“Celebrate your success and stand strong when adversity hits, for when the storm clouds come in, the eagles soar while the small birds take cover” – Unknown

Although we have been surviving my wife’s recent period of unemployment followed by several financial emergencies, the challenge has been made more difficult by the fact that we’ve also had several celebrations on the calendar. During the last weekend in June, my wife and I celebrated our first year of legal marriage, after being together more than 10 years. Earlier this month, we celebrated the Fourth of July.

Initially, we were tempted to cancel both celebrations, so we wouldn’t spend anything. However, complete deprivation is not helpful when trying to stay on track and it might make us likely to splurge later. Plus, we’d planned both celebrations well in advance, and it felt like a pretty lousy idea to cancel everything. So we ended up scaling back our plans, but we still managed to enjoy both celebrations.

Our anniversary plans took the biggest hit. We’d planned to spend a long weekend at the fancy hotel where we had honeymooned. We wanted to eat and drink in the fancy restaurant, soak in the fancy private hot tubs, and pay for an expensive massage. Last year, we spent $860 for two nights at the resort, so we planned to spend twice that much for four days. But when we looked at the numbers, spending $1,720 for our anniversary seemed insane. We decided not to make the reservation and came up with an alternate plan instead.

Since we’d arranged for childcare in advance, we went ahead with those plans. We’d arranged for our daughter to spend time with a friend, rather than paying a sitter. We spent those days at home, and treated ourselves to better food than we otherwise would have had. We bought Two Buck Chuck, grilled sirloin steaks on our barbecue and ate premium ice cream bars. On the day of our anniversary we went out for a sushi lunch, since lunch specials are far less expensive than the dinner menu. We also passed on alcohol. We rented movies and spent a lot of time alone. Our total cost for four days, including alcohol and food, was less than 10 percent of what we’d planned on for the hotel.

We also tempered our Fourth of July celebration. Originally, we’d planned to invite all our neighbors over for a hotdog, hamburger and beer celebration. We’d bought and frozen a great deal of the meat in advance, when our finances were better, so our barbecue plans were pretty much unchanged. Although we didn’t rescind any invitations, we made it a point not to go out of our way to remind people about the party. As a result, fewer guests turned up, so we didn’t consume nearly as much food. When guests asked what they should bring, I asked them to bring their own drinks, thus saving us the cost of beer. Instead of paying to watch the city’s fireworks display in the stadium, we watched the aerial show from our driveway.

Lessons learned:

1. The most important part of celebrating is time spent with friends or loved ones, not the fanciness of the party. Although I’m sure that my wife and I would have enjoyed the hotel, fancy food and massages, the real point of our anniversary was to spend some time alone. As for the July Fourth party, I don’t think our friends really noticed or cared that this year’s party was BYOB. Everyone was happy to get together for an enjoyable afternoon, regardless of who paid for the beer.

2. Restaurant alcohol is expensive. I’ve known this for quite some time, but our anniversary drove home the fact that I can buy an entire bottle of inexpensive wine for less than the cost of a single glass in a restaurant.

3. People and relationships are more important than fancy vacations or stuff. There’s no doubt that vacations and nice toys are luxuries that everyone enjoys, but the more simple joys of friendship and love are far more powerful. A vacation is over within a few days or weeks, while a relationship with another human being lasts much longer.