Although the place of residence has a great impact on leisure opportunities, the weekend almost invariably incurs additional costs for most Finns. Whether you live in a country or a city, it’s easy to get money out as soon as you can take a little break from everyday life. Especially if the long-term goal is to save money, the overriding feeling can be a little bitter after the weekend.
The good news: thankfully, there’s also a lot of free things to do that won’t pour into your everyday budget!
The goal of this article is to inspire a couple of activities that are either completely free or at least very affordable. Properly executed, they can be as fun and enjoyable as a three-course dinner or a long-form cafe visit.
Cheap does not mean boring
Finland is one of the most prosperous countries in the world and has an international standard of living. While this is, of course, a positive thing in many different ways, it also means that we tend to focus on spending money. In Finland, there have been significant changes in household consumption expenditure in recent decades, but most of them are constantly aiming to accumulate savings on their socks.
Very often you come across people who think that a cheap price automatically means a bad product or a boring activity. Cheap activities are often ended up because something really fun is perceived to be too expensive.
If you expect cheap weekend activities to be as attractive as more expensive activities, something needs to be done about it. Develop a way to make saving money fun. Whether you wanted to reach your savings target or simply tweak household spending, the guidance is similar in both situations. Try to find something affordable but still fun for yourself.
Fortunately, there are plenty of wallet-friendly activities. We warmly encourage you to be open-minded about everything and possibly test something that you have no previous experience with. Below we present three affordable or completely free things to do that are equally suitable for families with children as well as others. In addition, we provide an extra tip to help you make your dining your very own activity.
Free things to do for the weekend: Get out for a stroll
We Finns are in a happy situation in the sense that there is a rich offer of outdoor activities in our country. You don’t need expensive skis or a high-quality bike to enjoy Finland’s wonderful nature. Your own feet are the best way to get to know the environment, and using them costs nothing. However, walking does not automatically mean hiking in the fells or socializing in the woods for hours. You can simply go for a walk in the park or beach near your home.
How you can make an activity fun depends on you as a person. Do you like design? For example, you can use Google Maps to create your own itineraries. Start building a route from your home, choose your final destination, and look for interesting stops and, if possible, free things to do along the way.
This can be a lot of fun to do with the kids. Together with the children, you can create your own adventure routes and let the children decide which route to go through. You don’t have to end up in the middle of nature and the map can be centered in the immediate vicinity of your own home.
If you prefer to go for a walk without its weird plans, you can simply choose a starting point and then head where your nose looks. Often, downloading a map to your smartphone can be a good idea in case the internet connection is lost in some area.
Cheap weekend activities: Free museums and other attractions
Have you seen the free museums and other attractions in your hometown? When you want to find cheap activities for the weekend, it’s smartest to start in your hometown. It is very common to be blinded to one’s homeland. This way, you may miss many of the opportunities that can be offered one day after another for the weekend.
There are plenty of parks and museums in the big cities, many of which are completely free. Here are some good options from the metropolitan area.
Helsinki
- Helsinki City Museum – The Helsinki City Museum , located opposite the Great Church, breaks the history of the city with its interesting exhibition. There is also a Children’s Museum on the same premises, which provides fun stimuli for children. There is no entrance fee.
- Bank of Finland Money Museum – The money museum on Snellmaninkatu, which is open from Tuesday to Sunday, opens an interesting history of world currencies and the use of money without an entrance fee.
- Natural History Museum – On the first Friday of the month, the doors of the Helsinki Natural History Museum are open to everyone. Both children and adults get a lot out of this museum.
- Haltiala Livestock Farm – One of the gems of the Helsinki metropolitan area is located in Vantaa, namely the Haltiala Livestock Farm. This free-access visit for the whole family showcases farm animals ranging from cows and sheep to pigs and chickens. In addition, at certain times it is possible to pick free peas and flowers from the farm.
Espoo, Finland
- House Museum Glims3 – In the vicinity of Jorvi Hospital is the house museum Glims, which presents the life of a farm in the past. Admission costs only a few euros, but on Wednesdays the museum is free. For those looking for free things to do in Espoo, Glims is a real treasure trove.
Cheap activities for the weekend: Home activities
“Let’s stay home." It may not be a bad decision at all. If you have less free time, you can find affordable things to do at home for the weekend. The key thing here is to find something to do at all. If you always end up doing the same things, at the end of the weekend you can easily feel that you have done little during it.
Now that we live in an age of technology, many people forget about all the traditional activities that have been practiced in the past. It makes a big difference, of course, whether it’s a family with children, a single household, or a couple without kids, but when did you last remember having a fun game or setting aside time for baking or cooking according to a longer formula?
One nice and cheap solution is to set up a home theater. You may already have a Netflix account, or maybe you’re renting a movie online, so it’s easy to have a nice home evening with a movie night. You can buy a cheap package of popcorn at a local store for the evening. Small details like blackout curtains on the windows make watching movies even more awesome. If there are children in the family, you can make the pillows on the floor seating like in a cinema.
Extra tip: Pack mouth-watering lunches
One of the biggest challenges in keeping a weekend trip affordable is eating along the way. If you are greeted by a charming café or the smell of good food from a restaurant, it can be awkward not to use the situation – unless you are waiting for a really delicious meal packed in your bag.
Organizing a low-budget weekend requires some planning. For example, if you’re going out on a Saturday, it may be smart to go shopping as early as Thursday or Friday. Making a quality sandwich is a whole different matter than buying bread ready-made from a kiosk or cafe. In this way, you save on food expenses and at the same time ensure exactly the kind of lunch that you are sure to like.
If the whole family is going on a day trip, you can let everyone plan their own lunch to take with them. You’ll probably want to keep your food costs on budget, but at the same time enjoy your meals during the trip.
As we have tried to illustrate in this article, these are, after all, very small things. Even cheap weekend activities can easily become a favorite for the whole family.
