Dating on a budget? It's difficult, but not impossible. We have the experience to help though, and these tips will teach you how to hook up on a budget.

How's your hookup game on your best day? If it's good, then this shouldn't be too difficult for you. Almost everything you need to do is just a modification of traditional dating and hookup activities, with an element of little white lies on top.

If you find yourself without the extra spending money that you typically do, or perhaps you're trying to save up, you should still be able to remain sexually active. Maintaining your sex life is important. In order to hook up on a budget, you need to sit down and make some lists about your dating style, and what activities you usually take hookups out to do. Break down the costs, and figure out cheaper alternatives or small lies that will remove your need to do that activity, which is traditionally expected from a date.

Read on to take a closer look at some of the things you can substitute, like coffee for drinks, going dutch on dinner bills, and many more.


When we're at our best, and out in the nightlife, trying to hook up as often as we can, it can be a liberating and extremely fun period of our lives. Unfortunately sometimes life deals us a bad hand, and we find ourselves without the means to go out partying as often as we usually do. This of course affects the amount of hookups that we're having, but it shouldn't keep us from having sex completely. One of the best ways to make sure you're still getting some action, is simply being more selective. More selective when it comes to who you hit on, as well as what nights you go out on. If you typically go out 4 times a week, you might consider reducing the number of nights you hit the town. The more you're able to do that, the more money you'll have to spend on the nights that you do go out. The same concept applies to dating, if you're going out on dates with people that you've met previously, or that you've met on dating websites. Going out to the clubs and buying every woman you find attractive a drink becomes rather expensive, so you need to start finding your hookups in cheaper ways.

Once you've found some dates, it's time to figure out cheaper alternatives to traditional dates.

Though going on coffee dates will very rarely wind up resulting in a hookup, without at least going out for dinner or drinks afterwards, they can be used as an extremely effective tool for people who're looking to hookup on a budget. People typically go on coffee dates instead of dinner or drink dates for a couple reasons. One, you rarely find yourself ordering a second cup of coffee, for fear of getting over caffeinated, and not being able to sleep for the next two days. This keeps the amount of time you're giving up for dates with people who're not sure you're going to hit it off with, to a minimum (though always of course with the option to extend the date at a different venue if conversation is going well). And Two, coffee is cheap! You can check out to see if you're vibing with someone for anywhere from a couple dollars to six, depending on how fancy (or corporate, rather) a coffee shop you decide to meet at. By going on coffee dates rather than dinners or drink dates, you're going to be saving a lot of money, while still meeting up with as many potential hookup partners as you can.

And you never know. If you find yourself out on a coffee date with someone who you connect with quickly, and who's on a similar budget, you just might find yourself getting your vanilla bean lattes to go, and heading back to your place or theirs. If you find yourself lucking out, and hooking up after drinking a couple big coffees, you'll have that little extra juice thanks to the caffeine, to make the hook up that much better.

Most people know that "going dutch" means splitting the bill with your date, but you might not know the term's origins. Back in the 17th century, the UK was frequently trying to transport goods through Dutch territory, but the Netherlands were having none of it. That was their land, and they felt like they should be paid for using it. This created an image of being cheap in the eyes of the British, so because of the old fashioned attitudes about it being the responsibility of the man to pay for a date, the term "going dutch" somehow found itself attached to dates where the bill was split by the two daters.

That might be a bit of a longwinded explanation, but trust us that if you find yourself on a date soon where your date doesn't seem super keen on the fact that they're having to go dutch with you, you can drop that little bit of knowledge on your date, as both a way to impress them (don't expect they'll be too impressed), and distract them from being annoyed. You'll probably want to add some sort of funny tag at the end, so you aren't ending your story by saying that the thing you're proposing in order to keep to your budget is cheap. Maybe say that it's too bad that the Dutch were tagged with a reputation of being cheap so early on, because you've heard that even if they might be financially responsible, you've heard they're also really good in bed.

While going out for drinks at a bar or club can become expensive, the priciest expense when it comes to typical dating and hookup culture, is usually dinner. If you're hooking up with someone that going dutch just isn't an option with, then you're going to have to push back your date start times to a point where dinner isn't on the table anymore. Somewhere between 10 and 11 o'clock usually works. This of course reduces the time you have to make a hookup happen, but if you're on a budget, these are the sorts of limitations and challenges you have to put upon yourself.

If you find yourself going out with someone who doesn't catch onto what you're suggesting with your late start time, and says something like, "Oh, that's late. I'll have to have a snack to keep me from starving before then," you'll need to tell them that you have other dinner plans, so they should eat before. Depending on who you're going out with, that might put you deep in the hole. We've even found ourselves getting cancelled on because of the lack of dinner. So if you gone out before with someone you're planning on skipping dinner on, be prepared for that by having a backup hookup in mind.

The most expensive part of hooking up is dating. We've already suggested some things to put into action in order to keep your hookups from bankrupting you, but another option that's available to people, is to simply use hookup apps that are built expressly for hookups. On these apps, you can still send a few messages between each other, and maybe some dirty selfies to make sure you want to hookup with the person on the other end of the network, but you can decide without having to go out on a date, because it is established right off the bat between you and your potential hook up, that you're not looking to go out for drinks; that you're not looking to go to the movies or the local discotheque. You've sent them a message because you're looking to hookup then and there. The only money you'll need to spend is on protection, and transit to and from their place if you're going to them.

If you've got a sweet apartment or house, and want to save that transit fare (we know that this is incredibly cheap, but we're trying to keep our spending low!), you can probably send a pic or two of yourself that showcases your sweet pad, and convince them to come to you. If you send them a selfie of yourself, naked in a sad looking bathroom with a dirty mirror, you're going to theirs, so you should make sure you have bus tokens.

This probably only applies for people who're having an extramarital affair, or sleeping with sex workers (which we'll ignore in this instance since that wouldn't be very budget-friendly).

If you're looking to save money, you should make sure you aren't hooking up in hotel rooms. So if you're hooking up with someone who's married, and isn't able to offer their place to have sex at, you need to do it at yours. If you're in the same situation, the two of you are going to have to get creative, and find alternate (read: cheaper) locations to hook up at.

Another option is to budget for your hookups in advance. Say you have 3 dates in a week. Create a budget, and decide which of your hookups are more likely to be open to the cheaper options, and which ones you think will hang up on you and block your number the second they hear the words "grab a coffee" or "go for a walk along the boardwalk" come out of your mouth, when planning your hangout. Create spending tiers, based on the needs of who you're going out with. If you're going out with someone who's really chill, and you think you'd be able to get away with a long walk and a shared ice cream truck cone, put them in your bottom tier. These tiers aren't indicative of the quality of the hookup; just the amount of money that you're going to have to spend in order to keep them from thinking that there's something funny going on with you and your date.

It goes without saying that these tiers must never be seen by your hookups. It should also be noted that when you're back to a better place financially, if you find yourself still hooking up with someone from a lower tier, you shouldn't stop using these budgeting tiers. They will have served their purpose during your rough patch, but it's not how you want to be seen forever.

This is probably the most difficult of your options when trying to keep your sex life active while being short of funds, but it's also the best one in a lot of ways.

If you're only out looking for casual hookups, and are sure you aren't going to be taking any of your hookups past casual sex, then so long as you keep your lies small, and focused on hiding your financial situation, you should be fine.

If you're open to relationships though, or are just looking to hook up with people who're really down to earth and accepting of people who might not be going through the best times. In our experience, these people are rare, but when you find them, they're among the best hookups you're going to find (whether you're casual or serious relationships).

If you're using dating websites to find your hookups, it's simple to edit your profile to let potential dates know that you're not rolling in money at the moment. Perhaps create your own hashtag to draw the attention of potential hookups. If your bio started with something like, "Budget-friendly dates wanted. King of the #5dollardate," you're setting yourself apart from 98% or more of the other people who're on the site. If you don't mind setting up a new account (we know it can be time consuming), you might also want to try making your username something that makes it clear up front that you're looking to spend as little money on dates as possible. @5DollarDateGuy or something similar. As we're suggesting this to you, we're thinking that it's really good advice. Advice that you would probably have to pay for somewhere else. Here it is for free though. Keep us in your thoughts if you're brave enough to give it a shot, and get a bunch of cheap and hot hookups out of it.

Good luck, no matter which of these methods that you end up using. It's great that you're not letting your budget keep you from keeping yourself out there on the hookup scene.

Did we teach you a thing or two? If you still haven't learned your lesson, then why not take a peek at our other fabulous advice guides NOW RIGHT HERE!

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