For those in a relationship, date night is single-handedly the best night one can have. Spending time with your significant other can make your day a thousand times better; however, it can break your bank account.

Being a college student, I can stretch $20 pretty far, but I don’t exactly want to spend all of it on a treat for myself when the necessities are being left out. My boyfriend and I knew we should be saving our money, so we came up with a few fun ideas to incorporate into our date nights.

First, we decided on having a spa night. I know what you’re thinking, “boys having a spa night?” but Mason and I have so much fun with it.

The key to all of our dates is we take these ideas and make them our own. This idea often includes the typical face masks, teeth whitening, and I often indulge in some self-tanner; however, the in-between moments are what make the night fun.

We find ourselves straying off into having dance parties, laughing at our appearances with the materials we’ve placed on it, and generally having a good time.

Once this portion of our night is completed, we make sure to put on the comfiest clothes we own and head to Dairy Queen. This is the only time we spend money on our date nights, and it’s to buy their glorious pretzel sticks with cheese and a blizzard of our choice to split.

You don’t have to spend money at all, but sometimes the small treat makes our night much better. However, whatever you have in your kitchen will suffice. After this is done, we head home to fulfill the third plan for our night.

My personal favorite portion starts now. While Mason gets together any extra snacks, I get to work building the perfect couch fort. Once I consider the fort to be satisfactory and Mason has a large number of snacks, we flip the tv to our favorite show (which is A.P. Bio at the moment), crawl into our new hangout space, and hang out for the rest of the night.

Although these ideas work best in this combination, they’re also fun to do on their own. They also allow a lot of time for us to talk, creating bonding time and a chance for our relationship to grow.

I highly suggest trying these ideas out, even if you stick to snacks at home and ignore the Dairy Queen trip. It’s a super easy date night to recreate, but the memories will last forever.