Welcome to a new series that will help shake up your platonic/romantic date ideas! It’s so easy to get trapped in the cycle of movie-dinner or Netflix-drink dates. The main reason why these two get so much replay from college students/20-somethings is because they’re cheap. This series will introduce fun inexpensive outing ideas that stray a bit from the college student date norm. 

This series will also strive to maintain 4 rules that relate to a real college student’s budget and lifestyle:

• Cost of the outing: around $30/person
• Cost of the clothes: around $70, excluding accessories (jewelry/bags/shoes/makeup) since those can be swapped out according to your style/budget
• Diversity of body sizes and styles
• Diversity of fashion-lifestyle preferences: always 1 outfit using shorts/pants & 1 outfit using skirts/dresses

Table of Contents

Botanical Garden + Bubble Tea Cost Breakdown

• ~$10 Transporation
• ~$0 Botanical Garden (look for free days/passes!)
• ~$5 Bubble Tea Drink 

If you have a botanical garden in the city, your university most likely has the hookup for the popular tourist attraction. Check if your library has a free pass and if the botanical garden has free/steeply discounted days. 

How do you get there? Bus, shuttle, taxi, ride-sharing apps all work. I priced the transportation a bit high because some universities are really far away from the city’s botanical garden. Plus, gas costs rack up for commuter students. 

Bubble tea, also known as boba, has become a food trend in the past years with shops popping up everywhere. The flavored-tea-with-tapioca-balls combination is especially popular with the college crowd so you could probably find a shop near campus – or even on-campus. Shops generally sell the drink in the $3-8 range for a medium cup. Some shops even let you play card/board games in-store!