For me, today was a no spend day.  I stayed at home all day cleaning, folding laundry, talking to my mom, blogging, and doing fractions with The Son.

This evening I got all showered up and The Husband and I went out to dinner.  That’s what the asterisk (*) is about.

Althought I didn’t spend any money, The Husband did.  He forgot to take the American Express gift card with him so he put dinner on one of his credit cards (don’t worry, that balance, like all of our cards, will be paid in full this month).

As anticipated, the crab legs were delicious.  The Husband had crab legs and shrimp scampi — I love the smell of all the butter and garlic.  Dinner came to $43. and change including a generous 23% tip.

Forgetting the gift card was no big deal — he can use it anywhere for anything.  Kind, loving, generous wife that I am, I offered to spend it for him.  He thanked me but said he thought he could manage it on his own

I know that today’s maintenance tip will seem ridiculously simple to some.  It’s so simple, in fact, that each time I’ve thought about posting it I’ve managed to talk myself out of it.

But today it occurred to me – to some people the concept of spending less than you earn is so patently obvious they’d never think to include it in the list of financial must-dos.  Still, there it is — on lists everywhere as the Golden Rule of financial solvency:  Spend Less Than You Earn.

So, without further ado, here’s the Golden Rule of Cleaning:  If you clean it while it’s clean, it will never get dirty.

I sure wish I’d grown up with that philosophy of cleaning and maintenance.  It would have saved me a lot of hassles and frustration over the years.  I know now that cleaning a clean toilet is just so much easier than cleaning a dirty one.  Amen to that!

Today is our 14th wedding anniversary.  According to various websites, the traditional anniversary gift for the 14th year is ivory.  The modern or contemporary gift is gold.

The Husband and I are breaking from tradition this year — and, no, I’m not talking about gold instead of ivory.  This year we’re breaking away from our traditional methods of celebrating our anniversary.  Each year, either on our anniversary or as close as we can to that date if the schedule doesn’t work right, we go out to dinner and exchange gifts.

This year we’re going out to dinner, but for the very first time since we’ve been married we’re going out to dinner without the kids.  Yup, for the past thirteen years we’ve taken our children with us when we go out on our anniversary.  There’s a reason for that — and no, it’s not because we couldn’t find a sitter.  We’ve always included our children in our anniversary celebrations because they were both present at our wedding (hm, I’ll have to explain that in depth and detail our super-frugal wedding sometime soon).

Due to my extensive food allergies, dining out is a very rare occurance for me.  In fact, most of my “dining out” consists of watching other people eat.  But there is a restaurant that serves one dish I can eat — Red Lobster’s crab legs.  When we go, I simply order a plate of crab legs – no salad, no potato, no sides at all.  I can’t even have the melted dipping butter.  But I can eat the steamed crab legs.  So that’s where we’re going tonight — just the two of us.

Normally, dinner at Red Lobster would be anything but a frugal date.  But tonight it will be.  First, it’s Monday so tonight is Crab Fest at the local Red Lobster.  Second, The Husband recently cashed in some American Express reward points and got a $100 gift card.  So bring on those crab legs — I’m feasting tonight!

As for the traditional anniversary-gift exchange, no one will be receiving either ivory or gold because we’ve agreed not to buy anniversary gifts this year.  Not that there would have been gold or ivory involved anyway.  Typically, The Husband and I buy each other something small like a new book or a CD.  But this year, inspired by Melissa and Eric’s story, I suggested that we completely forgo anniversary presents and The Husband required no convincing.  Later I clarified my position — no need to buy each other a gift this year but that doesn’t mean we can’t give each other a present

image credit: Jeff Belmonte