Money Matters
AprilZ81
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Gift giving for spouses.
@hoffse reminded me of something I wanted to get feedback on.
Our 2nd anniversary is on Monday (January 25th, exactly one month after Christmas), then my birthday is on Feb 8th, and Valentine's Day follows right after that.
When we set a date for our wedding I told DH that we didn't need to "celebrate" all of those events with big gifts and spending a lot of money since those four events all happen in under two months.
Last year we went on vacation for our anniversary and didn't do anything but exchange cards and go to a nice restaurant (nicer than what we normally go to but dinner and drinks was still less than $100). This year we are going to a hockey game and going out to dinner but I told DH that we really don't need to exchange gifts since we are going on vacation again in a few weeks and spent more than we normally do at Christmas.
I'm also not a fan of Valentine's day...
Am I being a total buzzkill? I'm not a super romantic person but making a big to-do out of our wedding anniversary seems a little silly until it is a "milestone" like 5, 10, 15 years. I might feel a little different if it didn't fall so close to Christmas and I'm usually out of gift ideas after his birthday in September and Christmas.
Formerly AprilH81
Re: Gift giving for spouses.
I don't think you're being a buzzkill either. Our anniversary is 3 days after my birthday. We actually like to plan our annual trips around our anniversary (although not this year) and that's what we consider our anniversary gift to each other. Oftentimes we have been on a trip over my birthday, so we'll use that night to go out to a nice dinner, or H might get me a little souvenir or a massage. If we're not traveling around that time, such as this year, we usually do dinner but not gifts.
We sometimes go to dinner for Valentine's day, but H has never been a fan of the holiday so we don't really celebrate it much, which is fine by me. Last year we went on a snowshoeing/food tasting adventure for Valentine's Day. It was a fundraiser for a local nonprofit, and it was super fun and way better than dinner and chocolates
Not celebrating Valentine's Day isn't a big deal to me. It's too commercialized, restaurants are too busy, so honestly I would rather go out another night if we were going to do a nice restaurant. This year it will be under 2 weeks after baby, so absolutely no Valentine's Day this year.
Next year for our 10th we would love to go on a special vacation!
This year we did an Escape room for my bday and went to a playable arcade museum for my H. For Valentines and New Year we make surf and turf meals at home.
Phew! It's so funny how birthdays tend to cluster in families.
The "it's a trick" thing is so frustrating! Drives me bonkers. Even this year, with a big trip and TTC on the horizon (i.e. many great reasons not to spend money) H brought this up when I suggested skipping Christmas gifts.
We put effort into finding nice cards and we use our anniversary as an excuse to splurge on a nice dinner out.
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We do exchange gifts on birthdays and Christmas, but how much we spend depends on the year/circumstances. We don't usually do much more than cards for Valentine's day, however this year H's client has February 15th off for President's day and I'm thinking it would be nice to take a little getaway somewhere. We both could use it.
I'm so glad I read this thread! My H and I don't really do gifts for anything anymore and I sometimes feel guilty about that. Now I see it isn't that unusual.
It really comes down to we just have too much stuff and don't want more. For birthdays and our anniversary, we leave it to going out for a fancy dinner.
Now we do buy each other little, surprise things fairly often. Just if we see something we know the other will like. My H occasionally brings me home flowers. Sometimes for special occasions, but sometimes "just because".
For V-day, our tradition is to go to a place like Whole Foods that has nicer "take it and go" type of meals, and then cook those up at home for a "restaurant like" meal without going out. It actually stems back to our very first V-day. We had only been dating for about 6 weeks at the time and my H asked me (ahead of time) if I minded if he cooked me a homemade meal instead of our going out to a restaurant. He made the argument that restaurants are crowded on that night, which makes the staff more grumpy and the food more likely to be worse than normal. I thought that sounded great.
Now the funny story. At the time, he lived in a "mother-in-law" cottage behind someone's big house. And there was a super awesome pool and patio area. So I arrive and he seats me at the patio table...already complete with lit candles and a stargazer lilies centerpiece. He comes back out with fancy looking appetizers and these perfectly plated and gorgeous looking meals of what he tells me is "Tequila Lime Chicken". Unfortunately for my H, I sometimes have a steel trap memory. I remembered that, about two weeks earlier, he had mentioned how much he loved the Tequila Lime Chicken at Whole Foods.
I gave him a big, knowing smile and said, "Thanks! It looks yummy! But did you get this at Whole Foods?" He laughed and sheepishly said, "Yeah."
I don't think you're a buzz kill! H and I have a really hard time buying gifts for each other because for the most part we just buy the things we want and need.
For birthdays we usually go away to the beach, his mom has a condo that we get to use for free. Our birthdays are 4 days apart so it works well.
Valentines Day we use as an excuse to get hibachi! Somehow this tradition started years ago in high school and we've just kind of kept it up. But usually we only do small gifts, like I buy him reese hearts because he loves holiday reeses.
Christmas we pretty much always buy each other something, but usually it's $100 or less.
And Easter I usually try to make him a (very) small Easter basket so he doesn't feel left out when the dog gets one... Let's be honest, she's the most spoiled in our house.
And I mentioned before I have no idea what we did for our 1st anniversary, but we'll probably just go out to eat. Maybe take a trip for the big ones.