Money Wise Mom

It’s my anniversary today. My husband and I have been married 27 fun filled years. We have known each other for 32 years, which is wild to think about! Even more wild is how much I love my guy. Yup, we’re one of those gross couples who are still madly into each other and I see zero signs of that petering out any time soon.

I am a big believer in celebrating milestones. What I struggle with, sometimes, is deciding the best way to mark certain occasions.

The main issue is that, culturally, North Americans are not that creative. The norms for a celebration are typically food (going out to eat), drinks (ordering an expensive bottle of wine), and sometimes gifts (flowers, gold watches, etc.).

Diminishing Returns

When we were first married, we were crazy poor. Like, we slept on a twin mattress together poor. For, like, a year. So, it goes without saying, that celebrating every early milestone by eating out felt luxurious. For the first five years of our marriage, a milestone moment was probably the only time we sat down in a restaurant to eat. The only exception I can think of was our honeymoon where we lived it up and went out to eat nightly!

But after six or seven times around the sun, our mentalities started to shift. It was around this time that I graduated university, we started to earn double income, and I got my first career related job that was not in the service industry.

Suddenly we had choices. I don’t think we felt like we had money to burn, but we definitely could decide to eat out more, if we wanted to.

The funny thing is, though, that, by this time, we were used to cooking meals at home. All our meals, including bagged lunches for school and work.

With all that practice, we got pretty good at cooking. We learned how to make a steak better than the Keg. We learned how to make seriously delicious pizza. We learned how to make a melt in your mouth roast with Yorkshire pudding. We learned to make a Caesar salad exactly how my husband likes it.

We also were conscious of how much our time was worth. We were both still early in our careers, so while we had lifted ourselves above the poverty line, we were definitely not drowning in cash. We knew how many hours of work it took to buy something, including a sit down meal at a restaurant.

As time unfolded, we just didn’t enjoy going out to eat as much. We found we were paying a chunk of money for an experience that was kinda meh for food that was also kinda meh.

It was around this time that we finally looked at each other and admitted that we didn’t really want to go out to eat.

Finding the Fun

And so a new tradition was born. During this phase of our lives we had two young kids and both of us were working full time. Life was pretty exhausting. It meant that time together had become our most precious resource.

So, for many years, our new go to plan became Xbox and chill. Our game of choice? Dynasty Warriors

And so, for years, our go to anniversary fun was playing this game for hours upon hours. If a new version was out, we would “splurge” on the latest copy. We might order in something or make something and likely we would grab a bottle of sparkling wine.

Keeping Tradition Alive

I am a bit of a romantic and for my anniversary I have very much enjoyed giving my husband a “traditional” anniversary gift. I find it a little bit of a fun creative adventure to make or find a gift that he will enjoy made from the traditional material associated with that year. For our first anniversary, I wrote out our wedding vows on fancy hand made paper. For our 7th anniversary, I gifted him a Razer Copperhead computer mouse. For our 25th, I gifted him silver cuff links with the Cameron insignia on them.

I confess that I don’t remember my gift from every year and I’m sure he doesn’t remember them either. For our 25th, I know we will cherish the big party we threw with our friends and the his & her tattoos that we designed for ourselves far more than some shirt jewellery that now sits in a box on his end table. Still, no regrets, because for me the act of giving a “creative” gift is fun.

You might be surprised to know that my husband rarely gets me an anniversary gift. I think perhaps it may have happened for first year, but I really couldn’t say for sure. And that’s totally fine by me. A gift is not expected or necessary. I don’t want flowers or mindless stuff. While I enjoy thinking of creative gifts to give, he does not. For him, I think having to give a gift under pressure of a date on a calendar is the polar opposite to joy. So, for us, it’s not a big part of how we choose to celebrate.

Evolution

Over the years we’ve built our own traditions. Most importantly, we have evolved our traditions as we’ve evolved as people.

We gave ourselves permission to be more intentional with how we spend our time and money while celebrating being together.

So tell me, how do you celebrate your milestones?