2nd November 2026 - 6 min read
Dates don’t have to be fancy for the cost to add up over a month. For the people in a recent survey by Legasi Research, a date was usually a meal at a café or a walk around the mall, and it cost somewhere between RM51 and RM200. Even so, 13.2% of the men said they’d borrowed money to pay for dating, compared with fewer than one in 20 women.
The survey asked 152 people, more than half of them in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor, so it doesn’t speak for the whole country. 4 in 10 of the folks questioned were aged 18 to 24, about as many were students, and one in five had no income of their own.
On a first date you want to make a good impression, so you pick the nicer place and offer to pay. 6 in 10 men in the survey did the same, and about as many usually paid for the whole date after that. At four dates a month, RM200 dinners come to RM800 a month and RM9,600 a year.
Many of the people surveyed went out often, too. Almost half of them went on three or more dates a month, and 3 in 4 said they’d spend more to keep a relationship going. This is what a month and a year of dates costs at RM100 and RM200 each.
| Dates A Month | At RM100 A Date | At RM200 A Date |
| 2 | RM200 (RM2,400 a year) | RM400 (RM4,800 a year) |
| 4 | RM400 (RM4,800 a year) | RM800 (RM9,600 a year) |
| 5 | RM500 (RM6,000 a year) | RM1,000 (RM12,000 a year) |
Before deciding how much a date should cost, it helps to know how much you can spend on fun. The 50/30/20 rule splits your take-home pay into half for needs, 30% for wants, and 20% for savings. Dates sit in wants, along with streaming subscriptions and teh tarik with friends.
On a RM3,000 salary, take-home pay is RM2,649 after EPF, SOCSO, and EIS, so your wants budget is RM795 a month. Four RM200 dates add up to RM800, more than that whole budget. When the survey asked what a date should cost, the most common answer was RM50 to RM100. At RM100 a date, four dates cost RM400 and leave you RM395 for your other wants.
If you’re living on an allowance or a part-time job, the same idea works with a smaller amount. On a RM600 allowance, setting aside RM150 covers one RM100 date and a cheap supper. Move your dating money into a separate e-wallet or savings account when the money comes in, and pay for dates only from there.
It also helps to talk about money with the person you’re seeing, especially if one of you always pays. Taking turns was the most common arrangement in the survey, and very few people split the bill down the middle.
Buy now, pay later (BNPL) lets you pay for a meal or a movie in instalments. Each instalment feels small, so it’s easy to have several running across different apps and lose track of the total.
Three-payment plans are usually interest-free, but longer plans usually charge interest. In August 2025, the Finance Ministry said most providers charged 1.5% a month, or 18% a year.
If you miss a payment, you’ll usually pay a late charge on top of the instalment. As of July 2026, Atome charges up to RM23 for each one, plus RM7 in some cases. Missed payments can also show up on your credit record. Ryt PayLater already reports them to CCRIS, and other providers will start reporting to credit reporting agencies such as CTOS in stages.
Some of this will change from December 2026, when new rules from the Consumer Credit Commission apply in full. Providers will have to check that you can afford the repayments before giving you a limit above RM1,000, and late charges will only be allowed to cover their real cost of collecting. Miss two payments in a row and you can’t buy anything new on that account until you’ve paid what’s overdue and the late charges.
Putting dates on a credit card doesn’t cost extra as long as you clear the full bill by the due date. Any amount you carry over to the next month is charged interest of up to 18% a year, even though the bank only asks you to pay a minimum of 5% of what you owe or RM50, whichever is higher.
Three months of dates at RM800 a month adds up to RM2,400. The table shows how long that takes to clear at 18% a year, with nothing new added to the card.
| Monthly Payment | Time To Clear | Interest Paid | |
| Minimum only (5% or RM50) | 48 months | RM785 | |
| Fixed RM200 | 14 months | RM266 |
If you pay only the minimum, those three months of dates cost RM3,185 and take four years to clear. The table uses 18% throughout, but if you pay at least the minimum on time for 12 months in a row, your rate drops to no more than 15%. A missed payment stays on your CCRIS report for up to 12 months, and banks check it when you apply for a car loan or a home loan.
If you’re getting your first card, look for a basic credit card. These were introduced in Budget 2027 and charge no more than 14% a year.
Our own RinggitPlus Malaysian Financial Literacy Survey (RMFLS) 2026 found that more than one in four people aged 25 to 34 had put off or decided against marriage, a wedding, or a first child in the past five years because of money. Card debt from dates in your early twenties can still be on your statement four years later, right when you start saving for a wedding or a house deposit.
If a date would mean borrowing, pick a cheaper one or wait until payday. Anyone who likes you will still turn up for a mamak supper. If you already have BNPL or card balances from dating, pay off the one with the highest interest first and stop adding to it until it’s cleared.
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Christina writes about personal finance with an eye for making the complicated feel straightforward. She is drawn to the everyday money decisions people face and genuinely enjoys finding the clearest way to explain them. Between articles, she is probably napping, on a hiking trail, or terrorising her sister’s cats.
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