Why is it so hard to have fun without spending money?
Yes, I know I said I wouldn’t post in May but long weekends inspire me. Also, I bought dirt.
A funny thing happened when I decided to cut back on my spending: I realized during the May long weekend that is the official start of summer that I didn’t know how to have fun without tapping my debit card.
That might sound dramatic, but I’m not alone. In a world where joy is increasingly tied to transactions like $18 cocktails, $250 concert tickets (which is cheap these days) and $3,000 vacations, opting out of spending can feel like opting out of life. Why is fun tied to spending?
The answer, it turns out isn’t just about personal willpower. It’s about culture, capitalism, and convenience.
Fun is sold to us, not shared
We’ve been trained to associate leisure with consumerism. From childhood birthday parties at amusement parks to adulthood brunches and boutique fitness classes, the message is clear: fun costs money.
Even our digital downtime is monetized, all those streaming subscriptions, in-game purchases, and the ever-present Instagram algorithm nudging us toward aspirational lifestyles. Right now my algorithm is telling me I need a fully linen, inspired by White Lotus season whatever-wardrobe. Minus the murders, I think. I’m not sure.
We’re reacting to this demand to summer spend. The Bank of Canada says that due to the tariffs and trade conflicts, housing costs which are softening but are still high compared to wages and high costs of goods, Canadians are being more cautious of our spending.
Free fun requires more effort and imagination
Here’s the other truth: spending money is easy. It’s a shortcut to joy. Click a button, order food. Tap your card or phone, get a dopamine hit. Free fun takes work. It asks you to be creative and to plan.
But people are trying, which is nice. Two friends and I went to an event which was free, we just had to get tickets. The event wasn’t what we thought it would be but I had a lovely time hanging out with the two of then and one more friend on a random Wednesday. We’re planning on do a few more of them because why not?
I also do walking dates with another friend and her dog. We pick an area and walk and talk, like a very low-budget Sorkin series.
We’ve lost the muscle memory for no-cost fun, especially when inflation, burnout, job worries and pandemic isolation leave us craving comfort.
I’m also going to argue that we’ve also lost the ability to be alone by ourselves and to be mid as hell. I’m just as guilty as the next person of feeling boring when I see friends and family doing things when I scroll social media while I do nothing really interesting and postable.
For example, this long weekend, I did the following:
Cleaned my home
Caulked my bathtub
Repotted plants
Chatted with my neighbour and friends
Read a bunch of magazines
Did a bit of work (Look, I do a lot of freelancing.)
Watched TV
Went for a walk and got dirt for the repotting
The social cost of saying no
There's also a social pressure to spend. Declining a dinner invite or skipping a night out to stay within budget can feel like admitting failure, especially in a city like Toronto, where your social life often happens outside your home because your apartment is tiny and honestly, who wants to clean to host friends?
A 2022 report by the Angus Reid Institute found that nearly half of Canadians are cutting back on social outings due to financial pressure, but many do so quietly, not wanting to appear cheap or struggling. That silence reinforces the idea that real fun requires money and that opting out means being left out.
How to rebuild a free fun life
The good news? There’s a quiet movement toward low-cost living and value-driven leisure. It starts with intention.
Make a list of things that bring joy or at least contentment but don’t cost anything like library books, walks, game nights with friends and free events. Then go one step further and schedule them. Make them a habit.
Use your community resources. Toronto’s parks, public events, galleries, and even some fitness programs are free. Websites like Toronto Fun Guide and Eventbrite (use the “free” filter) are goldmines. Yes, Toronto politicians and NIMBYs are weird about large groups of people living life in crowds but there’s more of us than them and we can vote them out.
And most importantly: find your people. The ones who are okay with coffee instead of cocktails, who’ll bring snacks to the park, who are also trying to find joy without the financial hangover. Because the real secret to having fun without spending money? Doing it together so you don’t feel weird about it.
Recommendations:
My friend Chloe started a newsletter called The Gaysian Agenda. She’s documenting her IVF journey.
I remember mentioning to a friend about a month ago that heels were coming back when I saw several women wearing pointy stilettos on a random weekday in the city. Isabel Slone breaks down the why behind the heel revival in her newsletter, Freak Palace.
And this, which I had posted on my Instagram: Right, so Gregor Robertson, the minister of Housing, Infrastructure and Communities of Canada's comment about how housing shouldn't go down. One explanation as to why is because a lot of wealth held by Canadians is in housing. It's also a significant portion of Canada's GDP. So the government has to figure out how to build more housing while not tanking the wealth that home-owning Canadians have already invested into those four walls. Which was encouraged.
Of course, it would have helped if the federal government had stayed in the house-building business instead of getting out of it in the 90s and letting the private sector pick up the slack because that always reduces costs. /s. I wrote about it in this newsletter.One thing to read: I wrote a piece on how to prevent basement flooding. It’s an issue in Toronto and it’s going to get worse. I had a great conversation with Dr. Blair Feltmate, head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation at the University of Waterloo that I might put here in its entirety.
Finally, let me know if you want to see the results of the survey, graphs and all.