So, I'm going to be in my good friend Speedo's wedding this weekend, and my wife and I haven't yet gotten a wedding gift for the lucky couple. While looking over the registry, I asked my wife how much she thought we should spend.

As I should've known, her answer told me, once again, how differently we look at money. The surprising thing, though, was that our roles appeared to be reversed. Typically, I am the one who thinks we should spend less money on gifts, but this time around, the amount I proposed was double the one my wife had in mind. When she explained her reasons for the lower figure, I heard all the arguments I had used myself in other discussions.

• We have a set amount that we try to stick to for gifts (with moderate success)
• We haven't spent as much as I had proposed for other people's weddings
• Our cash flow at the moment is a bit stretched at the moment for various reasons
• We are already spending a bit more than we had planned to travel to the wedding (we're taking two cars) and have to pay for a hotel and buy my tux

These are all convincing arguments, especially to someone who has used them before, so I really had to think about how I had come up with my figure. Through my introspection, I came up with the following things that may have occurred to me subconsciously:

• We are actually better of financially now than we have been in the last five or six years (nearly our whole marriage). That's not to say we don't have debt – we do. But I guess I have a bit of residual euphoria after using our tax refunds to pay off a large chunk of debt.
• In addition, within the next couple of paychecks, our cash flow problems are going to be resolved as I start seeing the benefit of the 401k loan payoff and increase pay from a recent promotion. This is a dangerous situation because I find that I am tempted to charge things I normally wouldn't put on my credit cards, "knowing" that I will be able to pay them off in a month or two.
• On a more emotional level, Speedo is one of my best college friends, and the one of only two that I keep in contact with fairly regularly. My wife argued that we haven't spent as much as I've suggested even on family member weddings, but I guess I consider Speedo closer than many of my family.
  • Don't get me wrong – I love my family. Hearing horror stories about other families, I realize that my extended family is extremely fortunate in that we all get along well.... But while I love them and wouldn't trade them for anything, I'm much closer to Speedo than many members of my family. That's just the way it is, and I'm sure my family members all have closer friends than me.

Anyway, we haven't settled on a final amount yet, but likely it will be somewhere between what my wife and I each proposed.