
When trying to meet someone special, most people gravitate towards the places where they know they can meet other singles: bars and clubs. In fact, When Bostonians were asked in a CityVoter poll: “where is the best place to meet other single people in Boston?” 75% of respondents answered with a bar or restaurant. While these spots are usually populated with other people, they can end up being prohibitively expensive options (a couple of $12 mojitos in, and your “socializing” budget is blown for the month!). Fortunately, there are plenty of other places to meet people that won’t cost you an arm and a leg… and may even bring you to your financial soul mate.
Please enjoy these 10 suggestions on creative and cheap ways to meet someone special, and begin your own financial romance. I hope to hear your own tips! Please leave your comment son the blog, or tweet them to me at @LantrnFinancial. Enjoy!
1.Get Physical
Playing a sport is a great way to get exercise and bond with new people who have common interests. Additionally, all of those chemicals that your body is producing during exercise (endorphins, adrenaline and serotonin) are also released when two people are attracted to each other and falling in love, so it’s kind of like a head start! And the best part about meeting someone this way? It is cheap to join an intramural sports team!
Check out the Boston Ski and Sports Club (www.bssc.com) to see all of the different intramural sports teams that are available. They offer everything from Soccer to Hiking to Golf. They also have plenty of social events, like cruises and rooftop mixers. And for an even better deal, enter our contest at www.lantern-financial.com to win a One Year Membership to the BSSC, for free!
If you enjoy running, try a club such as Community Running that welcomes all ages and abilities! The cost is $10 a month and includes coaching! (www.communityrunning.org ).
Of if you are trying to expand your horizons, stretch out with free Yoga offered for free every Wednesday morning through August at the Rose Kennedy Greenway in the North End (http://www.trumba.com/eventscalendar/ma/boston/rose/fitzgerald/kennedy/greenway/conservancy/boston/parks/big/dig/central/draft-calendar).
2.Take a Class
Boston offers a wide array of fun, skill-building classes that can lead your life in a new direction, many at little or no cost.
MIT offers free beginner Salsa lessons on Mondays (http://web.mit.edu/salsaclub/www/). A friend of mine had success with this tip: she has already been on two dates with her dance partner!
Take a climbing class at MetroRock in Everett (www.metrorock.com ). Don’t worry, it’s easy to get to off the Orange Line and they offer a free shuttle to pick you up. If you want a day of climbing for 50% off the normal price, contact us at info@lantern-financial.com to join the Lantern Team for a day! (Date TBA… some time in August.)
Feel like cooking up something spicy in your romantic life? Try a cooking class from Boston Center for Adult Education www.bcae.org that teaches you to stretch $40 into a week’s worth of healthy meals. This class is a bit more expensive but you will be learning something cool, opening the floor to interesting conversation, and meeting someone with similar interests. Some places like the BCAE even have singles nights, where classes are geared specifically towards helping singles meet each other.
3.Go to a Museum
It may sound geeky (it is) but a museum is a perfect place to strike up a thoughtful conversation. It also provides for an easy fix for awkwardness. At a bar, any moment of silence is awkward, but at a museum, silence is pensive, mysterious, even sexy!
The Museum of Fine Arts offers free general admission museum nights on Wednesdays 4:00 -9:45 P.M.
If you want a little extra romance for $12, (think ivy in a nighttime open courtyard) the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on the Fenway combines art with live music every third Thursday from now until September. (http://www.gardnermuseum.org/afterhours/afterhours.asp ) Admission for college students is $5.00 with I.D. Check the website for additional admission deals if you are a Red Sox fan!
4.Join a religious group
As with all of these suggestions, in order to meet that special someone, you will have the most luck if you are doing something that is fun and important to you. This is especially true for this tip. If expressing your faith is important to you, or you are seeking to explore faith, this may be a perfect opportunity to do so, and meet someone else special that is doing the same thing. There are study groups, prayer sessions, and even outings and field trips! A Google or Yellow Pages search will provide you with plenty of options within many faiths. And of course, it’s free! Ever heard of a Bible Study cover charge?
5.Go Outside and Hang Out in a Park
So far this “summer”, being outdoors has not been an option in Boston, but we are keeping our fingers crossed. Especially because when the weather gets nice, our beautiful parks fill with people! And my favorite part about hanging out in the park, of course, is that it is absolutely free.
Besides the Common and the Public Garden, check out the Charles River Esplanade, The Arnold Arboretum in JP, The grassy quad on MIT’s campus, The Kennedy Greenway in the North End or the Evans Way Park on the Fenway. Strike up a conversation with someone else enjoying the sun, bring a Frisbee and find a partner, or bring a pet along: it’ll be a great conversation starter.
If you’re looking for the Backyard BBQ feel that is hard to find in the city, you’re in luck. Every Friday through Aug. 21, backyard games like badminton, bocci and tether ball are on the Rose Kennedy Greenway from 12:00PM – 2:00PM.
6.Don’t Give Up on Online Dating
Of course the popular dating sites like www.eHarmony.com get a lot of attention and can be very successful, but it may cost $40 to send an email! However there are cheaper online alternatives to internet dating, ones that don’t require any fees at all.
An example is www.Meetup.com, which is an event site where people post things that they are doing around the city. Dodgeball, Ultimate Frisbee and Guitar Hero are a few examples of Meetups in the Boston area. A member of the Dodgeball Meetup said, “It was a wonderful way to meet new people!” Reach out through one of these websites to find people who like doing the same sorts of things that you do, and then meet in a neutral location, or with a group.
Twitter (www.Twitter.com) could also be a useful tool to help you meet someone special. Tweetups (a Twitter Meetup) are fun gatherings with lots of local adults. (As always, remember to be smart and safe about online dating, and connect with people in neutral locations.)
7.Volunteer
Volunteering is free, fun and it feels good. You give back to the community, usually in ways that are enriching and enjoyable. And you often meet other people who care about the same things as you. It is also a great way to find people who are generous, responsible and thoughtful… a recipe for a great romantic partner.
Here are a few places to volunteer to get you started:
a. Boys and Girls Clubs of America, (http://www.bgca.org),
b. Big Brothers and Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay (http://www.bbbsmb.org),
c. The Women’s Lunchplace(www.womenslunchplace.org),
d. Boston Cares (www.bostoncares.com),
e. Young Alumni Volunteering Association, or YAVA, great for recent college graduates (www.yava.com),
f. or Habitat for Humanity (www.habitat.org).
8. Wine and Cheese Tastings
Many wine stores offer free wine tastings throughout the week in order to showcase their products to their customers. Some times they even set out appetizers. These types of events are perfect for meeting people because they already have a date feel, but they are completely free.
On Tuesdays, Best Cellars on Boylston Street offers free tastings from 5:00PM – 8:00PM. Not into wine? Boston also does beer tastings. Check out Wine Gallery on Boylston Street in Brookline from 5:00PM – 7:00PM on Thursday nights for a free tasting.
Looking for something a little more upscale to end the work day? Looking to meet someone in a suit? Vinalia in the Financial District has free wine and cheese tasting at 6pm every Wednesday! (http://www.vinaliaboston.com/calendar.asp?month=8&year=2009)
9.Participate in Local Events
There is always a lot going on in Boston, especially during the summer. This time of year is all about enjoying entertainment, food, and beautiful weather (even though we haven’t yet arrived this year) for very reasonable prices.
Consider the free Boston POPs concert at the Hatch Shell (July 3rd) (http://www.searchboston.com/happenings.html), the Cultural Survival Bazaar (http://www.culturalsurvival.org/) on July 11th or many of the restaurants that offer deals to both ladies and gents throughout the week. For example, Match on Newbury Street has Ladies’ Night on Thursdays ($5 entrees for women) and will soon be announcing a Gentleman’s night (www.matchbackbay.com) . With all these great opportunities, saving money and meeting new people who are doing the same is a recipe for romance!
Read the Improper Bostonian and Stuff and Night to find out what else is happening that is cheap and attracting other people in the same mind set. To make it even easier to find all of the great goings on in Boston, follow us on Twitter as we announce these steals @LantrnFinancial.
10.Throw a Singles Party
At Lantern Financial, we are big believers in “Do It Yourself” to save money. Instead of going out, stay in and invite the singles to you! By creating an MeetUp.com group, a Facebook event page, and inviting all of your single friends and having them do the same, you can create a gathering of fun, interesting people, all looking for romance.
Host a potluck to save money- your guests will be happy to participate in making the party a success and showing off their cooking or baking skills. And read our blog from April, “Party Planning on a Budget”( http://lantern-financial.blogspot.com/2009/04/party-planning-on-budget.html) , for inspiration on how to make your bash a smash!
At Lantern Financial we believe that romance and finance go hand in hand. I hope that these tips will help you find your own financial romance! This list is just the beginning, and I look forward to hearing your own ideas on meeting someone special and maintaining your relationship with your budget, either on this blog or on Twitter (again, @LantrnFinancial). Thanks for reading! Click here to read more!






