun: this post is for everybody looking to save money on entertainment - whether you’re working your way out of debt and need free ideas - or you’re out of debt and just need some ways to tighten up the ole entertainment budget. All of that is in this post. 3. You have financial goals: the more money you save on entertainment, the more money you have to put toward all of your financial goals. If you don’t already have your financial goals written out, it’s time to do that - this post can help you with your financial goals - then start saving money [from your entertainment budget] to put toward them! 27 Simple ways to save money on entertainment 1. Your book collection If you have a collection of books, especially those that you’ve never read, it’s time to run through them. What I mean is that I want you to take some time and read every single book that you own. I want you to challenge yourself. Try to read at least a book per week or more. Make this fun. Because it’s a great way to be productive, learn some stuff, get all of those books read, and save a ton of money in the process. 2. Hit the library! One of the best ways to save money on entertainment is to hit up your local library. Almost every town or city has a library, so make sure that you have a library card! Once you do, head over and start checking out whatever you want. Most libraries have a ton of books, online ebooks, books on tape (or CD), and DVDs. A lot of entertainment and it won’t cost you a dime! But make sure you always return your borrowed items on time or else it won’t be free anymore. Lastly, if you live in a bigger city, check to see how many different libraries your city has. My city has 7 libraries! That means 7 times the free books! 3. Movies on the cheap Next up, here’s how to go to the movies for cheap. Skip out on those nighttime movies and hit up the daytime matinee showings. Movie theaters want to sell out all showings so they discount the matinee shows pretty heavily. Hit up those shows and try to steer clear of the concessions. They’re WAY overpriced. Just bring some snacks with you instead. Do those things and you’ll save at least half of what you would normally spend. 4. Potluck dinner and movie night Have some friends who want to save money as well? Awesome! Just get up with everybody and figure out a game plan - have every person commit to bringing a food dish and a have someone grab a new movie from Redbox. If you wanted something new, try streaming a new movie or everybody throwing in a few dollars to rent a new one on Prime Video. All of that is super cheap, plus y’all get to have a nice meal and a movie, too! 5. Board game night I’m a huge fan of board games and board game nights. They can be extremely fun (and interesting as well with a few drinks - 21+). My friends and I will get together and bring the games, which will usually consist of some elaborate, story-oriented game or other game that requires some thought. But if you don’t want to go that hardcore, simply bring some cards and play card games, try a game like Phase 10, or pull out the poker chips for a poker night! 6. Online discounts Check websites like AirBnB, Groupon, and Entertainment.com offer some awesome deals for all kinds of different entertainment ideas. You just have to find something fun to do on there and you can start saving money! 7. The discount book Discount books are pretty awesome. They’re usually run as some sort of fundraiser and can help save you hundreds of dollars in a fairly short period of time. Most discount books, like the ones sold by my son’s daycare, cost about $20-25 dollars and have thousands of local discounts. This can be a great way to both save money and find cool, new, local places to check out. However, be careful with this. I don’t want to encourage extra spending just to get a small discount from these discount books. Use the discounts at places you’re already going to be spending money at - like the local ice cream shop or Mexican restaurant. Don’t increase your spending just to get the discount…because don’t forget, you probably just bought the discount book, too! 8. Local amateur sporting events One great way to both have fun and save money is to check out a local amateur sports team. If you live in a larger city like I do, or near one, there are always a few options. For example, my area has an arena football team, a semi-pro basketball team, and multiple semi-pro baseball teams. These events can be super fun and amazingly cheap to go to. So start looking around to see what sports teams are local. Also, if you live near professional sports teams, stadiums, or event venues, check to see what outings you can go to for cheap. Raleigh, N.C., has a professional hockey team that my friends and I visit frequently and simply buy crappy nosebleed seats just to go and have fun. Up to you, though. 9. Start a goal journal This is one of my favorite things to do at the beginning of the year - create my new goal journal! Every single year, on January 1st, I create a new goals journal. In it, I chronicle my life, great things that have happened to me recently, pull over some stuff from previous notebooks, business ideas and tips, and ALL of my goals and sub-goals. I don’t mess with New Years Resolutions, but I always want to aggressively attack and make progress toward goals in my life. And to help me with that, I create a goals journal. The more time you put in, the closer you’ll be to your goals! 10. Volunteer If you’re looking for something fun to do, try out volunteering. There are lots of ways that you can help out the community, all while saving money, having fun, and making a big difference in someone’s life. Seriously, don’t sell this one short. Volunteering is an amazing way to give, especially if you don’t have the money to give to charity right now. If you’d like to give your time, have fun, and save money, check out this post here on Indeed.com. 11. Yard sale flipping This is one activity that my wife and I LOVE to do. If you’ve never heard of yard sale flipping, the idea is simple - you travel around to local yard sales, find really cool and moderately valuable items on the cheap, and then you turn around and sell them on online sites like Mercari or EBay for a profit. THAT is the art of yard sale flipping. We’ve been doing this for a couple years now and have made a few thousand dollars so far! However, if you try this, I highly recommend that you do a little bit of research and find what the best items are to flip. If you don’t, you might just be wasting money. Once you do this for a few months, you’ll get the idea of what sells pretty quick. If you’d like to see a really good mini series on yard sale flipping, I HIGHLY recommend Gary Varnerchuck’s YouTube series called “Trash Talk” that you can check out here. I love this series. And Gary V is pretty motivational on top of that if you need some inspiration and motivation in your life. 12. Turn your hobby into extra money If you have a unique hobby, try figuring out a way to turn your your hobby into some cold-hard cash! If you’re great at landscaping, start up a side hustle cutting lawns. If you can make really cool furniture or things with wood, sell it locally. If you’re a crafty person, start selling stuff on Etsy! Having a hobby is cool but having a hobby that you can make money off of is freakin’ awesome! That’s what I did. I started playing disc golf and soon found out that I could turn my new hobby into an entire business, with a website running almost everything. 13. Build a website If you’re fairly tech-savvy, you could try starting a website or blog! If you have a cool hobby, or are knowledgeable about a certain topic, that could be the motivation to start building an awesome website. So what are you passionate about? My website, DiscgolfNOW.com, was started as a site to simply help out beginners with learning how to play the game. It took awhile, but my site turned into something amazing and now makes me a solid monthly income. With a lot of hard work and focused effort, you can build a great website, have fun, and start making some money, too! 14. Local bar discounts (21+) I love hitting up the local bars in my neighborhood and getting discounts on alcohol! If you’re over 21, try checking out all of your local bars and restaurants to see which ones have deals and which days have happy hour! One local bar we have has different drink specials on every single day of the week! 15. Cheap date nights If you’re trying to find some decently fun date night ideas, but don’t have a lot of money to spend, have no fear. Because there are hundreds upon hundreds of free and cheap date night ideas on the internet. But it’s more than the money. Finding free and cheap date nights is almost equally as fun for a couple for two reasons: it forces you to think about money and how you don’t always have to use it for dates. And it makes the both of you think creatively and outside-the-box for new ideas! So don’t knock it ‘til you try it! For a list of free date night ideas, check out this post here on stylecaster.com. For a great list of cheap date night ideas, check out this post here on Ramseysolutions.com. 16. Cut your cable - stream instead! I never liked cable all that much. A bunch of channels and a bunch of shows, but you’re restricted to watching shows at certain times and hoping that there will be good movies on TV. Nah, not a fan. So my wife and I cut the cord on cable a long time ago and have loved it. We save about $100 bucks a month on that and just pay for a couple of streaming services every month. They’re cheap and you can watch what you want, when you want. That’s our kind of entertainment. But be careful! Because if you have too many streaming services and subscriptions, you’re going to be paying just as much, if not more, than cable. Limit yourself to just a few and that’s it. Twice the entertainment and only 25% percent of the cost! 17. Free local festivals Free local festivals can be one of the most fun things to go to. In fact, me, my wife, and my son just went to the local folk music festival. Some got rained out, but they had 2 1/2 days of all kinds of awesome music - from Irish music played on a harp, to Tuvan throat singing, to the local college drumline. We go every year and it was still pretty dang cool this year. On top of that, there are so many other festivals that towns and cities put on, most of which are completely free to attend. And if you do want to buy food and other stuff, you can. But it’s all still relatively cheap. 18. Free local music Free local music can also help you trim your entertainment budget. If you’re not heading to a local music festival, check out the local college for performances, local bars, or hip coffee shops. A lot of places have live music and it won’t cost you much of anything at all to hang out and listen to it. 19. Local history and ghost tours Another thing you can try out are local history or haunted ghost tours. Some places have A LOT of rich history and local tours that can either be free or fairly inexpensive. My wife and I have now gone on two haunted tours and they’ve both been awesome (definitely check out a haunted tour in New Orleans if you ever go there - crazy and very creepy). 20. Hiking My wife and I are all about some hiking. It’s almost always free, fun, interesting, and an extremely healthy thing to do. If you’ve never gone hiking, it’s simple - grab your tennis shoes or some sport hiking boots and head out to a local trailhead. Most towns or cities have something like this nearby, so simply Google, “hiking trails near me” or “hiking trails near (your city/state)” and a bunch of local trailheads should pop up in the search results. Then find where you want to go and head out. I’d encourage you to take a buddy or friend if you can for safety, but you can also do this by yourself if you’d prefer. So head out, hit the trailhead, have some fun, save some money, and get some great exercise in while you’re at it. 21. Running Running is free and fun. Well, maybe not all that fun if you’re out of shape. So start slow. Then challenge yourself to run faster and further. As you progress and get better, running becomes more and more fun. Pretty soon, you’ll realize that you’ve done a lot of hard work, gotten good exercise, and didn’t spend a dime. 22. Disc Golf Did I mention that I love disc golf? Yep, I sure did in tip #12 and #13. But let me tell you why I love it. This sport is, hands down, one of the most fun activities that I’ve ever done. AND it’s insanely cheap. Disc golf is similar to ball golf in that you use plastic discs (instead of clubs and a ball) and you try to throw them from the teepad into a metal basket at the end of each hole (instead of a hole in the ground) in a certain number of throws or strokes. To play, you only need a few discs and a bag to hold your discs - all of which costs around $50-100 bucks depending on how much you want to spend. From then on, you can basically play for free as long as you want. The equipment is cheap and about 99% of all disc golf courses are FREE to play. So I haven’t spent hardly anything on actually playing disc golf in a long time. If you’d like to try out disc golf, check out the following posts on my other site: Disc Golf 101: A Step by Step Beginner’s Guide The 17 Best Disc Golf Starter Sets for Beginners 27 Best Disc Golf Bags (Yes, You Need One of These) For more, check out DiscgolfNOW.com here. 23. Exercising Besides the 3 kinds of free exercise I listed above, there are so many other ways to exercise or workout for free and for cheap. And it doesn’t matter what kind of exercise you do, it’s all good for you! So whether you hit a cheap 24/7 fitness gym for weightlifting, walk around the local school’s walking track, rock climb, or play a sport like basketball with your friends, you’re having fun and saving money…oh, and getting healthy, too! So find something that you love and give it a shot. 24. Make your own entertainment list Next up, your personal entertainment list. I’ve already told you that this list that you’re reading is my personal list of free or cheap entertainment ideas for both my wife and I. We use this list. So now it’s your turn. Start putting together a personal list of all the things that you might like to try. There are hundreds of free or cheap things to do, but it’s up to you to find entertainment ideas that you’d like to try out. So make your personal entertainment list now! 25. Entertainment limit I’ll also encourage you to set an entertainment limit, or a specific amount of money, for how much you’re allowed to spend every month. Something like $50-150 dollars per month. You need a limit so that you can save money. Giving yourself limits on unnecessary items like fast food, coffee, and entertainment is extremely important. Because most people heavily overspend in these budget categories. The idea is to trim down your entertainment budget. So giving yourself an allotted amount of money is how you do that. If you spend all of your money before the end of the month, then that’s it. You don’t spend any more until you get paid AND the new month starts. However, if you’re unsure about how much you spend, here’s what you do ⬇️: 26. Track your entertainment expenses If you have no idea how much you’re spending on entertainment expenses every month, you need to track everything you spend for an entire month. Do as you normally do for the entire month and track every entertainment expense as you spend the money. Add up all of those expenses when you get to the end of the month and get your total. Be warned - this total might surprise you. Once you have a total, you can set yourself an entertainment budget limit and go from there. After that, you should continue to track your expenses every single month, just like the first month. That way you’ll know what you’re spending and how much you have left to spend for the remainder of the month. If you’re having trouble, start using a budget. 27. Use a zero-based budget Creating and using a budget for your personal finances is a REQUIREMENT of good money management. You NEED a budget or else you aren’t going to be watching your money as closely as you should be. Without a budget, you won’t be in control of your money. Instead, it will control you. So you need to create a zero-based budget, meaning a budget where you track every single dollar, and use that to help you both track expenses and watch your entertainment budget limit amount. Budgeting your money is important, but it also offers you a way to keep track of how you’re doing and help you hit your financial milestones. On top of that, I spend about an hour per week just looking at our budget and trying to find ways that I can improve my budgeting skills. That can actually be entertainment, too! So if you’re interested in budgeting, check out the following posts: 7 Ways a Zero-Based Budget is the Best Budget for Your Money 37 Ways to Give Yourself a Raise in Your Budget (#27 is Crazy!) Extra - learn about your personal finances One last thing you can do to not only entertain yourself, but save money also, is to start learning about personal finance and your own personal finance situation. It might be tough at first, but the more you learn, the better you’ll get at managing your own finances. Plus, just like me, you might learn to love personal finance! Extra - 101 free and cheap things to do Stay tuned for this post - “101 Free and Cheap Things to Do: Ultimate Money Saving Guide!” Finally The tips above are some of the absolute best and cheapest ways to save money on entertainment. Like I said, all of the ways that I’ve personally used to save money and tighten up the budget a bit. From this point on, I want you to figure out how you can do the same. Because it’s never a bad thing to save money - especially when entertainment and fun can be so dang expensive! So USE THIS LIST as your guide going forward and you’ll be just fine. 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