Dating in the UK costs singletons a whopping £1,349 a year

28 July 2020, 17:02

By Mared Parry

@maredparry

Those meals out, 2-4-1 cocktails and cinema trips all mount up it seems!

Singletons across Britain could be splashing a pretty hefty amount on trying to find 'the one' if they're actively seeking dates and scheduling in regular ones.

A new study has revealed that on average, a single Brit will spend £1,349 per annum just on attending regular dates!

The dating app Plenty of Fish conducted the study in question, asking 2,000 singletons about their habits and looked closely at the ins and outs of trying to find the one through dating, and found that the average Brit goes on 13 dates a year.

Of course, it depends entirely on what you do on your date... If you're just going for a walk for all of those 13 dates then it's unlikely you'll be spending thousands .

However, the study has found that a rough approximate date that people spend on one date is about £106.06!

But this isn't just the cost of say, dinner and drinks for example, as a huge chunk of that sum comes down to the preparation for the date.

Women especially are prone to sending some money on something new to wear or getting a beauty treatment of some sort done in preparation for a date, while men also may invest in a new shirt or some form of grooming.

This costs an average of £60.45 - all before the main event!

When on the date, an average of £45.61 is spent on things such as dining out and/or entertainment.

The study also revealed that daters spend up to 55 minutes getting ready for a date – and a proportion of that time is spent snooping the potential suitor online and checking out the security of the location.

Shockingly, men tend to spend MORE on getting ready for the date, £74.07 compared to women spending £53.14.

This is down to men typically footing the bill for tickets somewhere for both parties, or investing in a new top or trousers.

When it comes to women, their money usually goes towards a new perfume, top and skirt, said the study.

And when breaking down the bill when actually on the date, when split per gender, men spend nearly double what women do - around £62.59 on average, with women only spending £36.60.

This is probably quite expected, as 'traditional' attitudes towards dating are still very much existent in modern dating, with men admitting they offer to splurge on the date as they don't want to seem cheap.

But when they looked into it, cheaper and free dates actually came out on top in terms of overall enjoyment, with almost nine in 10 adults surveyed by OnePoll agreed chemistry and conversation are far more important than the cost of a date.

Shannon Smith, a dating and relationship expert at Plenty of Fish, commented: "While we can feel under pressure to sweep new love interests off their feet with lavish date ideas, it’s clear from our research that some of the simplest and cheapest activities can be the ones we enjoy the most."