Back to School Budgeting Tips: How to Find Inexpensive Entertainment at College

You're back to school and back to the fall semester of college. You don't have much of an entertainment budget, but you want to stay entertained. This article will explore ten ways to enjoy yourself and find entertainment during the fall semester of college on a budget.

It's easy to come up with expensive ways to enjoy the fall semester of college and entertain yourself and your friends. You can go to the movies, and spend about $10 per ticket. You could go to an upscale restaurant, and delight in savory prepared dishes. You might take extravagant weekend trips to Florida or even to the Bahamas or Cancun. You could throw a party and have expensive crabs as the main course.

If you're on a budget, and you don't have much free entertainment money, it's much harder to enjoy yourself. You may find yourself sitting alone in your room wondering why you even came to college. That's no fun! And, to stay motivated, you need some time to unwind and relax.

Here are ten budget entertainment tips and ideas for back to school college enjoyment:

1. Try the local theatre at the college. It will generally cost less. There may be an old or historic theatre at your college. I know there's one at Shepherd University in West Virginia where I went to school. There was only one movie playing at a time, and it wasn't always the latest release, but we had fun. It was enjoyable because other college friends could be found hanging out there and it gave me a sense of enjoying a historic place. I think the tickets were a third or half of what it would have cost to go to the mall theatres.

2. Find free college sponsored events. Most likely your college has an event planning committee or student planning committee that comes up with and organizes free student events. There may be a monthly free movie, or a monthly free bowling night. Even if the prices aren't free for admission, taking place in the college sponsored events can save a good deal of money off of paying for the event on your own.

3. Get a college activity card and use it. Many universities have activity cards that can be purchased for sporting events. The activity card either gets you into all college activities and sporting events or a set number. Buying the activity card saves you money as compared to buying tickets to each event individually.

4. Join a sorority or fraternity. If you join a fraternity or sorority, you'll always have something going on. There are all kinds of events sponsored by these organizations. Sometimes, you can attend the events without belonging to the fraternity or sorority.

5. Find bargain nights at different local entertainment establishments. You might find that if you bowl on Sunday afternoon instead of Saturday night, the rates are half price. Or, you might get two for one admission to the local dance club if you show your college id on wednesday evenings.

6. Get together with a small group of friends in someone's dorm room. If you can't afford to go out, you can still join your friends and watch a movie together or play cards. You could also use the student center as an alternative meeting place.

7. Take advantage of your college facilities. The college I attended had an indoor swimming pool as well as other gym facilities. You could use any of these for free with a student id. This meant I didn't have to join the local gym, and I had a chance to mingle with other college students while I also took measures to keep myself healthy!

8. Sign up for a college activity based class. Skiing 101, ain't it great? I took skiing lessons through my college so that I could get discount ski lift passes at the local ski resort. The lesson part took about half the class, and then the rest of the time we could just have fun skiing. Many colleges offer a set admission cost for full time students, even if you take more than 12 credits. It doesn't cost more to take fifteen credits, so you can take three credits of fun activities like skiing. What's even cooler is that you'll probably get a high grade in the class, which can help your overall college gpa.

9. Get a group of people to go in together to pay for an event. Maybe you'll all pay a few dollars to have a football party, or maybe you could hire a local band to play for your college. If you join the college events board, you could even take a part in planning these events.

10. Have study parties. This may sound silly, but you can really have actual fun learning at college. This is especially true if you can find a way to make it more fun. If you get together with friends to study for an exam, you can test each other on your knowledge and even make up a trivia game on the subject matter with index cards with the answer to the question on the back. Make learning a game to keep in enjoyable.

I went back and taught some courses at the college I attended after I finished graduate school. One of my teaching techniques to help students want to learn and to actually learn was to make part of the class a game. We would have weekly quizzes where the grades got students points on a team. At the end of the semester, the team with the most points got extra points added to their final exam. It inspired them to keep on track each week and to want to learn.