PerkStreet Financial

This was Kevin’s first post for PerkStreet. He is the creator of the blog No Debt Plan and he’s a debt reduction champion with a passion for teaching people how to budget and stay out of debt. He’s also writing an eBook for checking your free credit report.

How busy is your life, and how strict are you with your budget?

The answers to those two questions helped shape a change my wife and I recently made in our budget.

You see, we are diligent savers. We are cash flowing about 38% of our after-tax income each month. (I say “about” because it fluctuates with my commission-heavy job.) We’ve been blessed to apply this extra income toward growing our emergency fund, saving for retirement, and paying off our second mortgage.

We carry no consumer debt — no credit cards and no car loans. We’re even saving up to pay cash for our next two vehicles in 2012 and 2014. (Yes, I plan out that far. I am a spreadsheet and budgeting nerd.)

We’re also operating two small side businesses: blogging for me, and making cakes for her. This also adds to our bottom line and accelerates us toward our financial goals.

These side ventures also take up a lot of our spare time. So much time, in fact, that we noticed that we were spending less and less quality time in each other’s company. Yeah, I would take my laptop into the kitchen to work on blog posts while she baked up a storm. But we didn’t do a lot of talking. I sat and blogged. She baked.

It was time for a change, and time to re-connect.

Budgeting for Romance

Our budget provides money for eating out and some individual free spending money. We use some combination of each to go on dates.

But we hadn’t taken a real, dedicated date in a long time.

We decided to use our budget to force us to spend time being romantic. We set aside some money with one rule: the money had to be spent that month. It didn’t roll over into the next month. We had to spend it.

Turns out it doesn’t have to be a ton of money, either. We’re currently working with $20 per month for romance.

Our First Date in a Long Time

Starbucks.

Ah, yes. The dreaded land of daily lattes that supposedly cause financial ruin.

Could it be the starting point for us to reconfigure our relationship?

We went to the closest Starbucks location to our home on a Saturday evening. We spent $7.13 – venti hot chocolate for me and a tall white mocha for her.

We spent over an hour sitting across the tiny coffee shop table talking. Just talking, joking, laughing, and re-connecting.

Needless to say it was some of the best $7 I’ve ever spent. We’ll definitely do that again.

Additional Inexpensive Date Night Options

Maybe coffee isn’t your thing. (Notice how I drank hot chocolate?)

Or maybe coffee is your thing, but you want to mix things up a bit. Your dates don’t have to be expensive.

Here are some additional date ideas:

• You might try a wine tasting at a local winery.
• Or spend that $20 going to a matinee movie — though you probably can’t afford tickets and snacks for that price!
• Instead of coffee you can always grab dessert at a place like The Cheesecake Factory.
• With baseball season getting into swing you could spend $20 for a pair of tickets to a minor league game.
• Pick up concert or sport tickets to your local college or university.

Yes, $8 cheesecake, $10 movie tickets, and $3.50 coffee seem expensive.

But you’ve got to ask yourself: is the investment in my relationship worth it?

What are your favorite cheap dates?