Ideas for how you spend time with friends while minimizing expenses?
I've read Your Money or Your Life and one of my values is spending time with friends, whether catching up with people I haven't seen in too long or putting in time with my nearest and dearest. We do sometimes do cheap things, like free concerts, board game nights, or dinner at one of our places, but often times it's attending a play or concert or going out for dinner. I love seeing these people, I love going to cultural events and going to dinner (I live in NYC where options for each are bountiful), and I don't look at the money I spend on those things and say 'this spending doesn't align with my values!', because it totally does. So for me the answer is not 'never spend on these frivolous expenses!'. But that said, I socialize a few times a week, and while I'm cutting back on drinks I buy and invites I accept, and trying to avoid the very spendy stuff, I know it adds up. I don't want to drop this expense (for instance, next week taking a friend out to a birthday dinner, the week after that a birthday brunch/going away party for another friend--both people I really don't mind putting my money towards seeing/celebrating), but maybe there are some tips on what you've done to pare down or redirect some of this.
I should say that I'm not focused on early retirement or saving a vast amount of my take-home; right now, I just want to pay down my credit card debt (a project that has been deferred for years), and then after that get a rainy day fund and start a small Roth IRA in addition to my 401k, which I contribute to at 10%, perhaps also helping my parents more with a mortgage they're taking out for an apartment I'm going to be living in. So ultra frugality is not my goal, rather it's about ceasing to live beyond my means and cleaning up the residual from when I was.
thanks all!