Keeping Birthdays Frugal

Well, it was my birthday quasi recently. Actually, it was two months ago. But that doesn’t matter. “Recently” is all in the eye of the beholder., right? The point is that I had a birthday relatively recently, and hasn’t everyone had a birthday relatively recently?

There’s always an urge to go all out and “treat yourself” for your birthday, or treat your spouse on their birthday. Treat your six kids on all of their birthdays. But in the early retirement lifestyle, all things must be kept in check, and that includes birfdays. You can splurge, but within reason. And at this point in our life of eternal optimization, it takes very little to feel like a huge splurge!

Here’s what we do on birthdays to make it fun and keep our savings in checl:

Eat Whatever You Want!

After abolishing Takeout Fridays, Marge and I hardly ever eat out or get takeout. We’re not lazypants, we like to cook food for ourselves. It definitely costs less, although I refuse to accept the notion that cooking is inherently healthier than eating out. It’s all in what you make of it (the food), but let me say this: Making our own meals definitely means less sodium intake. There’s so much salt in food out among the English. The only times we do eat out is when traveling to fantastic places… and on our birthdays! And on birthdays, all rules are out the window.

Usually these birthday meals turn into birthday meal weekends. How exciting it is to pick out a favorite home-cooked meal from the past or something from one of our favorite area restaurants. For the past few years, my birthday dinner has been fried chicken and waffles from a local place.

I still managed to especially frugalize this birthday. I was all set to order the fried chicken dinner and noticed on their website that they are now on GrubHub. That’s an online ordering platform, I guess, but the point is that I could get $7 off my first order since I’ve never used the service before. Seven dollars is worth like two fried chicken thighs and a drumstick! Sign me up!

My other special birthday treat is a handpicked six-pack of craft beer. This is basically the only time I’ll buy a six pack during the year. Maybe one other time if I’ve really “earned” it through DIY work around the house.

Special birthday meal for me usually extends to Sunday breakfast as well, which usually means fried eggs, corned beef hash, bacon, and a couple apple cider doughnuts from a local baker. It’s your birthday! Treat yourself! And the treats don’t end there!

Customized Birthday Cake!

For a few years, being big fans of Ace of Cakes during the 2000-aughts, I would order Marge a fancy birthday cake from a local bakery called Queen of Tarts. A hazelnut and chocolate cake I ordered for Marge’s birthday in 2006 is still one of my top cakes of all time. Look at those buttery layers. Unfortunately, they went out of business a few years later, and we moved onto another bakery.

The new baker made beautiful cakes as well (see the autumnal style), but we eventually ran out of interesting flavor combinations on their menu, and we took birthday cakes into our own hands. Now, whatever cake we can imagine, the other person has to make!

I saw Alton Brown make a classic, and complicated, coconut cake once, and requested that for my birthday. In an incredible show of devotion, Marge took the day off from work to make it. This recipe involved finding some esoteric ingredients,  cracking and scraping an actual coconut, and making a coconut extract! It may not look like much, but it’s another of my top cakes of all time. Which has nothing to do with the actual coconut, by the way, and more to do with the coconut cream, if you’re thinking of making it yourself.

Some of the other flavor combinations requested over the years have been a Girl Scouts’ Thin Mints-inspired cake, requested by me and created by Marge, and a literal coffee cake requested by Marge and created by me. I used Pioneer Woman’s coffee cake recipe. There is a layer of marzipan in the middle. I wish I could remember what the frosting was, but there was almonds in it.

This year, I had an idea for a gingerbread cake with cookie butter frosting. Again, Marge set to work engineering it, and it came out great.

Sorry if anybody out there hates cake. I still find it hard to believe in your existence, but I know you’re out there. I guess you could make yourself a birthday pie instead (derisive laughter).

No Gift For You?

As you can tell, the birthday meals and cakes take a lot of effort, so maybe you won’t be surprised to learn that the food is basically the gift. The effort of your betrothed to make the food, or at least design the cake, is the gift. Therefore, you’re not unwrapping anything. If something in the prior 12 months really stood to to me as a good gift for Marge, I’ll get it. But otherwise, no gift for you!

The greatest birthday gift of all – Friends?

So, if you have a Facebook account, no doubt you are inundated by well-wishers on your birthday. It really is nice, but can also feel like people are just ticking off a box that says “Happy birthday!”

So what a friend of mine started doing a few years ago was asking people, instead of simply writing “Happy birthday!” on his wall, to write a short story, just a few lines. This year he asked for friends to write a narration of a bucolic landscape that contains a very strange animal. Of course, I wrote one, and by the end of the day, he had a wall full of short stories about animals that don’t exist! It’s fun, and it shows someone you care enough about them to write something odd and creative. It’s oddly heart-warming and better than another “Happy bithday.” And you don’t have to get off of Facebook for a second to do it.

So on my birthday, I asked “Instead of writing happy birthday to me on my Facebook wall, how about you write to one of the members of the Polyphonic Spree on my wall wishing them a happy birthday, but also simultaneously showing concern that they might be in a cult.”

This was my first go, and I only got two stories, but getting them was a hoot and a half.

How about you? How do you celebrate your birthday?

Leave a Comment