A Cheap Date

We went on a very impromptu date last night. As we were finishing up dinner at home, Tom suggested seeing a movie, since we have to make good use of our popcorn bucket before the year is up (more on that later). We called my mom (our stand-by Tuesday night babysitter who lives only two miles away), looked up movie times, and left the house all within 15 minutes.


Let's do some math on what a date like this would typically cost:

Three hours of babysitting at $8/hour......................$24.00
Two movie tickets at $10/ticket ..............................$20.00
Large popcorn.......................................................$7.00
Two small drinks at $3.75/drink.............................$7.50
GRAND TOTAL................................................$58.50

YIKES! How on EARTH do couples ever afford to do the dinner and a movie thing, when the movie alone costs so much??

Going to the dollar theater is the best deal ever. And it's not even actually a dollar - it's 99 cents per ticket! I know saving one penny doesn't really matter, but in these days of ten dollar movie tickets, that's just unheard of! And so is this popcorn bucket I mentioned. It's a huge plastic bucket that we bought earlier in the year from the theater for $10 (and it came filled with fresh delicious buttery popcorn). Every time you go back to the theater during 2010, it only costs $2.50 to get it re-filled. Also, we snuck* cans of pop (or "soda" as some people so erroneously call it) in my purse.

So let's do the math on what we actually spent:

Three hours of babysitting...........................FREE
Two movie tickets at $.99/ticket.................$1.98
Extra large popcorn...................................$2.50
Two cans of pop**.......................................FREE
GRAND TOTAL.....................................$4.48

What a great way to have an inexpensive date, and still get out of the house!



*Spell check is telling me that "snuck" is not a word. I suppose I should say we "sneaked" in cans of pop. But I like snuck better.
** I said the drinks were free since we already had them at home, but if you want to get technical, they came out to $.25/can since I only buy 12-packs when they're on sale for $3.00.