47 Cheap, Fun Things to Do This Weekend

Ever have a conversation that goes like this...?

"What do you want to do this weekend?"

*Shoulder shrug*

"I dunno, whatta you wanna do?"

*Shoulder shrug and sigh*

"I dunno; there's nothing to ever do around here."

I've had conversations like that many times in the past, but not anymore. I'm learning to appreciate the little things in life and enjoy living in the moment more. Too often when we think about "fun" things, we think of the expensive options like taking in a ballgame, going on vacation, or going to a concert.

Here's a list to help free you from boredom without emptying your wallet this weekend. (See also: How to Visit Museums for Free)

You can take your family or go with a friend. Swing on the swings like when you were a kid.

Find a great spot in your community to catch the sunset. We have a lake by our house that offers some great views!

Throw a picnic lunch together and find a shady spot to enjoy the day with your loved ones.

Bring out the old favorites like Monopoly or Scrabble, or find new board games to play.

Invite a few friends over and have a card night.

Get some friends together and go on a mobile scavenger hunt. The first one back with all things on the list wins! Losers have to buy dessert.

Make it a digital scavenger hunt. Think of some creative, hilarious pictures you could take with people in the community, or check out this list for scavenger hunt ideas.

This stands of Bring Your Own Everything. Guests are encouraged to bring food and drinks to share. Or, check this post out for more frugal party ideas.

Make s'mores and play campfire games.

Hit up your local ice cream shop and indulge in your favorite dish! Our local Dairy Queen is located right on the lake, which ties in perfect with #2!

Plan a romantic, candlelight dinner for your spouse or loved one. Romance need not be expensive!

Try a new grilling recipe. Recently I tried chicken breast stuffed with cream cheese, mozzarella cheese, basil, and tomatoes! Mmmm!

Many times a local museum will have free or discount days. Zoos are fairly inexpensive if you pack your own lunch and avoid the unnecessary extras.

Take the weekend to go through your old photos and scan them into a digital file. You can even create digital scrapbooks!

Most folks rarely visit their own city's tourist attractions. Take a weekend be a tourist in your own town.

Get friends and neighbors together to go and clean up a city block. Here are six steps to organizing your own neighborhood cleanup.

Communities will usually have farmers markets on the weekends where you can get locally grown produce. The food is fresh and delicious! Here's a savvy guide to farmers markets.

Find a "U-Pick" spot to gather some fresh strawberries, blueberries, or other fruit and then...

Use the freshly picked fruit to bake a homemade pie! (Need help with the pie crust?)

Organizations like these are always looking for volunteers. This will be one of the most rewarding things you could do this weekend and can possibly make a difference on your resume!

With today's busy pace, it seems harder to get to know our neighbors. Invite them over for dinner or dessert and make an effort to know more about them.

Grab the poles, find a pond, and cast those lines!

Hit the sandy shores for a little rest and relaxation. Just don't forget to protect your skin!

There are many benefits your local library has to offer besides just books. You can rent movies, page through magazines, or surf the net.

Invite friends over for a movie marathon featuring all the classics you remember from when you were growing up. Or, host a money movie marathon!

My wife and I did this last weekend. I love the new look and feel of our living room now! Rearranging furniture doesn't cost anything and adds a new flair to your place.

Brainstorm ideas for all the things you want to do in life, and pick one to do this weekend.

When is the last time you put together a puzzle? Find one you like and get to it.

I know many parents who would love for someone to offer a chance to take a break from the busyness of life. Many single parents hardly ever get a chance to get out and unwind.

Go through your closets and declutter. Find items you can donate to your local Goodwill or another thrift shop.

Go on a star-gazing adventure. Grab a blanket and head to a park to lay and watch the stars. Here's a 2011 meteor shower calendar to help.

Bike to a location you've never been to before. Or, bring your bike to a town or city you're unfamiliar with and create your own bike tour. Just be safe on your bike!

There are plenty of free online classes you could take to improve your skills in a certain area. Try your hand at investment classes if that interests you!

This one will take some thought but will be well worth it. Here's a great resource from Michael Hyatt for helping you think through your life plan.

Related to the life plan is setting three new goals you'd like to accomplish in the new six to twelve months...and write them down!

Many local communities offer inexpensive theater productions.

Lend a helping hand to a neighbor, co-worker, or friend.

It's not always wise to give money to a homeless person, but you can buy food. Listen to their stories, and if possible, direct them to an organization that can help.

Get some friends together and have a blast at the lanes!

Take a friend or two, grab breakfast, and then hit the local garage seals to scan for deals.

A simple gesture can really mean a lot to the men and women who serve us on a daily basis!

Many elderly folks have great tales to tell. Listen to their stories and see what you can learn from them.

You can make a garden box or even an herb garden if you don't have much room.

Grab a few friends, put those dancing shoes on, and hit the local club.

Take your spouse or loved one to a craft store and each purchase a few crafts for a creative project. Or start a pine cone project!

Invite a few friends over and challenge each other with some creative games based on the hit TV show.

When is the last time you sat down and wrote a letter? There's something magical and nostalgic about the written word on paper. Send a letter to someone you haven't talked to in a while and tell them how much you love them.

Hopefully these ideas are enough to get you started on a fun, cheap, and rewarding weekend!

What cheap, fun things are you planning to do this weekend?

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20 Things to Shop for at Secondhand Stores and Consignment Shops

I vastly prefer to buy items at secondhand and consignment shops if I can.

There, I said it. I love going to secondhand shops and consignment shops. My wife and I stop by such shops all the time in our area, particularly for a few specific items that we go through at an amazing rate. There are many, many non-consumable items that we prefer to buy secondhand because, frankly, buying new doesn’t add much to the product other than the “new,” and that’s something we don’t want to pay for.

Here are twenty things we usually look for used before we even consider buying new, along with some reasons for doing so.

Children’s clothes Do I really need to say more? Children can be very hard on clothes at times, plus they outgrow their clothes very quickly. The end result? We don’t want to invest much in individual items. Luckily, children with plenty of clothes will often wear specific items only a time or two, so you can often stumble upon used children’s clothes at very good prices. We are (very) regular customers at the excellent Duck Worth Wearing in Ames, Iowa, a store we recommend to any parents of younger children in central Iowa.

Holiday attire As with the children’s clothes, any items that are rarely worn are good candidates for purchase at consignment shops, and the figurative “Christmas sweater” is a great example of this. There are certain colors that we tend to only wear during the week or two before Christmas and I can usually find great clothing in those colors at consignment shops.

Maternity clothes Another example of clothes that are only worn for short periods are maternity clothes, something we’ve learned a lot about over the past five years. My wife has used Me N’ Mommy to Be in Ankeny, Iowa in the past, with good results.

Costumes I don’t directly mean full-fledged costumes, but instead elements for more creative costumes. Rather than going out there and buying a prefab “zombie” costume, for example, just head to the used clothes shop and pick up some worn items that you’re fine with ruining. We’re doing this very thing for our children’s Halloween costumes this year.

Silverware It’s often easy to come across complete (or nearly complete) silverware sets at secondhand shops. Take it home, clean it thoroughly, and you’ll find yourself with all of the dining utensils you need without much of a bill.

Plates Similar to silverware, dinner plates, saucers, and cups are often easily located at secondhand stores. The set I used in college and before my wedding came from such a secondhand store (we received a really nice set as a gift, so we started using those because we only had about five plates left from the old set).

Kitchenware Small appliances like hand mixers and blenders, plus common tools like spatulas, pots, pans, and rolling pins are often easily found at such shops, particularly items left over from an estate. If you hunt around, you can stock a kitchen quite well from secondhand stores and consignment shops.

Sports equipment The Play It Again Sports in Clive, IA is my first stop for most sports equipment. In fact, I plan to take my son there next spring to look for his first “real” baseball glove and first “real” bat for backyard use. In the past, I’ve found soccer balls and other such material there (and at similar stores).

Exercise equipment Such stores aren’t just a good source for sports equipment. Exercise and training equipment, like free weights and exercise bands and pedometers, can often be found at secondhand shops. Even bigger items, like treadmills and ellipticals, can easily be found secondhand if you search a bit (they’re equipment that people buy and sometimes never use).

Bicycles I’m including this separately from exercise equipment because, quite often, there are stores devoted solely to secondhand and refurbished bicycles, particularly in college towns where they buy abandoned or forgotten bicycles from the college, repair them, and sell them at very reasonable rates. BicycleSurplus in Ames, IA is a great example of this, but they themselves have quite a bit of competition.

Video games I’m almost exclusively a used video game buyer. I shop at both GameStop and Gamers, both of which buy and sell used video games with a strong return policy, and I’m in the trading club at each store, which gets me a 10% bonus on trade-ins and/or a 10% discount on purchases. Careful trading gets me new games to play for just a few bucks.

Books Used bookstores abound, providing a great place to pick up books at a very low price and also trade off your already-read books for new reading material. Aside from moments of weakness, the only books I acquire at this point are used ones.

Toys We often pick up toys for our children used, either at consignment shops or at yard sales and the like. A used toy is just as good as an old toy – a toy’s value comes in whether a child plays imaginatively with it. Just take such toys home and wash them carefully before using them (but that’s true of any item bought used).

Hand tools Everything from screwdrivers to hammers and drills can be found secondhand if you’re patient and shop around for it. My screwdriver set is a mismatched lot, with many of them coming straight from secondhand shops over the years.

Musical instruments Many music stores sell more used instruments than new ones. In fact, they often act as brokers in a way. Go in, tell them what you’re looking for, and wait for a while, and they’ll often come up with a great used version of what you want at a very nice price. I’m waiting for some electronic piano models right now.

Home decor The best home decor isn’t stuff bought at the Pottery Barn or at IKEA. It’s used stuff, stuff with character and a bit of wear which reflects your own tastes. The best places to find such things are secondhand shops and consignment stores, where all sorts of interesting things pop up.

Gardening supplies Hedge trimmers? Weed trimmers? Hoes? Rakes? All of these things pop up secondhand on a regular basis. Sometimes you’ll find a shovel that needs a bit of work, but when you can pick it up for a buck and it does the job, that’s good enough for me!

Furniture Almost all of the furnishings in my home up until about 2003 were secondhand – and we still have several items of secondhand furniture in our home. It holds up well, looks good, and does what we ask of it, so why spend a mint on a “perfect” bed for the guest bedroom?

Art supplies I wouldn’t have believed this myself, but I’m constantly running into brushes, paint sets, and other such items at secondhand shops, perfect for picking up for my children’s art projects. I picked up a 128 count box of crayons that looked as if it had been used once for a quarter a while back, for example. I’ve also found easels and oil-based paint sets, plus countless magazines and such that are perfect for collage work.

Cars So many people are out there going from lease to lease or trading in their new car every four years that there’s always a big pile of late model used cars on the market, often very well maintained and at a strong price. Don’t overlook them when you’re car shopping. (And, yes, a used car dealership is a secondhand store if I’ve ever seen one.)

For every item on this list, the same idea holds true: shop used first, and be a little patient. If you really can’t find anything that meets your needs by buying used, then consider new items. Sticking to that policy will save you a mint.

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Best Money Tips: How to be productive while doing other things

Welcome to Wise Bread's Best Money Tips roundup. Today, we give you a way to be productive without seeming to, an easy template for effective complaint letters, tips to save on printing, and more!

How To Be More Productive – Even When You're Not Working — Start thinking about a project by jotting down ideas, and let them brew as you do other things. (That's actually how I got through most of my college papers…and my weekly chores!) Get Organized Wizard

Use This Template to Write Concise, Effective Complaints When Companies Piss You Off — Venting your frustration in a complaint letter can be cathartic, but it's not really conducive to fixing your problem. Try following this template instead. Lifehacker

7 Ways to Reduce the Cost of Running a Printer — Only print the sections or images that you need. This will save you paper, ink, and time spent waiting for the 10-page document to finish printing. Lazy Man and Money

7 Perfect Crafts For Teens — It's hard enough to get teenagers to talk to you, but to do crafts with you — and enjoy it? It might not be so hard after all. All Women Stalk

Scary Fare: 5 Meals That Bite Back — Do you find mushrooms growing in the wild? You probably want to leave them be. Oh, and watch out for hotdogs. Len Penzo via Currency

6 Shopping Tips Without Coupons — Of course, couponing isn't the only way to save money while you shop. Here are six others! Frugal for Life

How To Make Your Money Last In Retirement — Even in retirement, you'll need be careful how you manage your money. Take these steps to make sure your retirement funds will last. Forbes

Don't Let Costly Auto Repair Estimates Get You Down — Follow this advice to avoid overly-pricey auto repairs. You won't regret it! The Digerati Life

5 Lessons Learned From Filing Bankruptcy — If you've just filed for bankruptcy, or are considering it, or is curious about it, this first-hand account can shed some light on the experience. PT Money

How to Stage a Home for a Real Estate Showing — First impressions matter, especially when you're trying to sell your house. Be sure to clear out the clutter, repaint as necessary, and declutter again! No Debt Plan

Many thanks to Kiplinger for naming Wise Bread the best blog for frugalistas on their Picks for the Best Money Blog. Congratulations to the other wonderful personal finance blogs on the list!

View the original article here