I love going on cheap dates. Don’t get me wrong – I can get all glammed up and go out for an expensive night on the town as well. But I tend to think that inexpensive dates are a lot more fun. You’re more relaxed on them. And you usually end up doing things that are more creative than you do when you spend a lot of money on traditional dates.

I happen to think that summer is the ideal time for romantic cheap dates. Part of that has to do with the great weather that most places have during the summer (something that’s not necessarily true where I live in San Francisco but can be found nearby). And it also has to do with the fact that there are so many great cheap events in summer that don’t necessarily happen the rest of the year.

Last weekend I got to enjoy a series of activities that made for great cheap dates. I actually went with the guy I’m dating as well as with some friends so it wasn’t uber-romantic but the activities we enjoyed were perfect examples of great cheap dates. Those activities were:

• A short inexpensive road trip. We piled into a car and listened to the radio and laughed about crazy sights in small towns along the road.
• Lunch in Old Town. We stopped in Old Town Sacramento and got a cheap lunch then just did some windowshopping and photo-taking.
• Antique browsing. I admit it – I love looking at old junk in cheap antique stores. I ended up buying a great colorful pitcher and glasses set for $15 but I would’ve been happy just looking too.
• Art gallery reception. We ended up in the small town of Marysville. There was an art and literary opening reception there. It was themed around the 1970′s and seeing the dressed-up people was great. Plus there was free wine and food.
• Farmers’ Market. There was a Farmer’s Market going on so we got some great inexpensive fruit and walked around people-watching.
• Carnival. It doesn’t cost much to play a game of throwing the darts at the balloons but it sure was fun.
• Spent the day at a river. The main purpose of the trip was to spend a day at the river up there. We floated down natural rock water slides, ate a picnic lunch, swam in too-cold water and had a really great time.

All of these things are cheap and there were fun and I’m looking forward to the rest of the summer’s adventures!

Tags: cheap dates, dating, frugal dates, kathryn vercillo, Personal Finance, Relationships, romance

The recession is doing strange things to people. It’s causing many different types of changes – some positive and some negative. One of the things that seems to be affected greatly is relationships. People are handling dating, marriage and discussions about money differently than they did in the past.

For some people, this has been a good thing. Couples that are facing the recession head-on together may be strengthening their relationship as a result of undergoing these tough times as a team. Unfortunately, that’s not how everyone is handling this situation.

There are quite a few couples out there that find their relationship impacted by the recession in a negative way. They are fighting about money. They are fighting about things unrelated to money because they’re stressed out by their finances. They are letting the recession tear them apart instead of allowing it to bring them together.

At the end of this difficult economic time, we are going to see that the way we dealt with the recession says a lot about who we are and the lives that we lead. Those couples who opt to make use of this time to bring themselves closer could be the ones that end up having positive life-long relationships.

Tags: dating, economy, marriage, money, Personal Finance, recession, Relationships

I recently wrote an article with 20 Tips for Dealing with Difficult People. What the common denominator for almost all of these tips ended up being was that you really need to deal with difficult people by changing yourself rather than them. This is a firm belief that I have for all situations that are making us unhappy. We can rarely change the circumstances around us and can even more rarely change the others within those circumstances but we can always work to change ourselves.

We like to believe that it is the people around us who are causing trouble for our lives. Although the problems that we face do often come to us in the form of conflict with another person, the solutions lie almost entirely within ourselves. How we opt to take in information, react to situations and deal with our own feelings about things is all up to us and that’s something that can entirely alter the situations that we find ourselves in.

For example, your husband goes on a business trip and doesn’t call you when he arrives even though you think that he should. You get angry. And then you get worried. And then you get anxious because you’re wondering where he is and what he’s really doing and why he hasn’t called and who he’s doing things with and … you make yourself crazy and angry. And when he calls, you express this anger and the two of you get into an argument.

In your mind, this entire thing was caused by the fact that your husband didn’t call. In reality, it was caused by your own belief that he should’ve called and your choice about how you reacted to it. Yes, he could’ve been doing god knows what with god knows who or he could’ve been lying in a ditch somewhere but neither of those things would have been altered by your own over-the-top reaction. You can choose to simply not react in this manner and save yourself a lot of chaos in your mind.

This isn’t to say that your husband shouldn’t call if he said he was going to. It’s to say that you can choose healthier options for your own mind and healthier ways of communicating your feelings. You can wait until your husband gets home to discuss how this made you feel and what you wish could be different next time. And you can give him the room to react accordingly. You can choose to be different if you want your relationships to be different.

Tags: change, communication, dating, friendships, how to improve relationships, hubpages, kathryn vercillo, people, Relationships

I have a confession to make. I have written tons of articles on parenting and yet I am not a parent. So, what do I know about parenting? A lot actually. You see, I worked in the field of child welfare for several years which allowed me to take numerous parenting classes, interact with many different types of parents and family counselors and even be a (foster) parent for two years.

I actually think that every single parent out there should take parenting classes. I believe that my ability to do any kind of parenting at all was heightened by the fact that I took these classes and studied up on the topic. There aren’t any exact things that you can do to be a good parent, of course, but the more that you learn about different parenting styles and parenting options, the better equipped you’re going to be to make the right choices for you as a parent.

So, yes, I offer parenting advice now and then. For example, I’ve got an article over at HubPages today with ten tips for single parents who want to start dating again but who have teenage children that are taking issue with that. I’m not saying that these tips are the right answers for every person in this situation. I’m just saying that these are some of the things I’ve seen work for people in that situation over the years so they could be a good place to start if it’s a problem that you have.

Tags: advice, child welfare, dating, foster care, Parenting, parents dating, single parent, teens