$55 prize for your best under $50 Valentine's Day gift ideas

Four days until Valentine's Day, so help me help out the people with bigger hearts than wallets. Today and tomorrow send me your best  suggestions for Valentine's Day gifts under $50. Get creative. No flowers, candy or blanket-on-the-floor matinee here. Get your imaginations working; you've only got a week to make him or her feel like a million bucks on a shoestring budget.

As a bonus, I'm giving away a promo code worth $55, courtesy of my partner CSN Stores. Best answer gets the prize, which you can use toward anything at CSN, which has more than 200 online shops where you can find everything from stylish handbags, a L shaped desk, or great cookware!

Best idea gets the prize, so be creative. I'm taking as many ideas as you want to send me either here or on Twitter, so send a bunch. It is Valentine's Day, and grown folk do like to get all happy time with theirs. If your idea's all hot & steamy, that's fine by me, but let's not get too explicit. Suggestive's cool, x-rated ain't.

Fighting Sprint, and winning

I'm not big on complaining except when I'm not getting what I paid for. Then I think it's an obligation. So two days ago when I stopped getting data on my BlackBerry, I was pissed.

I'm perpetually pissed about my cell phone service anyway because I think service providers like mobile companies, cable companies and the like are the devil. Their business is based on getting "incremental revenue" from each customer -- code language for how much they can pad their margins by charging you more while giving you less. It's why the cable company snatches away two or three channels a year while raising your bill and why those phony "fees" are tacked on to your cell bill every month.

So I called Sprint to complain about my data. They told me to remove the battery and reset the phone but I asked them to review my bill anyway. I rarely get an actual bill from Sprint, but they always hit me with a late fee and have even turned off my service for a day. What I found was an overly-inflated bill with all kinds of extra charges. The worst was an $18 "activation fee" charged to me when I upgraded my phone last month.

Paying a charge to "activate" a line that's already been active since 2008, on a phone that I've already paid for? Absolutely not. After making it clear that I was very unhappy with that position, I got some action: the fee was removed. But it makes me think twice about upgrading my phone again in a year or so: will they try tacking on the same fee?

And on top of that, there are the myriad other fees they tack on for no good reason:
-- a "spending limit program charge" of $4.99
--a late fee of $4.46 (this was another month when no bill came)
--"Sprint surcharges" of $5.64
-- "Government fees and taxes" of $9.66.

If you're adding, that's an extra $24.75 tacked onto my bill. Talk about "incremental revenue". I wouldn't be surprised if cell phone companies were the next in line for a bailout.

But in any event, I did win a minor victory in getting the $18 activation-for-a-line-that-was-already-activated fee removed. And the lesson I learned is one that applies to everyone: complaining is worth is when you're not getting what you paid for.

image: Gregory Szarkiewicz/freedigitalphotos.net

Is saving most of my pay realistic?

Q: I had a few people tell me they save money by taking out a certain amount of cash a week & then putting the rest in savings. Is it realistic? Can you really save that way?
A: I say all the time that what works for one person's money won't necessarily make sense for another, and this is a clear example. This may be entirely realistic for one person and completely irrational for another person to try. Without knowing the specifics of those people's financial situations, I can't say.

My best educated guess is that arrangement would be ideal for someone who had little to no debt and very low living expenses compared with their income. For example, a working student who lived at home with parents should be able to live on a small amount of cash and put away the rest. Working people who live in houses they own with no mortgage or consumer debt should be in a similar position.

So the real question, in my mind, is about how low your expenses are. If your expenses are far lower than your income, you should be able to live on a small amount of cash and save the rest. Hope this helps.

photo: Simon Howden/freedigitalphotos.net

Frugal Valentine's Day Tip #3: Give her rocks

My boy Sean married his until-then girlfriend Paaras last year. I gotta say, the homie chose well. Paaras is smart. She's gorgeous. She cooks, even for me when I come to town (can't wait till next week). I've never seen her complain or disrespect him and even though we got drunk together on a few occasions when he needed to escape her wrath (sorry for outing you, kid) he knew and I knew that he was happier to go home to her than I was to go home alone.

Sean cherishes Paaras and she him, so whatever advice he has to give on a great Valentine's gift for the wife is worth blogging about. So what's his suggestion? Get her rocks.

No, not shiny, mined somewhere in South Africa and marked up a zillion percent at retail rocks. Polished rocks. Check it out:

I got Paaras some polished rocks. Wrote past special moments & provided extra rocks to add new memories.

And how'd she like it?

I still get excited to add more things to the rocks! Love it love it! Sean is the best!

So just how frugal were the rocks? Sean says he bought the rocks at Michael's, but any craft store will do. They cost about $15. The silver pen he wrote their fondest memories on was $4, so total for the basics: $19.

He did go the extra mile though: he paid $60 for a special dish from Tiffany's to display the rocks in; it came wrapped in blue paper. Adding that would bring the total cost to close to $80, still relatively frugal but far from $19. That said, I'm sure a completely appropriate dish or other accoutrement could be had for much less and I'm guessing Paaras cares way more for the rocks and the memories they represent than the Tiffany dish.

Image: Suat Eman/freedigitalimages.net

Frugal Valentine's Day Tip #2: Strawberry Letters

One of the best gifts I ever got was a card. It was hidden under my pillow early in the morning, with the bed made over top of it so that I wouldn't find it until I got home from work and was ready to go back to sleep. I can't remember what it said word for word, but I remember the best parts: "I've never been more proud of you...I'll always love you."

Of course, the card outlasted the relationship, but it was enough to keep me smiling until I fell asleep that night and that I sat it on my desk the following day so I could read it if I was having a rough day.

Words go a long way -- even further when they're supported by action -- and they don't cost anything but the sentiment behind them.

When's the last time you wrote a letter? Not an email or extra long instant messaging conversation, but an actual, pen-to-paper letter? If it's been a while, go out today and spend a couple bucks on some decent paper, grab a pen that writes smoothly and some colorful envelopes. Spend 15 minutes a day for the next few days hand-writing your thoughts to the boo, the misses, the beloved or whatever you call your Valentine. Then seal the letters and hide them in fairly obvious places come Valentine's Day.

It'll be a worthwhile surprise that will outlast flowers, candy or an expensive dinner, and it'll help you keep more of your hard-earned cash in your pocket.

Image: Simon Howden/freedigitalphotos.net

Frugal Valentine's Day Tip #1: Time is free

Valentine's Day is six days from now. Since I'm booless in 2010, I get to keep all my cash in my pocket. But for those of you with obligations, this week's posts are for lovers, particularly lovers on a budget.

I asked my Twitter followers (follow me at www.twitter.com/k_dot_re) over the weekend for their best frugal Valentine's Day suggestions, so I'm going to post at least one a day between now and Friday, with a roundup on Friday.

Here's the first one, from @adriennewrites:

The best vdays gift is time.Flowers at work are nice, but a walk together or free ice skating is better. all women want, really, is time. Not sex always, but time. Not sure what men want for Valentines Day.

So pay attention fellas. If the wallet is slim, just plan to spend a day, or a weekend together. Gather up some movies (you don't even have to pay to rent them. If your local library's like mine, you can get the latest, sappy chic flicks for nothing), and lay a blanket on the floor. Or take her suggestion and go ice skating, which should be easy since half the country is frozen this week anyway. If you can't ice skate, don't trip: if you've got a good one who appreciates you spending the time, she'll pick you up and dust you off. Or take you to the hospital if you break something.

(If you fall and she does neither, she's no good and you should be happy you didn't spend anything on the date to begin with.)

That said, @adriennewrites does have a caveat for her frugal suggestion:

I'll never turn down dinner at a fab restaurant where i get to wear a freakum dress.

Fair enough, so long as you realize that that statement answers your question about what men want for Valentine's Day: we want what comes after the fab dinner when you're wearing the freakum dress.

Bank overdraft fees lead to lawsuit

Do you get hit with high overdraft fees from your bank? Sick of it?

In most instances, I'd say that should make you pay more attention to how much you're spending. But what if your bank was charging you with fees even if you had enough money to cover your expenses? That's what one woman who is suing her bank, Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati, is claiming. (Fifth Third sued over overdraft policies).

Since the suit was just filed, it'll be a while before we know how the court comes down on this, but I suspect many people feel vindicated just because of the lawsuit itself? How many times have you felt screwed by a bank with no recourse? I know I certainly have.

A few years ago I got a fat check for some freelance work and deposited into my checking account at an ATM machine. This was normal and I'd never had a problem doing so. A few days later, I wrote checks to cover some bills, and I'll be damned, they all bounced. Why? Because the bank never credited my account with the amount I deposited. A bank representative told me on the phone that that was because they didn't recognize my signature on the back of the check (as if someone working there KNEW exactly what my signature looked like, and never mind the fact that the name and address on the check matched the name and address on my bank account).

It took a few days and I finally got the issue resolved, but for about a week, my bills were unpaid, I had no access to my own cash and I'd been hit with more than $100 in overdraft fees. All of this happened after I deposited a check into my own account for more than double the amount of bills Id written checks to pay.

Needless to say, I switched banks. So I'm curious: what are some of your bank fee horror stories? Unfair overdrafts? Onerous ATM fees? What does your bank do that you hate?

Posted using ShareThis

Track expenses daily to keep the budget in line

Last Friday was the final Friday of January and you know what that means: payday. Like I always do on payday, I woke up and texted my bank for a balance just to make sure I wasn't fired two weeks ago and hadn't been told. The good news is I still have a job. The bad news was that I had a balance in my checking account that was short of what it should have been after payday.

Fortunately, I'm not in a position where that means I can't make the rent. But it does mean I spent over my budget between this pay and the last and in fact, I've probably been less disciplined about my spending for a few months.

So this month I'm going back to the drawing board with an exercise I haven't done in a few years: keeping a running tally of all my spending for 30 days. This is something I think everyone should do at least once every couple years, or when you make a significant change to your budget. It's easy to make a budget by estimating fixed expenses like the rent, light bill, cable and car insurance. But seeing everything you spend on paper, including small things like the junk food you bought at lunchtime, shows you how much money you're really spending and more importantly, where you're wasting some money.

This past weekend, I spent about $220 that wasn't in the budget, for example. While that money came out of disposable cash that isn't set aside for any particular purpose, spending like that on a regular basis without tracking it can wreck a budget.

So if you're not tracking your expenses, you should try it. Get small notebook and keep it with you every day for a month. Every time you spend money, on anything, write down the item, the date and the exact cost. Add it up at the end of the month and find out how much you're really spending.

Q&A: Leasing vs. Buying Cars

Q: Car lease vs own, what's your advice?

A: Personally, I'd buy a used car, preferably with cash but definitely with a significant downpayment.

I understand why leases are attractive: the choice of switching to a different vehicle every few years or to hang on to the one you have seems like a good one. But that's the thing: switching cars every couple years means locking yourself into a perpetual car payment, unless you have enough cash to pay the entire lease up front. Of course in that case, it's easy to argue that you could also afford to buy a used car outright.

If you decide to keep the car at the end of the lease, you're voiding another one of the advantages of leasing, which is that you don't take the hit on the car's depreciation. If you give the car back, the dealership takes that hit and makes up for it by selling the car to someone else. But if you keep it, you own the depreciated asset and continue paying on it until you've bought the car fully.

Again, this is not to say that there aren't some circumstances where leases make sense; this is just my opinion on why buying a decent, used car with cash if you can afford it, makes more sense.

photo: Susie B./freedigitalphotos

Avoid these top tax mistakes

Last week I wrote about the unexpected $5,600 tax bill that's my 2010 debt burden. I did that to myself but you can avoid my mistake, and the top five mistakes that cost taxpayers each year, according to Michael Ellis, a certified public accountant and the new resident tax expert here on the Money Corner. I asked Mike to give you some tips since tax time is here.

Underpaying your taxes

As an employee:

1.) Underpaying taxes or under withholding taxes. Whether you're self-employed or an employee, your taxes are due throughout the year to the IRS and your own state. The IRS requires that taxes be paid as taxable income is earned, which is why instead of receiving your actual “gross” salary, taxpayers you get your “net", which is the amount you are entitled after state and federal taxes are withheld every pay period.

However, the amount of taxes withheld is determined by you when you fill out the W-4 with your employer. Claim too many allowances and you may underpay your taxes and find that you owe a significant amount more -- including penalties and interest for underpaying your taxes. The easiest way to fix this pitfall is to pay close attention to your W-4 when you fill it out and reassess your allowances every year to account for changes in your tax situation.

As a self employed taxpayer:

2.) If you're self-employed, you are responsible for making your own tax payments. The simplest way to do this is to make quarterly estimated tax payments to the IRS and state. Estimate your tax liability for the year based on either previous year's earnings or current year known taxable income and write quarterly checks to US Treasury and your state's revenue department. This is done with a voucher issued by IRS (1040-ES) and most state tax agencies. You may also make your payments online.

Failure to make these deposits usually results in substantial underpayment of taxes and subsequent penalties and interest. You will find yourself in a constant uphill battle to bring your tax payments up to date as you will probably still be earning taxable income as you try to catch up. The key to avoiding this issue is withholding at least 25% of every self employed check your receive in a separate account to use for paying your taxes. In some situations you may need to withhold up to 40% of your self employed income depending on your deductions and amount of income.

Missed deductions:

As a self-employed taxpayer:

3.) When self-employed, you are responsible for keeping your own records and receipts for business deductions that directly and indirectly relate to your business activity. Keep three things in mind when trying to determine what's deductible: Is the expense “ordinary” and “necessary” for your business to operate and is the expense “reasonable” in amount?

Use this criteria to be sure your expenses are deductible and you will substantially reduce your tax liability.

An easy way to avoid this problem is to always have a separate bank account for business activity that you use exclusively for business transactions. This way you will have a 12-month record of all income and expenses. Lastly, be sure to keep receipts for your business transactions and stay organized! Once the receipts get out of control, the likelihood of missed deductions increases.

Credits

4.) Tax credits are available for a variety of common expenses and situations that go unnoticed every year. Depending on your tax preparation method (tax preparer, CPA, boxed software, etc.) you may need to do a little research yourself to see what’s available.

The best way to do this is to simply Google “2009 tax credits” and you will find an abundance of tax credit-related articles that may help you plan and keep records for eligible spending like education, energy efficient property expenses, child tax credits or retirement savings credits.

Finally, if you use a qualified tax preparer, you may be able to plan for refundable credits such as the earned income credit and first time homebuyer credit by analyzing taxable income and delaying or accelerating income to help force you into eligibility. This is a tool best offered by tax professionals that may save you thousands of dollars.

Refunds

5.) The way you receive your refund may also save you money. Over the past 5 years, Refund Anticipation Loans, or RALs, have become very popular among eager taxpayers. These loans (usually issued by affiliated banks) will immediately issue your refund to you instead of waiting for the refund to be issued from the IRS or state.

But BE CAREFUL! The cost of these loans can vary widely but expect to pay between 3 percent and 5 percent interest for the benefit of a very short term loan. If you file your taxes electronically, your return could get to you in as little as a week. Meanwhile, the cost of a refund anticipation loan could be equivalent to a 97% to 2000% APR depending on the size of the refund and the actual refund dispersing date. In short, it's not worth it.

Michael C. Ellis is a CPA with Ellis and Company LLC in Germantown, Maryland.

image: Michelle Meiklejohn/freedigitalphotos.net

21 days without spending money

Think you've got financial discipline? Could you go 21 days without spending a dime on anything besides necessities (and I mean real necessities, I-really-need-these-shoes necessities)?

That's a challenge personal finance columnist Michelle Singletary is issuing to her readers in promotion of her new book. I've done this kind of challenge before myself, although more out of necessity than trying to see how strict I could be on myself. It reminds me of what my friend The Frugalista did a couple years back that gave birth to her blog.

It's an interesting experience and definitely the kind of thing that builds a certain level of character. Most of us don't realize how much money we're wasting unless we stop spending altogether and look at how much money we have left over. This is also the kind of thing that can help you with making a decent budget and with shedding your credit card debt. Once you realize how disciplined you can be with your disposable cash -- and indeed that you actually have disposable cash -- you can start putting it toward the balances you have on your cards.

So how many of you are willing to try Michelle Singletary's
21-day challenge? If you do it, let me know how it's going.

How moms can help their kids be better with money

Q: I am a mother and my daughters think money grows on trees. As a father with two sons are you currently teaching them the value of dollar? and how are you teaching them?

A: I'm constantly teaching my sons lessons about the value of a dollar, mainly by forcing them to work at wages that would violate child labor standards in Taiwan.

Seriously though, my philosophy on money is that as with other habits, children emulated what they've been taught. If they're not taught, they emulate whatever they see. So if your daughters think money grows on trees, it may be time to re-evaluate what you're teaching them about the value of money.

Are you prone to shopping sprees? Do they get an allowance? If they run out of their own money, do you still buy them the things they want or do you make them save? Teaching kids delayed gratification is hugely important.

I use every opportunity to teach my boys about the value of money, hard work and the difference between income and wealth. As a parent you can use ANYTHING to instill those values. For example: My sons are both Monopoly and chess freaks because I decided early on to teach them Monopoly to learn cash flow management, negotiation and real estate investing and chess to teach them to think ahead and strategize. My 13 year old could play circles around most adults in those games, and his business acumen is pretty high. He gets it.

There's other lessons: money they get for birthdays or holidays must be put in the bank. 15 percent of the oldest's allowance also gets stashed. If there's things they want, they have to earn it through their schoolwork or extra chores, or save for it out of their allowance.

Christmas gifts this year included shares of stock in the companies where they spend the most money: GameStop, the video game store for my oldest, and Heelys, which makes roller-sneakers, for my 10-year-old. I did the same for all my kid cousins and they were so enthralled by the possibility of making money from the stock that they made me sit down and teach them the basics of the market. If you want to do the same, you can check out OneShare.

My boys also have brokerage accounts for their college savings and I have them look at what's in them and how they're performing when I log in.

Your children's money habits start with you. They'll emulate what you do with your money and they have no choice but to follow your rules regarding their own. Take the lead as a parent and they'll follow.

photo courtesy photoexpress.com

Federal Reserve tries talking to consumers

Sadly, most people don't know anything about what the Federal Reserve does, even though it plays a central role in our economy and has been controversial for its role in the recession and federal banking bailouts.

I won't bore you with all that stuff here but one valid criticism of the Fed is that for all it's regulatory power over the financial sector, consumers don't understand what it does and that perhaps it should do more to educate them.

Seems like at least one Fed branch is trying to change that. This morning I got an email from the Cleveland Fed about a new online publication called "Forefront". Written by three Fed staff economists, the headline on the first issue is "Making Financial Markets Safer for Consumers". The content is still policy-heavy but for the Fed, churning out articles that discuss how it might better regulate financial services specifically to the benefit of consumers is step in the right direction.

My personal favorite: this paragraph that uses exploding toasters as an analogy for the kinds of mortgages some consumers were duped into signing up for in the housing meltdown:

The exploding toaster holds a special place in consumer protection lore. It is obviously an unsafe product: If they knew about the danger, consumers would not buy the toaster and regulators would pull it off store shelves...Some believe that although consumers wouldn't knowingly buy an exploding toaster, in the past few years millions of them took out an "exploding mortgage."

Granted, this is a simplified analogy. But it underlines the observation that ordinary consumer goods seem a lot safer than some financial products. How do consumer goods markets—and their regulators—differ from consumer finance markets?

I emailed the Cleveland Fed public affairs staffer who sent the initial email to me (and other media, I assume) to ask if Forefront was aimed at consumers, media or economists but as of yet haven't gotten an answer. But you can click the link above to have a look for yourself.

A $199 Nintendo Wii for only $347!

The holiday shopping season is in full swing, so it's appropriate to offer yet another lesson in why shopping with credit is an awful idea and in why you have to be careful when considering what seem like "easy" payment plans.

Today I was in my gmail account and up pops an ad for a web site called AffordIt.com. "Buy a Wii for only $16/wk", it said. I gave it the instant #sideeye and out of cynicism clicked over to see what the rest of the terms were. Here's what I got: AffordIt will give you "low weekly payments" and "Instant Approval" to buy your Wii (and ostensibly whatever else they offer.

The devil, of course, is in the details. In this case, you start by making a $59 downpayment after which you make $16 payments each week for $18 weeks. I'll spare you the time doing the math: it all adds up to $347, nearly double the cost of the same Wii in stores. You'd actually come out better buying the thing all at once, even if you used a credit card, so long as you paid it off before you got hit with too many interest payments.

Oh, and speaking of that: since you'd be buying online from AffordIt, you'd still be putting that $347 Wii on a credit card anyway (unless you used a debit or check card), which means your actual cost could still skyrocket with the added interest you'd be paying your bank.

Folks, if ever there was a lesson in the value of delayed gratification, spending within your means and not trying to take shortcuts, this is it. If you can't buy it outright, you cannot AffordIt.

The $0 Balance Countdown

This is it: the big week when I'll be making the final $500 payment on the credit card balance I've been carrying since college.

I can't wait to feel the exhilaration of hitting the "make payment" button, logging in the next day to see the balance reflected as $0, and knowing the liberation of having hundreds of suddenly available cash flow in my budget every month after that. In fact,it's such a great thought and a great feeling, I want you to have it, too. So I'm issuing a challenge: how many of you believe you can eliminate all of your credit card debt in the next 12 months, using nothing but sheer financial discipline and sound budgeting?

If you think so, hit me up with your story (keithtr(at)gmail(dot)com or on twitter). I'll pick a few people to follow and chronicle here monthly as they work toward their goals.

In the meantime, I'm devoting all this week to posts about credit cards and debt elimination, be sure to check back.

photo courtesy freedigitalphotos.net

If I'm paying off my credit card; can Ann Minch bail out on hers?

This morning I made the penultimate (next-to-last) payment on my credit card, a $176.23 testament to beating the debt monster I've been carrying in my wallet since college. I'm quite proud of myself for the obvious reasons (a PF writer with a mountain of unsecured debt is not a good look; looking forward to that TV that's been at the top of my 'reward yourself' list for three years) and the not-so-obvious (freeing up cash flow for investments, savings and a sprucing up of the crib that is in great demand from certain quarters).

But my fortune at being disciplined and financially stable enough to pay off my Visa makes me consider the millions of people in the US who are neither as disciplined nor as fortunate; people like Ann Minch, who the HuffPost profiled for her refusal to pay off a Bank of America credit card because, she says, they've gone too far in jacking up her rates. Here's Minch on video talking about her "debtors revolt":


Is Minch right? Should we have the right to just say "screw you" to lenders who are treating us unfairly, or is this the rant of someone who made irresponsible choices with credit and needs to do what I did and just pay up?

Credit card debt almost gone

If you've been following me for a while, you know I'm a big advocate of getting rid of any and all credit card debt. While it continues to be the bane of most Americans' financial existence, it's particularly crippling to young people who are just starting out in their careers and families.

So as to lead by example, I've been keeping tabs -- publicly, on how my quest to get rid of more than $8,000 in credit card debt has gone since last year and today I'm happy to report that the magic number is down to a mere $679.45!

No secrets, no tricks, no gimmicks or TV commercials, just common sense budgeting and consumer discipline is all it took. And even though a trip to Florida (for business) and school shopping for my son were a setback in August (I was supposed to pay the whole thing off last month but wound up adding more than $700 to the balance); I used the same discipline to quickly pay every penny off and keep the balance right where it is. $679.45.

Can't wait till the first week of Oct. to blog/tweet that zero balance.

All you can fly for $599 on JetBlue

If you're like me you're both disciplined with your cash and love to travel, which means you know that the two can be in conflict with each other. Enter JetBlue (which along with Southwest is my fav airline), which is selling the airline equivalent of a monthly bus pass: $599 gets you all you can fly between Sept. 8 and Oct. 8.

I haven't yet read the fine print but on the surface it sounds like a great deal, provided you live in a JetBlue city and will fly more than $600 worth in the next month. It could be an even better deal if JetBlue's competitors match them; airlines are a copycat business and usually what one does with fares, the others will do, too. If other airlines are inclined, we'll probably know no later than Monday.

Frugal gift giving at holiday time

Today's my mother's birthday (Happy XXth, Ma!), which brings me to the topic of gift giving at a difficult time. My mother, like many, has never asked me for a birthday gift but we all know that doesn't mean I don't have to send one. In years past I've gotten her luxuries like that Coach purse and matching wallet she always wanted in her favorite color, or just given her cash because, well, she likes cash.

This year though, the gift was practical: Moms is setting up a gambling counseling practice and needs a book to pass some test for her state certification; sonny boy knows how important that is to her. It's more important, in fact, than an extravagant birthday gift and at a time when things are tight, its a more frugal option for me, too.

All of which brings me to this point: perhaps this holiday season, focusing on more practical gifts -- the things that people actually need instead of big, flamboyant wants might save you a little money. In the comments section, I'd like everyone to post an example of something a loved-one needs that you could give them during the holidays that might save you vs. buying something more exciting or sentimental.

Thinking about it might save a little cash when you need it a lot.