Sometimes you just have to blow the budget.
I know how responsible it is to stay on budget, but last weekend’s date night we just needed to blow it. We are fortunate that we’re not so desperate that we can blow the budget once in a while, so while I wouldn’t recommend people who are scraping by or have outstanding debts they need to be paying on, for us it was the perfect time to spend a little extra.
We only spent $25 over. Which maybe isn’t “blowing” a budget to you, but it was a lot for us. We usually get $25 to put in our “Date Night” envelope for 2 weeks. This usually means we can eat out for around $12, or go to a movie for $15, but only one night. We have date night every Friday night. So within our 2 week budget we can usually “go out” one night (for a cheap dinner at a local pizza place or Noodles), and then the next week we stay home and rent a movie (free from library or $3).
For the next month or so a friend is staying with us. And it’s great, and we want to share what God has blessed us with and open up our home with others need it, but it also makes it harder for David and I to have alone time. It’s almost like practicing for when we’ll have kids around and it can’t just be “us” all the time. So we decided we needed a big night out, which we never do, our dates are low maintenance usually.
We decided to spend $50 on a night out. We got all dressed up and headed to Fratello’s for fancy riverside dining. We still got reasonably priced meals, water to drink, and no dessert. Then we went to a movie and saw Reign on Me with Adam Sandler, a really good movie, something David and I could both agree on and enjoy (which is hard). Once again, we don’t buy popcorn, candy or soda at the movie’s and I used my student ID for cheaper tickets. After we had paid for the movie and dinner, we had around $2 left, so while we were waiting for the movie to start we went and played Cruisin’ USA and some ski-ball (there’s a Chuck E. Cheese type place connected to the movie theater). Then David gave his winning tickets away to some little girls, because he didn’t even have enough to buy a Tootsie Roll anyway!
Overall it was worth it. We hadn’t been on a date like that for probably 6 months. The movie was good, but most of the time I’d rather wait until video to see them because it costs so much to see them. But especially with someone else staying with us, it was worth it to get away for a night and go out. This Friday we will just be staying in, probably not spending any money, maybe renting a move from the library.
Budgets are great. They are necessary. But once in a while allow yourself to go a little overboard. We hadn’t done a date like this in so long, so it seemed okay, and we both discussed it before deciding to (communication is key when budgeting with a spouse). If we had really wanted to we could’ve used our allowances to make up the difference, but we’re not starvin or on such a tight budget that we can’t allow a few leisures here and there.
