We were driving back from a friend’s house on Valentine’s day.
Littered on both sides of the road were flower stores obviously doing a roaring trade.
I turned to my wife and said “maybe I should stop and buy you some flowers?”
She replied, “Why do I need you to spend money to tell me what I already know, which is, you love me!”
I thought this was pretty interesting.
When these types of days roll around, such as birthdays, anniversaries or Christmas, we use it as an opportunity to show our love and commitment to each other based on the level of money we spend.
This can be an incredibly dangerous trap to fall into.
Afterall, who determines the amount of money we spend and how this correlates to our levels of love for a specific person?
In my travels I see a lot of this. Often hearing, “If I had money I wouldn’t have these problems. I would be able to buy what I want, for whom, when I want to buy it”.
So after 16 years of doing this job, one thing is pretty clear. The more people earn, the more assets they have, the more debt they carry, the more challenges they ultimately have.
The above type of thinking is a fallacy.
It’s all the same – people still have problems.
You see, no matter what money an individual has, we all go through exactly the same emotional roller coaster.
To illustrate this, I had some clients come in and see me once. In the scheme of things, they weren’t the most affluent people around, being at the lower end of the spectrum in terms of earnings.
Regardless, these were the richest people I had ever met. The reason why? They could “say” and “do” things just by a simple action. Not spending a truck load of money. Just being really thoughtful.
So to answer the question of “how much should you spend on our partner when buying gifts” it is a simple one.
Challenge the paradigm.
The value of the gift is not the value of the money. It is the value of the thought that went behind it.
Think about this next time you are buying for a loved one.
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