THIS CONTEST IS OVER. COME BACK NEXT THURSDAY FOR ANOTHER $100 GIVEAWAY.
Sometimes the Frugalista feels like Cinderella. Do the grocery shopping! Get the bills paid! Run to the ATM to pay the cleaning lady!
(That is how the fairy tale goes, right?)
So for this week's
Frugalista Challenge, I want to focus on something we don't talk about enough here: Getting out and having fun. And then, I want to give you $100. Lucky for me,
8coupons.com is providing a $100 gift card that I can give one lucky winner.
So, first my top 10 tips for saving money on the high life, and then, you comment with your favorite Chicago-area bar bargain. That could be your
favorite happy hour, the spot with the consistently generous pours (hint: the Lincoln Square Lanes bowling alley, above the hardware store), or the bar with the free pool on Thursdays. Anything goes.
MY NIGHTLIFE TIPS
1. Hello,
Groupon? Seriously, Groupon
and its ilk have revolutionized going out to eat and drink in Chicago. If you are not checking the daily deal roundups here, you are missing out.
3. Go out when there's some kind of entertainment thrown in for free. I like trivia night because I am a nerd. My theory is that if you are occupied trying to win a trivia contest, you will likely drink more slowly and order fewer drinks.
4.
This article has a few good tips, including one I highly recommend: Don't be embarrassed to ask the price of a drink.
5. Go to events with free drinks and appetizers. This is easier than you might think. If you join Yelp and become an Elite member by writing a lot of reviews, you can go to
periodic parties with lots of free food and drink. Eventbrite has a f
ree events page.
6. The blog
Broke Hipster continuously posts nightlife freebies and deals.
7. Put your drinks on someone's tab. Recently I was at a party for ChicagoNow bloggers, and I told the bartender I wanted a drink on
Tribune Digital Editor Bill Adee's tab. Well, the bartender took out a small stack of credit cards and started shuffling through. "You mean Phil? You mean Joe?" We eventually found Mr. Adee's card and proceeded to push his credit limit, but before we got there, I realized that I need never pay for my own drink again. Next time I go to a bar, I'm just going to say, "Put it on Joe's tab." Chances are, someone with a name vaguely resembling Joe has a card in the register drawer.
8. Tip No. 7 is totally a joke. I'm frugal, not a crook. Besides, when I go out, people ply me with free drinks just to hear my CVS shopping secrets, so I don't need to pull a scam like that.
9. It would totally work, though, wouldn't it?
10. Never open a tab at a bar. See No. 7-9.
So, enough about me. What are your tips for going out in the Chicago area without losing your figurative shirt? (If you lose your literal shirt, you have probably had a good enough time that it doesn't matter what you spent.)
I'll pick one commenter to win a $100 certificate or credit at the bar, tavern or lemonade stand of their choice, compliments of 8coupons.com. Once again, one comment per person, please. You can get a second entry by Tweeting this post, but you don't need to comment to tell me you tweeted. Just make sure to add @carriekirby to the tweet. Contest ends at Friday at 5 p.m., aka, Miller Tme.
Drunken tweeting is a-ok in the context of this contest, but may not be advisable in other circumstances.
Photo by glennharper, used via Creative Commons license.
19 Comments
FacelessGraceless said:
Nightlife? What nightlife? I'm sure I save tons of money by staying in. My cheapest staying-in entertainment is DVDs from swapadvd.com (since we don't have RedBox in my town - boo!)
jll said:
Well, I have an 8 month old so we have barely been out in the last year. But one extra simple tip we like to use is go out on weeknights! We're not big on the bar scene, but we like a good drink special at a restaurant. On the weeknights we can frequently find $3 draft beers or something, and if there are some food specials even better. (Candlelite on Western in Rogers Park has some good weeknight deals!)
Jackie Tithof Steere said:
Very funny and I AM RTing this. :) I'm going to say Lynfred Winery in Roselle. You can have a wine tasting of 6-8 different wines (plus bread for cleansing your pallet in between) for $7 or $8 and you have all that ambiance. (It's not Napa, but it's something.) You can even request to taste only reds or only whites instead of the mix. There's also a nice gift shop to browse.
JohnKWilson said:
As much as I hate to shill for the Tribune Co., the daily Redeye is a good resource for daily drink and food specials. I can't find the online version right now, though. The other suggestion is to find a place that has drink specials but not food specials that is in the Entertainment book or the PBS/NPR Membercard. Then you can get 2-for-1 food and the drink specials.
angiechristine said:
BYOB is always the route we take. Although you have to be cautious of the corkage fee. Some restaurants have upped this charge to terrorizing amounts. Fave BYOB with reasonable food prices is Grand Katachi on Damen for sushi.
Another form of entertainment for us is the rotating dinner club. Everyone brings wine and the responsibility for dinner bounces from host to host.
CtrlAltTabby said:
I have a 5-year old, therefore, I have no nightlife.
No, really, when we do want to go out, I've learned to plan based on what Groupon has to offer our here in the suburbs, or I check Restaurant.com for places we may want to eat at.
srfagan said:
With 3 kids under 5, we don't get out much. But back when I was childless and worked (at a library) in the Gold Coast, we would like to go to the bar on the 96th floor of the Hancock Center. We'd buy the cheapest drink we could while enjoying the view (the view in the women's bathroom is also incredible). That way we didn't have to pay however much it is to go up to the observation deck. We also liked the bar menu at McCormick and Schmick's during happy hour. It looks like they've upped their prices to start at $1.95, but it still looks pretty cheap compared to the rest of their menu.
dandyone said:
Not much into the bar scene these days but we do enjoy going out to a dinner and a movie. I use my Discover Cashback Bonus to purchase restaurant Gift Cards at a discount through Discover and then also use coupons when they are available. For the movie, I save up my coke rewards to get the AMC tickets or my new favorite movie theatre is Classic Cinemas at Charlestowne Mall in St Charles. When you join their email list you get coupon for a free popcorn and for September they sent a coupon for buy 1 movie ticket get 1 free. They have free refills on any size pop or popcorn. Tuesday's a 46oz popcorn is only $1 and you still get free refills.
Alyssa Nickow said:
Keep to a budget by leaving the cards at home and bringing only the cash you are willing to spend. (Put cab fare in a separate pocket so you don't accidentally spend your ride home).
sarahmc said:
We check the Groupon deals daily and also use a lot of restaurant.com certificates. At this point, it's weird for us to eat out without one of those!
Siobhan said:
Is a visit with our therapist considered "nightlife" if it occurs in the evening? Ha ha, well at least its a cheap date as Blue Cross Blue Shield picks up that tab. Other nights, we use coupons from the Wednesday Journal, Groupon, Restaurant.com or gift cards from cashed in airline miles.
Noelle said:
On Tuesdays, Sidebar Grille on LaSalle and Wacker has half price bottles of wine, excluding Champagne, which stinks because I love Champagne, but their wine selection is decent. You also get a free pizza with your first bottle of wine. We go with 3 people, order 2 bottles, and get two pizzas. It's a cheap but filling night!
klhoffmann said:
I save money by eating at BYOBs and then having only one drink for cash at a bar after I'm near sated.
Sara said:
In addition to Groupon, we love to get the Entertainment Book. I usually wait until March or so of any given year to buy it so it's slightly discounted. Generally I think I pay around $17. It pays for itself very quickly. Just as an example, my husband and I are going to a play in a couple of weeks at the Noble Fool Theatre in St. Charles. Normally the tickets are $29, but using our BOGO from the Entertainment Book- voila, half price.
Mari said:
I like a place called Vine Tastings, which is just around the corner from the Lynfred Winery, in Roselle. When I have guests visit from out of town they are usually pleasantly surprised that we have this type of establishment in the neighborhood.
I save by avoiding these places on the weekend and visiting during the week, when there are drink specials, not to mention that it is less crowded.
adrianne said:
Well I don’t really drink much so don’t have any good tips for bars. But I DO like to drink good coffee (if lemonade stands count then why not?) So here is how I justify indulging in Starbucks.
1. I use the Starbucks gold card and have it automatically loaded once per month with my budgeted amount. If the card is empty before the end of the month, no more fancy coffee until the following month.
2. I always order a tall coffee in a grande cup. It gives me plenty of room for dairy and I have now paid for a small coffee while actually consuming a medium.
3. After every 15 drinks the nice folks at Starbucks send you a coupon for a free drink. ANY drink. So I use that to treat myself to a very fancy venti drink. When I net those it comes to a 20 – 25% discount!
julie said:
With two kids we don't go out much, so we bring the nighlife to us. I wait for a sale at Jewel and then combine the sale with liquor coupons, rebates and the 10% discount for buying 6 to get rum, vodka & Bailey's for about $6/bottle (mostly tax). Then we invite over one or two families and hang out until it's the kids bedtime. No late nights here. :-)
hawk3ye said:
I too am a big lover of trivia nights, but until I find one around here, I am loving the Veggie Bingo at the Hideout! I found out about it from my other fave ChicagoNow blogger, Mr. Brown Thumb. http://www.chicagonow.com/blogs/chicago-garden/2010/06/veggie-bingo-its-not-your-grandmas-bingo.html
Always been a big fan of the Hideout, seeing shows there since 1998. They have cheap PBR cans if you are feeling thrifty, and plenty of nicer beers bottled/on tap as well, plus some great whiskey's! There are live shows on stage almost every night of the week, and sometimes in the front room or out on the porch as well. Their annual Block Party is also not to be missed.
Emily Zanotti said:
Joining Foursquare seems to have given me a lot of opportunity for good deals. A good deal of the time, at least in the city of Chicago and some of the larger 'burbs, "checking in" at a bar will get you some percentage off...Trader Vic's near Rush St. has a deal for a free order of sushi, for example.