How we save money for a night with and without our child

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As I've mentioned in a previous post I like to save money. Where I live it's not always a difficult thing to do because we live in Ohio for one and Ohio is not one of the more expensive states for living in which helps. We are usually on a budget as to what we do. We don't typically splurge on ourselves but once in a great while we do. We have found ways to go out and have a date night that isn't expensive. Sometimes this means dinner and a movie and while that can be extremely expensive some places with the rising prices of movie tickets where I live you can see a new movie for about 3.25 before 6 and for about 5 dollars after 6. On Tuesdays it's even cheaper it's 3 dollars for movies all day and we hit up the bar in the mall that has tacos for a dollar each so this date night usually costs us maybe 20 dollars for two movie tickets (6 dollars) and 3 tacos (they are not huge or anything) each and a soda. The tacos run us usually six dollars for 3 each plus drinks are about 2 dollars each so it comes to about 16 dollars total for two of us. We live in a town that isn't huge so we are able to walk basically everywhere in about two hours tops. Sometimes on the walks we'll stop downtown which you usually have to go through to get about anywhere in town we'll stop at our local coffee shop that doubles as a used bookstore and we will get a hot cocoa or something and that's usually 6 dollars for two but sometimes we just sit and relax between destinations. Other days we check out our local nature preserve and our community garden area. We also have a local museum which is pay what you can afford. Sometimes we'll get a five dollar pizza from little Cesar's and get drinks from the dollar tree or McDonald's and find a park and relax and eat. We manage to always find something to do and the long walks are a nice way of spending time together. When we want a family night we usually check out free events going on around town like our park occasionally has a movie playing or a band playing. They have also had family fun events at the park and museum. The library is usually a good source of fun for my son too and their events are almost always free. We also have firefly nights downtown here which is when vendors come out with their merchandise, food stands are set up, and bands play. It's a good way to spend time and not have to buy anything. We do sometimes buy something if it catches our eye and a lot of stuff isn't extremely expensive. Our bowling alley here does a promotion where kids bowl free all summer so we can on occasion splurge on bowling. We also play pokemon go as a family and will walk around various parks and hit up the stops. I mean there are a ton of free or inexpensive ways to spend time together and have some fun and I usually try to hit up these events if and when I can. Our university also hosts a lot of free things that we take our son to.I have still been meaning to take our son to the planetarium because it's super cheap to get in there and my son loves all things space. Our university radio station used to have a kids day where they had all kinds of games and inflatable things where you paid either ten cents or a quarter for a ticket I can't remember anymore and they had a bunch of games and things set up and I would get him five dollars worth of tickets and take him around and then we would do McDonald's for dinner as a treat. It was a way we could do stuff without spending a ton of money. I like where I live because while as a whole there isn't a ton to do for families we still have a lot of amazing things we can check out or do cheaply and it's a relatively safe area or as safe as any place can really be. While I like some of the stuff the city over has I hate going there because the traffic is bad and there is a ton of crime. I'm sure if you look around your own neighborhood you could probably find stuff to do for free or cheap too. Sometimes you just have to look and always check out your local paper or website to see what events you have going on around town. You'd be amazed what you can find.