Date Ideas on a Budget for College Students

With Valentine’s Day around the corner and being a college student, going on dates shouldn’t cost a leg and an arm! For me, I’m personally fine with lounging at home and spending time together (I’m super homebound). However, there are just some days where you want to dress up and roam around the city. Here are some of my favorite date ideas that are super cheap, or even free!

Date Ideas on a Budget

Feel free to use these date ideas any day of the year and not just on Valentine’s Day.

Hiking

Hiking is one of my favorite things to do! You can enjoy the beautiful nature while staying active. I love taking a day trip up to Sedona and hike a 7-10 mile trail. Make sure the weather is not freezing cold or burning hot, lol. The scenery is so beautiful up in Sedona. Some hikes you can do is Devil’s Bridge or Bell Trail. If Sedona is a bit of a reach (i.e., you don’t have a car), you can always hike Camelback Mountain or even the A Mountain that’s at Arizona State University!

Although, I wouldn’t recommend doing hiking as a first date. Most of the time, you don’t have phone service during hikes, so we don’t want you to get kidnapped or something, especially if this is your first date from Tinder…

Picnic

Picnics are so fun! You can pack whatever food you want, go in the morning or in the evening for stargazing. My first year in University, one of my friends and I bought 4 $1 Hot and Spicy McChicken from McDonald’s and we went stargazing. It cost us less than $5, lol.

Also, I’m going to New York for spring break and one of DG’s and I’s plan for that week is a picnic at Central Park! So excited.

Museum

There are so many art museums in the valley or even pop-ups. Most pop-ups are pretty pricey and sometimes you will have to buy the tickets in advance depending on long the pop-up is going to be around for. Some museums will have one or two days of the week free admission, so definitely check out their website and plan a trip there!

Some of my favorite museums in Arizona are the Phoenix Art Museum and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

Walk or Bike Around the City

DG and I have done this so many times. We’ll just walk about the city and just pop into shops that we’ve seen while driving by, but never gave much thought about it. Just something fun to do if you honestly don’t know what to do, haha.

Not sure if your city has these, but Phoenix has bikes and scooters that you can rent out using an app on your phone.

Board Games

I love board games! It’s so fun just to get a little competitive with each other and if you have friends who love board games too, why not have them come over for a double-date game night!

Some of my favorites include Werewolf, Drunk Stoned or Stupid, and Red Flags!

Open Mic

Going to open mic is so fun! I personally love it, I know to some people it might not be fun since it’s pretty loud. Sometimes it’s pretty funny, other times it’s pretty deep – like when people are reading poetry with so much passion that you just get the shivers down your spine.

Play 8-Ball Pool

I love to play 8-ball pool. If you’re at Arizona State University, you can play pool for ~$4 an hour at Sparky’s Den, which is so much cheaper than going out to a bar where it’s about $15 an hour! Look into something like this at your university. I believe Arizona State used to have a bowling alley too, not too sure what happened to it.

See a Psychic

For a while, I was obsessed with going to see a psychic for a palm reading. It’s usually around $25 ish per person – so it might be a little out of budget depending on how broke of a college student you are. I think this will be a fun thing to do together and see what the psychic says about you! You never know, what if they’re the one. (Hint, one of my psychic reading said I’ve met the one lol)

Imagine that you’re going on your first date and the psychic scared them off by saying you’re the one. YIKES.

Free Events on Eventbrite

I did this for a couple of months, but I would every now and then go onto Eventbrite and find free events to go to. LOL, I had no idea what these events were, but if they were free, I figured, why not! I tried doing this for a while to work on my networking skills, haha. There are some cool events, such as a charity fashion show hosted by kids, goat yoga (I mean, what???), and karaoke. It’s interesting… Super interesting. Definitely puts me out of my comfort zone.

I hope you all enjoy my date ideas! Let me know in the comments what are some of your favorite date ideas!