Going out with friend’s costs money, a lot of money. If you just factor in dinner and drinks you are looking at close to $100 per person. How can you still go out and have fun with your friends without breaking the bank? Here are 4 frugally fun tips when spending time with friends.

Pot-Luck Dinner

My friends and I do a pot-luck dinner on a monthly basis. Each month we rotate who is hosting the event. Most times, the host is the one that makes dinner while everyone else brings snacks, drinks and dessert.

It’s great to spend time with everyone and save money at the same time. We’ve found out that some of us are even really good at cooking a certain meal and we now look forward to that meal when dinner is at his house.

After dinner we break out the board games and have some fun playing. Again, saving a ton of money and having fun.

Enjoy The Great Outdoors

Chances are there is a great park nearby where you can go hiking, biking, kayaking or anything else outdoorsy. Again, it is low cost fun with friends.

In the event you live in a large city and don’t have a park nearby, there is still a way to enjoy the great outdoors. Download an app for your smartphone called GeoCaching. People hide little boxes for you to find. You use the app to find these boxes using GPS. To some, this might not sound very interesting. But to anyone that enjoys mysteries and spy-related things, GeoCaching is a blast.

Movie Nights

With movie nights, simply find a few movies that you and your friends want to see and schedule a night to have a movie marathon. If you have Netflix, you can do this for a low cost. If not, RedBox is another low cost option. You could even intertwine pot-luck dinners into this idea and watch movies instead of playing board games.

Group Vacations

Going away on a vacation can cost a good bit of money. But when you go with friends, you get to split the costs. We’ve also taken advantage of this one. We found a weekend getaway at the beach for $500. Split between 2 other couples and it cost us $166. The place we stayed even had a kitchen, so we made it a point to bring snacks and food to make lunch and dinner in the room, saving us some more money.

Remember, you don’t need to go to a 5 star resort either. Even if the place you stay is a dump, you still will have great stories to talk about for years. Think about it, talking about how awesome the 5 star place was will get old really quickly. But telling the story of how the hot water was ice cold won’t ever get old.

Final Thoughts

Saving money with friends is easy. You just have to put in a little bit of effort. At the end of the day, the point is about getting to spend time with your friends. So just sitting around and doing nothing other than catching up will be a great time spent together. Don’t get caught up in the idea that you have to go out and spend a fortune to have fun. You don’t. You just need your friends.