Marital financial bliss? part 1..

I wonder if we shouldn't have our own money sometimes. I feel weird buying gifts and stuff out of the community pot. But we don't do anniversaries or Christmas really. We do pseudo birthdays though. JW a blogger asked what frugal idea for his anniversary, and it turns out he did a free super romantic day here. He wrote a love letter, made dinner, walked in the park, and slow danced, wowsa!

So what do we do? Nothing we stay at home, talk, eat, and sometimes buy a gift, the last being DH's tickets to a hockey game. Now for valentine's day we didn't really go anywhere or do anything special. And my birthday is coming up but I'm not sure what we should do. To be honest I love jewelry, but I don't think we can afford it, so that's a no brainer.

And last year I got a dog, which is the gift that keeps consuming. But we usually try to not buy each other gifts and instead just discuss purchases that are fun throughout the year and budget for it.

To us the gift giving is too much pressure, and we feel like we have a lot of luxuries in our lives. Which is really true because we don't have kids. So we can indulge in the Nintendo Wii, go away for a weekend, go snowboarding, etc. So I can't really complain that we don't have fun.

But for us we spend too time and effort trying to get the right gift for the right occasion instead of with each other. This way we just sort of flow our gifts to the opportunity that knocks. Like the hockey tickets, I called it DH's b-day gift/v-day gift because it was so expensive. I wouldn't have done it if someone he works with didn't have a season ticket and offered it to him at the same price to go with him. Will he ever go again? I don't know, but an opportunity presented itself.

So after reading JW's wonderful day, I wonder if we're being really cheap about our relationship? If we should put more effort into celebrating our days? Or is that only for people with kids and us DINKS we have too much free time anyway to always be together. That spending time or money for a special day is not necessary?

Next part is about joint checking...