Money is not spent lightly in our household. Both the Mister and I are debt averse and feel something is amiss if we are not actively saving, whether on a grad. student or consultant income or something in between. I feel blessed to a have a partner with similar savings attitudes, and lottery-winning-lucky to have one who shares my splurging priorities as well as my savings priorities.
We splurge on travel, food, and sparkling wine.
Last night we dined at Cafe Cimino, a fabulous New American Cuisine/Italian restaurant in a small town that appears as dead as ours in central West Virginia. We'd been planning this meal for a while (it was a Christmas present/Valentine's meal) and thoughts of gorgonzola and roasted fennel kept me going through a gray day of grading. The waiter brought the wine list before the menus and seemed surprised when we insisted on deciding what we were going to eat before we decided on the wine.
Which, as it happens, was foolish, because we knew we were going to end up drinking sparkling wine. I ordered filet mignon with gorgonzola spinach, the Mister had a salmon/asparagus/goat cheese special. We shared the entrees as we always do. We feasted on a fabulous anti pasta platter beforehand. And we enjoyed it all with a bottle of Roger Pouillon et Fils Brut Rose Champagne. The wine was considerably more colored (and less pink-- more the rusty shade of an older pinot noir) than most champagnes we've had. Very dry. Very winey and very good. Worked with oily olives, salmon and steak, which is a tough combination.
I know that fabulous bottles of true champange don't come cheaply. But they make us happy. Someday we'll have maxed out a huge diamond engagement ring worth of great meals and champagne and I'll need to come up with another excuse (all the money we've saved by not having two cars is already going into the summer travel fund), but in the meantime, I'll look at my plain gold band engagement ring (which is what I asked for) and feel fortunate to be with someone who knows where sparkling really counts.
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That sounds like a lovely evening indeed. Vlad and I are contemplating whether to try and go out somewhere fancy for our upcoming anniversary... trouble is, on any given day I may or may not feel nauseous at the merest whiff of food-smells, and of course I can't indulge in wine.
I agree it's good to keep one's sparkly priorities straight. I'm happy to have it both ways - a sparkly engagement ring which I admittedly don't wear all that often, and a plain white gold wedding band that I never take off. I had to insist on the plain wedding band, and I'm glad I did!
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