On Monday M and I celebrated our three-year anniversary—three years ago to the day we met at a bar and started to get to know each other. In May we’ll be getting married and we’ll start celebrating that anniversary so I wanted to do something special this year (as I try to do every year). Last week I wrote about Valentine’s Day and this week I wrote about what I’ve learned about money during special holidays. Well, on Monday I applied everything I wrote about after almost taking the lazy way out.

Originally, I went the lazy route and threw some money at the problem. I know M loves her massages so I booked her a massage at a nice place near her work and figured that was that. It was going to cost around $100 and I knew she would enjoy it. But something didn’t feel right—it wasn’t something we would do together. So I looked into a couples massage but that was way over my head, especially with the month I was having.

Luckily, this was on Thursday and the day after I felt some serious buyer’s remorse. Why? Because I knew I had put no effort into it and wasn’t even going to be with M during her massage—so it wasn’t even something we were going to do together. So on Friday I canceled the massage and put my plan into action. As luck would have it, Monday was President’s Day, which I now have off, so I had the time to get everything ready while M was at work.

Here’s what I did: I went out and bought some wine, a whole bunch of rose petals, tons of little tea candles, a bottle of champagne, and some fruit to dip into this fondue chocolate that we already had. Then I ordered some sushi so when she came home we could eat right away. The bedroom had rose petals and candles, the dining/living room had some more candles, and so did the bathtub (she loves her baths). So I pimped out our place and made it look really cool with all the candles and everything.

When she came home I asked her to put on a blindfold before she came in (the surprise factor is key). I walked her in, sat her down, and removed the blindfold—it was the beginning of one of the most relaxing/fun nights we’ve ever had.

All that for around $80—than what I was going to spend the lazy way. 

A lot of times us bloggers give out advice and forget to follow it (most of us are human), so it’s always a good feeling when we catch ourselves before it’s too late and follow what we write. It’s funny because I just wrote about this a few days before and now I’m following it, so that goes to show you the power of writing.

Do you have any similar stories where the lazy way was actually the more expensive way?

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