Today is the next in our Best Frugal Day Ever, and we’ve got a great guest blogger. Carly -  twitter.com/MarketerCalkins – details some big times while unemployed in the big city.

My Best $20 Day Ever

Hey Chicagoans, if you’re lucky enough to have an entire Thursday freed up for whatever reason (read: unemployment), there are countless activities available to you that defy urban fun’s expensive stereotype.

After doing some research, you’ll find that being unemployed in this typically high-priced city isn’t so bad—you might even be able to afford dating! So bask in this time for you to see and do things that a 9-5 lock in would normally put the kibosh on.

On a winter Thursday, I was meandering around my place, badly burnt out from another fruitless job search, when it occurred to me that I couldn’t remember how long I had been wearing this timeless wolf shirt. It was definitely time to get the hell out of the apartment. Fortunately for me, a friend in a similar situation lived nearby and was always up for an inexpensive romp.

I suggested we get some lunch before heading to the Art Institute to catch their Free Admission Thursday hours (5-8 pm). This is the only time of the week during which you can get into that gem for free, and I was eager to lose all sense of reality in the Thorne Miniature Rooms exhibit. Quickly, we stopped at a Subway ($3 daily special) before hopping on a brown line train headed towards the Loop.

Side note: Not a fan of art? Me neither, which is an absolute testament to the universal coolness of the miniatures. They’ve kept me coming back year after year, so you should at least check them out.

Always an enjoyable place for free capers, Millennium Park wins the crowd. The city continuously adds new components to it, whether it’s an exhibit, sculpture, unique landscaping, or, most recently, a rising walkway that connects to a new exhibit at the adjacent Art Institute.

My friend and I couldn’t resist this enormous pleasure garden—hey, it’s free culture—and thus walked through all of its various attractions. Experiencing Millennium Park and all of its wonderment includes ice skating right there on Michigan Avenue. The rink recently opened on November 28, and we were surprised to discover that the skating is free and rentals are only $10. Does anybody even remember what downtown Chicago was like without this grassy knoll on steroids?

Deciding to head back to our area for dinner, I knew exactly the place to go to complete our perfect day of frugality: Matsuyama in Lakeview. At the corner of Belmont and Seminary, this little sushi joint has a great ambience and is BYOB, perhaps its best quality. We stopped at my place first, I grabbed a bottle of wine, and our evening’s booze situation was set. Once arriving, myself not a big fan of sushi, I ordered my usual: $7 Grilled Steak with Garlic Miso Sauce, a steal by anyone’s standards given its tastiness.

Sitting back, food coma taking effect, I realized this was the best $20 day ever.

That’s a pretty great day. Thanks for sharing Carly!

If you’ve had a great day on the cheap, let us know. You can host the post on your blog or send to thedebtress@totalattorneys.com and I’ll post it here on my blog. For more good blog stuff, visit the Bankruptcy Blog.

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