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Valentines Day on a Budget

Valentines day can be expensive... too expensive for a student. It can really feel like its a corporate gimmick to suck your wallet dry. It can be easy to lose sight of the day's real objective to show your unyielding love to another when you are inundated with financial expectations associated with the day. 
But valentine's day does not have to cost the earth, today we will share some great ideas we have found to enjoy valentines's day on a student budget. 




Have a treat dinner at home. 
Not going out for dinner doesn't have to make the evening any less special. Get dressed up like you would for going out, set your dining space up for the meal, light a few candles. It can be a fun opportunity to cook together. We like to use Great British Chef's recipes for treat dinners, they have high quality restaurant recipes that almost anyone could cook and even have a section on valentine's day recipes

If your not feeling overly ambitious about cooking then the big supermarkets are back with their at-home valentines dinner sets that usually fall around the £15-£20 mark. Waitrose offer a dinner for 2 for £20 which includes three courses, sides and drink (and the food looks delicious). While Marks and Spencer offer a "2 dine in for £10" including drinks. 

You can get a free takeaway (up to the value of £15) with lots of big brand takeaway companies including Just Eat and Pizza Hut through Quidco. Or order through Deliveroo and get £10 off your first spend. 

Dine out for Less
Whilst lots of chains are offering discount vouchers at the moment many of them are not valid on valentines day. These will only work to your advantage if you plan on celebrating on a different day. 
We've found a hack to get you 48% off pizza express (without any discount vouchers).  
Other ideas for eating out on a budget include using Lastminute.com who have a great feature called 'cheap eats' where you can set your price point i.e. eat of for £20. Or why not consider going out for brunch for the better deals earlier in the day or just for dessert in the evening. 

Entertainment 
Going to the Cinema for a couple could cost £20+ in tickets plus any snacks you buy. This year valentine's day falls on a Tuesday so if you are thinking about going out to the cinema its the perfect opportunity to take advantage of the trick we have found to save 65% off Cineworld. To learn more click here

Perhaps you want to have a movie night from the comfort of your own home. Local libraries and often university libraries allow you to rent DVDs for free. Plus Amazon Prime have tons of movies available free for 6 months for students. 

Gifts
Flowers are crazy expensive (and die so quickly) you can easily be looking close at £40-£50 for roses. Luckily a number of florists at the moment are running special offers. Prestige flowers are offering 30% off 12 red roses. Bunches have 10% off with the promo code BUN10  and a free box of chocolates if you order online. Bouqs have 20% off with the code VDAY20.

O2 priority are currently giving away a free valentines day card with Choosy. Which you can order online. While new customers with TopCashback can get a free moonpig card after cashback or a free box of Thontons chocolates




More ideas? 
It is often the small more sentimental touches that make the big difference. The Dating Divas is a great site for help organising date nights that are big on sentimentality and not on budget. They have over 100 ideas for valentines dates (many you can do from your own home). Most of their ideas are inexpensive or entirely free making them perfect for any budget. 



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*This post contains affiliate links, all opinions are our own*



6 comments

  1. Love your ideas and thanks so much for inking up to #5frugalthings

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  2. Some great ways to save this Valentine's Day. We are having KFC I think - romantics that we are!

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  3. I remember one Valentine's Day back in school where we cooked dinner at my apartment and then exchanged the extremely romantic gifts of a new package of gel pens for me and pack of Magic cards for him. The whole thing probably cost us both $25 combined - groceries and gifts included.

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  4. Great tips I remember as a student I was given a packet of Haribo on valentines day! I still married him!

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  5. Awesome ways to save money. We don't do anything for Valentines but every so often we do want to have a nice night so we go to the store buy our "expensive meal" and I cook (which I've gotten pretty good at). It saves a ton of money versus going out plus we don't have to go out anywhere which is always nice.

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  6. We usually do a nice treat dinner at home, and then watch a movie On Demand on cable. We actually get those free because we use our cable system reward points. The other thing we do is to make homemade cards. It's definitely the thought that counts!

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