Mother’s Day Spending Recap

Posted on May 13, 2013 2 Comments

My mom is a fun lady. This photo is evidence. Here she is, doing a  fancy dance with me a several years ago that involved her winding up my sash (it was attached to the bridesmaid dress I was wearing), then making me “unwind” on the dance floor.  Clearly, we are tearing it up.

“The Unwind,” a dance move created by my mom.

Though she can cut a rug when the occasion calls for it, Mother’s Day is  typically a low-key event for my family. We usually just hang out at my parents’ house; my dad cooks, my the rest of us watch movies and play sports outside. 

This year, instead, my dad left for a fishing trip Sunday morning, and we children decided to take my mom to the zoo to enjoy the weather and allow her to spend time with her one and only grandson. So on a blustery morning that felt more like early April in Chicago, nine of us trooped to Brookfield Zoo in the western suburbs to take in the monkeys, lions, and bears. We spent a few hours there until my brother, his wife, and their baby split, and then the remaining six of us went for coffee followed by dinner and drinks. My mom enjoyed herself (maybe not at the level of intensity in the above photo), so I’ll count the day as a success.

Here’s how the spending went:

1. Gifts. I bought her a yellow flower plant, mums, for $10, a box of cookies for $4, and a card for $4. I included a future dinner and a movie in the card, so let’s count that as an additional $100. Total: $118.
2. Zoo day. We are zoo members, so no fee for parking or entry. We lunched at one of the zoo cafeterias, and I put lunch for 6 on my charge card for ~$70. I got money back from most of my siblings, but I’m still collecting. My lunch alone was probably around $12 for a salad, juice, water, cookie, and chips. My eyes were too big for my stomach; I only ate the salad, 1/2 cookie, and drank the water. I gave the rest away.
3. Coffee. I’m not sure who paid for my coffee at Starbucks after the zoo. There was a lot of awkward throwing of money at each other. Hilariously, I think the $20 my mom tried to pay ended up back in her pocket, and there’s a good possibility the $8 I tried to spend ended up stuffed somewhere in the back seat of my car.
4. Dinner. We had a lovely three-course dinner for six at our local pub for ~$215 (including tip). $36 per person isn’t bad, when you factor in that we all had two drinks each and my mom got crab legs. I paid for most of this meal because I was treating my mom and I owed my brother and his g/f a meal. So I paid$135 of that total.  Again, there was a lot of awkward “YOU BETTER LET ME PAY FOR THIS” type of talk by everyone at the table. My brothers having full-time jobs is a new thing so none of us really are used to them having cash for outings like this. I will let them treat me next time, for sure.

Looking at the rundown above, Mother’s Day was pretty expensive. Especially when you consider that we took manfriend’s mom out for dinner the night before with his family.  Since we don’t do this every year, I’m OK with this spending level. After all, if you can’t give your mom a nice holiday when you work full-time, what’s the point?  There are days to be frugal and days to splurge a little, and Mother’s Day is definitely a splurge day.

I went grocery shopping later that night and spent around $150, so I will have to be very good with my cash flow this week. It won’t be difficult; we don’t have any events to attend (phew!) and our house is a mess so we’ll spend this week cleaning and hopefully relaxing a bit when I’m not training for upcoming races.

How did your Mother’s Day go?

Category: Money
   Tags: gifts , holidays

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