25 Free or Frugal Ways to Say I Love You

With Valentine’s Day upon us, many of us are trying to figure out how to tell the people that we love exactly how special they are. Some folks are going to go all out with Valentine’s tricks such as hiring a plane to write “I Love You” in the sky or purchasing an “I Love You” advertising campaign in their neighborhoods. Those of us who are frugal know that you don’t have to spend those kind of big bucks to say “I love you” to the people in your life. But what can you do to say I love you in a special kind of way?

Here’s a look at twenty-five free or frugal ways to say “I love you” to someone special this Valentine’s Day:

1. Wake your lover up with a whispered “I love you”. If you live with (or spend the night with) the person that you love then this is a great way to start the day with a free “I love you”. It’s even better when followed up with breakfast in bed!
2. Write a love letter. This is a classic Valentine’s gift and yet one that all too often gets overlooked by everyone. Don’t underestimate the weight of your own words. Write a love letter to express how you feel without spending a dime.
3. Bake a large heart-shaped cookie and decorate it with icing. Write “I love you” or some other loving message on a full-sheet cookie. It’s a sweet treat that doesn’t cost much money but it makes a big mushy impact on the recipient of the gift.
4. Sing a love song to your sweetheart. You can write your own or sing an old favorite. You can sing it as you shower together or record it to be listened to again and again. However you choose to do this, the action will make your sweetie’s heart sing.
5. Head to a local photo booth. Take those four silly pictures with someone that you love. In the last frame, lean into that person’s ear and whisper, “I love you”. The loving look on your faces will forever be capture in those fun photos.
6. Spell it out on the refrigerator. Get those poetry magnets or even just get kids’ alphabet magnets and put “I love you” on the fridge. Those magnets will stick to cars as well if you want to get really bold.
7. Stick love notes in places where your partner will find them all day long. Simple messages of “I love you” can be stuck in glove compartment boxes, jeans pockets and refrigerator drawers to be found throughout the day by the person that you want to feel loved by you.
8. Call your sweetheart at an unexpected time just to say “I love you”. Your spouse has just left the house and doesn’t expect to hear from you until after work. Call five minutes later and say, “I just wanted you to know that I was thinking about you and that I really, really love you”.
9. Recite a love poem for someone. Take the time to create a special space for your presentation. Make a comfortable seat and surround it with candles. Perhaps pour a glass of wine. Then stand in front of your partner or sit next to him/her. Hold hands and recite a love poem – either one that you’ve written or one that you’ve located that says exactly what you want to say.
10. Say it with a greeting card. Take the time to pick out a Valentine’s card that really expresses those emotions that you have trouble saying yourself. When chosen correctly, greeting cards can really make a touching statement.
11. Write it on a flower. Purchase a single flower with large petals (daisies are a good choice). Get a marker and delicately write “I love you” on each petal. Let the person you’re giving this to know that there is never an “I love you not” when it comes to him or her. Alternatively, spell out “I love you” or create a heart using the flower petals from roses.
12. Use candy to find the right words. Those Valentine’s hearts with the sweet messages on them can be used to say exactly what you want to say. Get a big bag and pick out the ones that send the message that you want to send. Line them up in a row on a countertop or desk where the person you love will be sure to see them.
13. Use fruit to spell it out. If candy isn’t quite your thing, then perhaps you can go the healthy route that’s just as sweet. Take grapes or cherries or even nuts and spell out “I love you” on the kitchen table. Then take the time to feed these to each other slowly.
14. Put together a small photo album of your favorite pictures of the two of you. Go through the album together and let the person know exactly why it is that you love that particular picture so much.
15. Say exactly what you love about your lover’s body as you slowly massage each body part. By the time you’ve loved his back or her neck, that person is going to love you all the way down to your toes!
16. Have someone else say it for you. Surprise someone by sending a message of love through another appropriate party. Call a secretary or best friend or the dry cleaner and tell them that you’d really appreciate it if they would share with the person that you really love them. Imagine walking in to your dry cleaner and hearing, “your wife just called because she wanted me to tell you that she was thinking about you and really loves you”. What a strange yet sweet surprise!
17. Make art out of it. Whether you’re the kind of person who can get creative with oil paints or you’re just someone who can doodle decently with crayons, you can create an “I love you” picture that packs a punch.
18. Write out love messages on his or her back. Have the person guess what it is that you’re writing.
19. Say it in another language. Is there a country that your sweetheart has always wanted to see? You don’t have to spend a fortune on travel to bring a little bit of that foreign magic into your Valentine’s Day. Make a frugal meal from that country complete with an appropriate wine or cocktail and make sure you’ve learned to say “I love you” in the language of that other place.
20. Write it on a set of balloons. Say “I love you” anyway you want with a marker and a bunch of balloons.
21. Add messages of love to his/her calendar. This is easiest if you two share calendars on a site like Google Calendars but you can enter the message in any online, phone-based or wall calendar that he or she uses. Just enter things like “remember that someone loves you” on the day that you want them to get the message.
22. Come up with a secret way of saying “I love you” that the two of you can use together from now on. Someone once told me that she and her husband say “1-4-3” which is code for the number of letters in each word of “I love you”.
23. Say it with a kiss. Kiss the person that you love, slowly, twenty times in a row. Between each kiss, say a different variation of “I love you” such as “I adore you”, “I am happy with you”, or “I care about you”.
24. Share a memory of your love that you’ve never bothered to mention before. Remember how he had something in his teeth all the way through your first meal together and you didn’t tell him because you were so interested in what he had to say? Remember how she got the cutest look on her face when she tripped and you caught her? Share that memory now.
25. Look deeply into your lover’s eyes and say “I love you” like you mean it. We often toss the “love” word around casually with our partners as we’re heading out the door or hanging up the phone. Take the time to actually say those words out loud, fully and completely, without any distractions to take your minds off of each other. That’s the most powerful way to say “I love you”.

Of course, you’ll probably want to do more for Valentine’s Day than just say “I love you”. Take a look at our article on 25 cheap Valentine’s ideas to figure out what to do with the rest of the day!

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