by Beks
I was watching the news over the weekend and it seems all anyone can focus on is Valentine’s day date ideas. The anchor said, ‘I know we are all planning to spend a couple hundred over the holiday, so let’s talk about ways to save.’
A COUPLE HUNDRED!?!?
What planet are you living on!?!?
Then I realized… a lot of my friends drop a couple hundred on Valentine’s Day between dinners, romantic outings, and flowers. Hubby and I haven’t spent that much since… well… ever.
Is it just me? Or is everyone nuts?!? What will you be spending for today’s festivities?
Beks is a full-time government employee who enjoys blogging late into the night after her four kids have gone to sleep. She’s been married to Chris, her college sweetheart, for 15 years. In 2017, after 3 long years working the Dave Ramsey Baby Steps, they paid off more than $70K and became debt free. When she’s not working or blogging, she’s exploring the great outdoors.
It’s amazing how much people will spend on Valentine’s day gifts. DH and I? I suspect we won’t be spending any money at all, just a quiet dinner at home with the kiddies. It will be a perfect evening.
I have NEVER spent that much!
My significant other and I spend about a hundred dollars each for Valentines Day…but we exchange gifts in lieu of exchanging on Christmas. Christmas gets so expensive with friends and family, but the idea of not getting each other ANYTHING seems so not fun either. We compromised by doing a nice gift for Valentines Day after there’s been a month and a half to recuperate financially from the holidays.
We don’t do Valentine’s Day, it’s a silly way to encourage commercialism, so we won’t be spending anything.
Between the kids Valentine’s cards/candy for classmates and 5 teachers, my parents, my sister’s family, kids and hubby just under 70 dollars. I’m making the majority of gifts.
We will be going to dinner so I expect that to be $45. I spent $6 on the kids, plus $10 on their Valentines and candy for school, and I spent about $5 on hubby. $66 total! The kids will be enjoying a FREE Pizza party at church tonight while we go to dinner.
It’s sad, but I spent more money on things for my students than I did for my husband. I spent about $11.00 on things for activities and valentines for my first graders. I spent however much it is for our groceries to make dinner tonight. We are not big spenders and don’t really do much in the way of celebrating Valentines (at least as far as money is concerned).
We aren’t very romantic. I bought him something that he was going to buy anyways and he bought me something that I want but wouldn’t buy myself. Both items ranged from $40-60. And we are doing our regular Tuesday night potluck at friends. My husband has a bit of a bromance going on…
We’re doing Chinese takeout and linzer cookies from a local German bakery. So maybe $25-$30 total?
We don’t ‘do’ this ‘holiday’ in our family. So we don’t spend anything. 🙂
$13.00 on a box of chocolates for my two children, they get ever so excited about the day.
$10.00 on chocolates for the husband.
That’s it.
Impressed?!!!
I am.
Love your blog by the way, keep up the great work.
Nothing here, but not because I wouldn’t. Husband thinks it’s a made-up, silly “holiday.”
I think your “is everyone nuts” is closer to the mark. 🙂 A healthy, well-made meal at home, and maybe some reminiscing about first date and that sort of thing makes for a meaningful (and inexpensive!) Valentine’s.
A couple HUNDRED?! We hardly buy Christmas gifts, so no on Valentine’s. I bet those people *just* dug themselves out of a Christmas gift hole.
So far I’ve spent $150… On roses for my mom 🙂 I don’t do that every year, but I thought this year it would be a nice surprise for her. And, because the roses are part of a fundraiser some of the money is going to a non-profit.
My boyfriend and I will be celebrting Valentine’s Day this weekend. We haven’t decided what we’re going to do, but it will be low key.
Wow, a couple hundred? Jeez. Boyfriend and I are both essentially broke til payday [this Thurs and Fri, respectively], plus I have class til 10p tonight. Soo we’ll be going to dinner Friday, probably, but certainly not spending a couple hundred bucks, as far as I know.
We never spend that much either. We do an “expensive” meal at home but we do those fairly often anyway (we are making lobster tonight!). I did notice on my facebook that a few people who constantly whine about never having any money and living paycheck to paycheck dropped a ton of money on this holiday (jewelry, chocolates, etc). These same people are the ones that dropped hundreds on Christmas too. Not my problem how they spend their $$$ but I wish they would stop whining about how broke they are.
We had dinner over the weekend that totaled about $115, and my husband surprised me with a gift certificate to get a massage. So I guess we would be in the “hundred” category though probably not in the “hundreds.” 😉
We’re ridiculously frugal in ways that don’t matter, and spend money on what we value. Having a nice dinner to us mattered, obviously. We didn’t use credit cards or anything and have savings galore too.
We put a $10 each limit so that’s what we’re spending. I’m making him Bacon roses ;o) which, for him, are priceless.
Bacon roses?!?!?! That sounds WONDERFUL!!!!! 😀
Usually my wife and I take the approach that our financial goals are more important than what is to us wasting money on flowers, chocolates or unneeded gifts. We prefer to put that money way so we can take a nice vacation together sometime through the year. However, every once in awhile I like to surprise her so I did so this year by having some overprised flowers delivered to her work. I think each couple has to decide for themselves what’s really important. For some it is important to get gifts, for others it’s important to save for common future goals.
I have to say we might be spending closer to that than I thought. This is the first valentines day in 10 years that has been happy, so we may have gone overboard with it. $40 on me $30 on him, $10 on our son, then dinner $40 and some fancy cookies $10.. Wow when I spell it out like that, it really adds up…
My in-laws got my husband and I gift cards to a local restaurant for Christmas, so that’s what we used last night for our dinner. We debated getting a movie from the machine at the gas station, but realized we both have to be up early for work today so we decided to skip the movie. Maybe this weekend…
And we still have enough left on the gift cards for at least 1 more meal, maybe 2 — we did splurge a little last night, since I got a froofy drink instead of water.
I will be buying something for my boyfriend in the neighborhood of $50 (just haven’t had time to shop yet), but 2/14 is actually our anniversary. I honestly could give a crap about v-day.
We had reservations for a nice Italian restaurant we like to go to. Last weekend we had to take the dog to the vet.
Dinner was a new recipe I made at home. Pasta Puttanesca. It turned out nice and it cost very little.
Happy Valentines day!