The Twenty Dollar Date

When you’re out of work, there isn’t any money for extras. You’re constantly counting the pennies and working on your budget to make sure you can take care of your family’s needs. It is stressful, exhausting and it can takes it toll. We’ve found that we need to make sure we find ways to still have some fun so that our days are not filled with the pressure of keeping our heads above water. We find coupons for free movies from Redbox or check out films from the library and save out $10 and get a pizza from Costco so we can have a pizza and movie night, or we make a batch of popcorn and watch comedians on Netflix that have us laughing and forgetting our problems.

And we certainly have a lot on our plate these days. Since January we took in my son’s girlfriend, my father died and we moved my mother in to live with us, and we’ve struggled with the problems of going from a family of four to one of six. Hasn’t been easy, let me tell you!

One thing that we haven’t been able to do, Stan and I, is have a date night in the past seven months. It’s important that with all we’re going through that we try to keep positive and make sure that the situation doesn’t take a hit on our marriage. Any time that we have alone seems to be busy time -- running errands, taking care of business, seeing to everyone’s needs. A Date??! There just didn’t seem to be any money for something so extravagant. At least, I thought that until I started to think about it.

I started to think that if I could hold out $20 from our funds perhaps we could do something for us. And I’ve thought of a few things. Last night we had our first $20 date and it was SO MUCH FUN!

We went to Gunther Toody’s Diner here in town. Now granted, a sit down restaurant was a stretch, but we shared an order of fish n’ chips. It came with a bottomless cup of soup. Our waiter brought us each our own cup, and then split the order onto two plates. It was perfect!

We sat there for two hours, eating, talking, and just being together. Out of the house,

away from everything and focusing on us and our relationship. It was wonderful! After dinner we took a long drive. It had rained earlier and the air was soft, cool and smelled so sweet. Again we talked as we drove ... no radio, no distractions. We finally wound up at BJ’s Velvet Freeze and had ice cream cones.

All in all, it was a lovely evening and it did us both a world of good. Our final cost for the night was $20.25!! How great is that?

We’ve decided we’re going to try to do a $20 date night a couple of times a month, and thought of other things we could do: tacos at Taco Bell and catching a movie at the second run theater; attending one of the free summer concerts around town; picking up sandwiches and driving to the mountains for a picnic .... when you think about it there are many things to do.

I am really looking forward to thinking of creative things we can come up with. But mostly, I’m looking forward to spending time with the man I love most in the world. Can’t think of a better way to spend twenty bucks!