How to Save Money on Entertainment

Episode five oh five, How to Save Money on Entertainment.

Welcome to the Brugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and liver your life.

Here your hosts Jen and Jill. Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill, and today we are talking about all things entertainment. You guys told us you will love to spend money without gil on entertainment, and we want to tell you how to get more of it with less of your dollars.

I love to be entertained. I love to laugh, I love to have fun. Yeah, so this episode really is for us because if it's not fun, it's not Frugal Friends.

And we are running the gamut on entertainment. It's not going to be just concerts and movies and you know, finding free events on Facebook Marketplace. We will see some of that. It will be some of it. Yeah, let's not let's not diminish the greatest hits. But I think we're going to talk about some things that you have not heard talked about very frequently, if at all tantalizing. But first, this episode is brought to you by at

And then we go in depth on how we implemented that money move during the Sunday Reset on YouTube. So we're just going to have at you bam, bam bam. You know, podcast, newsletter, Instagram, YouTube. We're building an enterprise.

Yes, so this is very fun. I think our money move from this week is, let's see four twenty five. It was a cancel something, So we're in the middle of this week canceling something to save money.

Canceling something, not someone, not someone.

You're doing that, yes, and so On a Sunday's episode of The Sunday Reset, we are going to talk about what we canceled and how we did it. So head to Instagram at Weekly Money Move. Follow there to get all those videos organized in one place for you. We're post them on the Frugal Friends instead, but if you want to see them all lined up, that's where you're going to find it, and Frugal Friends podcast dot com to get the friend letter and get them in your inbox every Monday.

If you want more episodes like this, you can cueue up after this our episode how to get free Books it's episode four sixty eight, or why It's so important to buy Local that's episode for eighty three. You can just search those titles or click on them in the links. They are going to help us to continue implementing this framework of getting something free, low cost, a deal, or guilt free. But stay here because we're just coming at you with all kinds of stuff.

All right, So we're gonna dive right into the types of entertainment we're going to be covering. You know that we talk about how to get you entertainment for free, low cost deal, and guilt free. That's what we're covering. The categories are going to be very varied and they're going to very on each section as well, be covering

You know, it's Gen's one voter issue, one vote one what I'm a.

One issue voter and it is on the support and funding of libraries. It's all I care about. And you can cancel me for that, but I love libraries and you're about to be just as passionate as I am when we get through this section.

Okay, we're going to go. We're going to go quick and fast. Here's all the things you can get at a library. I'm going to say some, Gen's going to say some, and we're all going to be blown away. Books, you know it. You know libraries have books, fiction on fiction, bestsellers, classics, textbooks, audiobooks, CDs, play aways via apps like Hoopla, Libby Overdrive.

Even like actual like places where you can like like play aways like I don't. I don't know if they have like Tony's and things like t O N I E s not like Tony Awards, but they have things you can play music and audiobooks on too.

The rent DVD's blu raising. I don't really need those anymore. But THO these TV shows, documentaries, I think that some of that is even available through libbyan Hoopla.

Yes, you can find TV shows, documentaries, movies on Hoopla, libbyan.

Overdrive, magazines, newspapers. If you're still subscribing to those. Check out if your library has them instead of you paying for them. H CD's vinyl because that has made a comeback.

And record players. So not everywhere. Not everything we're saying is going to be available everywhere, but it is worth checking. Ask. So we've got board games and puzzles, maybe some classic ones that you've played before, maybe some you've never heard of and you don't know if you want to splurge on getting it. I love the library. First, toys and learning kits, especially for children, like stem and coding kits, all like robotics, circuit building, stuff like that, really good stuff.

Yeah, our library by the beach has a metal detector that you could runt out. If that's just something you want to try while you're at the beach. See if the local library has that. Sports and outdoor You already said that. Streaming services, so movies, TV shows, music via Canopy or free gal online courses so like LinkedIn learning Coursera. You to me, we pronounced that language learning through things like Mango languages Rosetta Stone.

The thing I like about the online courses in the language learning is that when we are looking to increase our income, we often think we have to pay to go back to school to get a new degree. It's typically only some soft skills and hard skills that we need to learn. We need to learn to negotiate better, close deals, better, expand our network better. There are we only think about the hard skills. We don't think about

Yeah, I don't know if I see it on here, so I'm going to add it to your point. A lot of times, they'll also have projector screens you can rent.

I didn't put that on there.

Could do an outdoor movie night, even at your own place, renting a projector. God.

I want to rebrand myself to just be livebrariy Jbrary.

That is all we do is library.

Library.

The only fun we have is library. But it's so much fun.

It's so much fun.

Oh okay, here we go. Book clubs you can participate in through the library.

So many types of book clubs. Nonfiction, full fiction, partial fiction. That's cults, I think, and murder mystery. Uh you got you've got fantasy, non fantas. We got to get through this.

I'm so sorry an episode only about library. I wish it were doing that. You can attend author talks and readings hosted at libraries, crafting and DIY workshops hosted at libraries. I know one of our libraries hosted a how to garden in your area? Right. That's nice to be able to look up. But if you don't have somebody specifically in your area telling you how to plant. It could be misinformation because you had to know what zone you're in to know what types of things be planting. So

Tool library. You want to diy something, you want to build something. You just want to put a screw in a piece of wood for fun. You want to use a power tool for fun. Tool library, and.

That might not be at your actual book library. There might be a separate library. Four tools you got to look up for your.

Library is going to nowhere.

To library, go to the library. Museum and attraction passes so free or discounted entry to local museums, parks, zoos, musical instruments. You can go to the library.

I said, guitar the ukulele at my local library. You're just sitting there ready to be rented.

Yeah, you could learn that. Genialogy re sources access to databases like ancestry dot com. So the library will have paid for a certain membership so you can go farther than you might be able to get on your own free.

I had a patient when I was an acupuncturist, and this was what she did every day, went to the library and studied genealogy like at the library. She loved it, she loved looking at her Sonily she can do it with the people she knews family, and I don't know where she's at now, but God bless her. Yeah, and okay, so I added this one. I should have talked about this one at the when I was talking about career advancement.

Career, change career.

And this is a lot of different and a lot of different tests. Not sure if you can cut it. The library prep at the library and see, you don't know till you try, You don't know till.

You ask, and you know what librarians need a master's degree, and I've always wanted why librarians need a master's degree. They literally are taking the little buzzer, scanning the barcode, no servary. That's not all they do. Because look at how many minutes we've talked about library and we're just scratching the surface. They've got to know so much, and they've got to know so much about how to resource you for the things you want to do.

Their education is in changing your life. Okay, I want you to know that, and I want you to go to your library and do something.

This has gotten so rammed up out of hand for it, like I am matching it. My level of elevated excitement for library is through the roof.

If anything, please just go to the library and do something new, to take out something new and let us know in the comments what you did. I want to know that.

Tell us how live I entertained you. Yes, okay, there review.

There are oh yeah, in a review too, that's yeah, that would be good.

Uh.

There are a few other ways to get free entertainment besides the library, not many, but a few. So watching TV the average, while the average American spends over three hours a day watching TV, but we're not really concerned with that. You do you? But they spend over fifty dollars a month on streaming services on average, so we don't want that to be you. I have heard a stat that gen Z is getting more into free entertainment because they're getting so much of their entertainment from social media.

I do need this. This is something I've warned for seasons two, whole seasons. If you know what years they took place in, not long enough ago.

When you watch a man play a game in the church back lot trying to unlock a woman from a cage, why you know, not long enough ago to.

Free entertainment is what that is. Okay. If you're also looking for more free entertainment that is apart from library, I don't know why you would want that. But you can also check your cities websites. They will often list upcoming events. You can check local businesses. A lot of times businesses will sponsor free events locally. Check Facebook events. They will give you all kinds of stuff that is

And lastly, borrowing, let's borrow more things. Let's tell our friends what we have, and they will tell us what they have, and let's just borrow. We're borrowing kayaks, we're borrowing paddle boards, we're borrowing roller skates. We're borrowing everything that we can to share our resources and have fun for less money.

I did do that, furrowed roller blades and did a little staycation with a friend and we roller bladed downtown, got all kinds of free stuff.

Oh what kind of free stuff because you had the roller blades or just it was just.

Free starting, just free stuff. I think we would have gotten it whether or not we had the roller blades. I'm not gonna I mean, it might have helped. I'll talk about that in our post show.

Okay, okay, all right, let's talk about low cost and so we're going into different categories here. Let's talk about first about gaming, because so many people game. If you don't game, your partner probably games. And if neither of you game, you kids probably game. And if none of that is in your life, then I don't know what to tell.

You're talking about this for a minute, Yeah.

Then don't listen. Skip thirty seconds. So there are free to play games. So we've got Fortnite, apex, Leagual Legends, stuff like that. Obviously, keep an eye on your children. There's also free promotions and weekend trials on platforms like Steam, PlayStation Plus or Xbox Game Pass. And you can also obviously used games, so look for used in pre owned games at game Stop to the Moon or on platforms like eBay or Facebook Marketplace. I prefer Facebook Marketplace, but eBay.

I don't game either. Okay, so we're moving on walking, biking, hiking. This is where we can be taking advantage of public trails and parks. Most of your local or even state parks and nature preserves are free to access, So check your local resources for some of those hidden gems. I would say even chat ept it because you might find that there is a parker preserve near you that you had no idea about. For instance, the preserve I live on, nobody knows about it.

I've lived here my whole life, and I didn't know it was there until you lived nerved there.

Yeah, and you're not.

Going to find it on a top ten list of preserves in Saint Pete, like you're not going to find it just googling little parks. But you are more likely to find it if you ask chat GPT what are the part you know good parks that aren't on the top twenty list.

Yeah, this park has beautiful, climbable live oak trees, a pretty well manicured walking trail through the tropical foliage, a dock on the water, a mulberry tree that blooms in April and May you can pick mulberries from for free because it's in the nature preserve. It's just amazing and nobody knows about it, and you wouldn't unless you really took a deep dive. So don't assume that you know everything your area has to offer.

And especially if you've been there for a long time, because new things come up and if you're not abreast to the situation, Yeah, then you'll miss it like I often do.

Yeah.

So free and low cost fitness groups. Sometimes the city will host free classes. So there's weekly classes here in Partnership Healthy Saint Pete. It's a city funded program. They have free yoga, free walking, free fitness classes on those little those little workout places next to playgrounds. Yea, so those are free. But then they also have low cost

And if you want to go camping, of course, camping at state or national parks can offer you camp sites at lower rates compared to your private campgrounds, and they are often super beautiful, super well maintained. Of course, because their prices are so affordable, a lot of times you do have to book in advance, so think ahead for what you want to be doing this summer or in the fall and start to book those places now. You

Air I think once the kid's stay in school.

That like park yep and then free camp sites like free campsites dot net will list free camping options, especially in national forests. Yeah, lots of opportunities to just sleep outside if that's what you're in.

It's one of those staycation sort of things. I don't love it, but it is a thing that people like. Live sports. So this is where I would challenge you to attend more local games. I would challenge you to attend more female led sporting games. They are still professional sports and they are still high quality, and for some reason they happen to be cheaper. I don't know why that would be, but they are, so we should take advantage of that.

It's not like females are often paid less females.

It's interesting, but a way to save money. So attending professional women's sports games also instead of Major league if you don't have a professional women's sports team local to you, local college like maybe high school, but that might be a little different. Do not attend children's sports games unless you know the child, unless you know well, no, unless it's your child.

What I attend? No pushing back on this, Okay.

If you just attend, you're like, Okay, I know the kid, and I want to go to a sports game, and you just show up at that kid's game, like.

My niece and nephews. I'm going to show up at kai soccer game. I showed up at other friends kids games. Don't think it's very fun.

Don't show up unless you're invited.

Can I ask to be invited?

You can.

Why We're gonna have to talk about this later.

Okay. So next is concerts festivals, so smaller shows are still really good. There is a guy T L. Gentiens in Saint Pete. He is not I don't know how well he is known like nationally, but my god, is he a good drummer. He is such a good showman and he plays here all the time, and he is leaps and bounds less expensive than a national act, but still such a good time every time he see hi. Because he's a drummer and he's a show drummer, so

I mean, I think you could go to a high school performance of you know, some sort of musical certainly universe. If you've got a university near you, then they're going to be putting on some really great concerts.

I like American Stage. It's like not a university, but it is acting classes and just people in the community who love theater and have been doing it for a long time. But I would say between that and the university, like good You're going to get some good quality there.

If running, yoga, working out is your a form of entertainment for you, you can definitely take advantage of free fitness classes at many local parks, community centers, online platforms, or free workout classes that just might be offered. I mean, I know a lot of gyms will even offer a couple of free passes to gyms I just recently heard of, and I don't see it on here. But since we're just talking like low cost, class pass could be an option.

I was just thinking about that. It might be under the deal category, but I didn't put it there either. Okay, well I'm here now. So so class pass is something that you can purchase I believe they call it like points or something, or credits that you can purchase through class pass and then redeem them for various types of classes that are happening in your area. That could be like a cooking class in your area, but it also could be local gyms. So different gyms will have different

WHOA, I know that's old school.

I know.

You can also use apps like my fitness Pal, Nike Training Club, Yoga with Adrians, she's on YouTube. They all provide free workouts for a variety of fitness levels.

Yeah, and so finally have crafts and hobbies. So look for a secondhand craft supply store near you. There are several near us. They exist. People, you know, they buy craft stuff because they love it, they never use it, so they can kind of sell it to the secondhand craft supply store, get store credit, and you accumulate different craft supplies for new crafts that they may or may not do. It is a fantastic thing for you know, if you want to do crafts, you're not too picky

Right, let's talk about how to get deals on these different things. So specifically, for concerts and shows, you could set a price tracker on stub Hub.

I didn't know about this. This is how.

Interesting to notify you if a price drops into your ideal price point. I actually think this is true for flights as well. You can set like even just Google notifications if a price drops, and I think that there's other sites that will do that so that you can know when a good time is. You can watch ticket Masters. Sometimes they'll release additional tickets twenty four hours before a show, so it's going to be if you're willing to do something just more last minute, then you could get a

We'll talk about Groupon.

Okay, yeah, city pass or last minute rush deals, so be on the lookout for all.

That Groupon has is notorious for, like great local deals on stuff like this. So yes, it is a great deal. But you have used it for international travel. I have, and I just had a friend come back from Italy use Groupon for their international travel deal. Great experiences. Let's not sleep on Groupon.

Now I check Groupon first really for any of my travel plans. You could do all inclusive like well like with air air inclusive, I should say, you can find and all inclusives on there for steep discounts or just hotels. There's all sorts of deals.

Do not sleep on Groupon in twenty twenty five, and you can also so some more like commonly used ones bundle deals on attractions, so you can bundle multiple attractions if you're buying a ticket to one, include some others and make sure you can use them at a later date. You can split memberships and subscriptions between friends if it's

Well that's great. One of the reasons I think to reassess our season and make sure that if we are a credit card user, that our credit card is aligning with that not just the credit card you've always used or the one that you have liked the most in the past. If now you're in a season where it's primarily hotel stays, then it could be worth having a

Library is not the definitive end answer, but it is always the first answer to everything you give me a question. The library is not an answer to I'll wait. Also, you want to make sure it's attached to or gets you more of what you value. So hopefully whatever entertainment you are choosing, more time with family, more time with friends, a deeper feeling of faith, or fulfilling work, you may not hit all of those, but hopefully you hit at least one and then spend the extra money to buy

Not going to break your body, like a good pair of hiking shoes is going to be worth its weight at the end of ye hike, you're gonna be glad. Yeah, So just do the things that you love to do. Figure out what that is, what brings you joy. Know that you are worth being able to spend that money on.

You are worth being entertained, truly entertained. Yes, so live in that. Yes, we hope that we are entertaining you too. You know, listen to podcasts, be entertained by podcast you know, it's always entertaining. At weekly money move, that's entertaining. We always are going to entertain with this. This one is always for you. It's always free. The bill of the.

Week, that's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week.

Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you've paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That bill, but blow bills, bill clean. This is the bill of the week.

Hey ladies, my name is Sabrina and I've been listening to your show for oh I don't know. A couple of years now, and my bill of the week. Starting in the beginning of December, I started to just use everything that I had on hand. I think you did

But that's my bill of the week.

I'm using everything that I absolutely have in my house before I allow myself to buy anything new.

Hope you guys have a great holiday. Keep up the good work. Yay, Sabrina. Yeah, we hope you have a good holiday.

As well.

This holiday on April twenty fifth, coming up Mother's Day. I hope you also have a great Mother's Day, Sabrina.

Yeah, that's what you're talking about. I know. Wow. I love this. I love it when I when we hear a callback bill to a previous episode tip that we've given, and so actually follows through and says how they're implementing this. Your examples of implementation are amazing, and your examples of the types of stuff you still have on hand relatable. Yes, we are all keeping travel sized items in our drawers for travel someday, and we don't need to be. We don't need to be.

We don't need to and you're right.

Also, anything can clean a toilet, except for my bar hands.

That's not well, they could, but they just because you can doesn't mean you should.

I love this. I love this so much, for you, for me, for our listeners, Sabrina, You're amazing. We hope you had a great holiday. If you all are listening and you want to submit a bill, if it is about a tip that we gave to save money that you've implemented and you want to say how you've implemented it, or your name is Bill, and you've got a tip for us for cool Friends podcast dot com slash bill leave it for us. And now it's time for the.

Light being round. Okay, what's your personal guilt free entertainment?

Comedy shows? I love going to comedy shows. I love them so much too.

You get to sit down and laugh.

Sitting ella laughing.

Both of those.

Things is for me. When I'm not sitting and talking.

I want to be sitting in last and nobody wants you to stand up, Nope, they want you to sit

And also the beach. The beach will cost me some money for parking, but we don't have like beach tags here in Florida. Which is so great because that's what I'm accustomed to. Although the parking is getting wild.

It is getting and as a Saint Pete native, that really keeps me from the beach. Yeah, because I remember when there was a lot of free parking, like secret free parking. Yeah, it's gone, it's all gone.

But the beach. There's a state park that is a beach and they have very affordable park.

And here's the thing that parking price has not changed in thirty years. It actually did, I know, it just did, but it it's still still less expensive than all the other places. But like when I was a kid, we were like, why would you spend five dollars to go down to Fort de Soto and park and pay to get into a beach? Like why? And that was the nineties, early two thousands, and now it's twenty twenty five and you're like, who Fort Tosto is steel.

Yeah, I'll drive all dight.

Around at six Yeah, they just literally changed it. But I was there like maybe a month or two ago, and I was like, dang, like yeah, they have not changed this in thirty years.

Yeah, yeah, parking is absurd, but six bucks at Fort de Soto for all.

Day, you get you some. If you're in the area Fort de Soto, you get you some.

What about you, Jen?

Okay, So mine is running And I know, I know you say running is free, Jen, But if you are a runner, you say, I get it, Gen. So I buy run Disney races guilt free. But I only do one a year. Some people do them all I do one per year, and I don't buy races that are less than six miles. If I do a run Disney race, it's ten or thirteen miles, so then I so I

So fun. We hope that you find something, like you said Jen at the beginning, try something new, figure out what you can be entertained by and Librairie thank you all for listening. We are so appreciative of your kind reviews, specifically of the book, like this one from Annaalie. She wrote five stars. I have been reading and listening to numerous personal finance books and podcasts over the years, and I've been deep in my own personal finance journey of

Thank you so much. We so appreciate hearing that. It makes us feel really warm and fuzzy. So if you've read the book and you would like to share your experience, we'd love if you leave a review on Amazon, that's where most people go to vet a book, even if they don't buy it from there. If you want to buy it, buy what you Love book dot com and we've got all the links, including bookshop dot org, which is our preferred vendor. And if you have not but you do want to help us out, leave a review

Next time Bye.

Frugal Friends is produced by Eric sirianni.

Okay. I had talked about this probably a while ago, but it's worth maybe revisiting. But this happened over a year ago that I went away with a friend just to Tampa. So we live in St.

Pete.

It's across the bridge, but tried to keep it like as inexpensive as possible, and that actually made it so fun to try and figure out, like what all we could do. So we took the faerry over so we didn't have a car, we didn't have to worry about parking or kind of driving around, So took a fairy over walked used her points for the hotel because she had something from her previous work, this status with the hotel. It also came with like arrival snacks and tree breakfast.

I love that.

So then I had borrowed roller blades. She already owned roller blades. We rollerbladed I don't know, like a mile away to the hockey arena. So the Lightning is the Tampa Bay Like ice hockey team and they were playing that night. We hadn't purchased tickets because they're usually super expensive, but they are so fun. I love watching hockey live. It's so fun entertaining, but we're like, you know what, let's just pop in and see if there's any kind

Okay, so there you go, having fun on borrowed roller blades on borrowed budget roller blades.