The Gift that Keeps on Taking

[ladislav]

If you give your GF a new smartphone, or a motorcycle or anything mechanical and electric, even a smartwatch, it will at one point break or will need to be serviced and she has no money to have it repaired or serviced.

So, now you are on the hook for maintaining your gift, a whole novel concept!

That is in addition to supplying phone loads or gasoline/insurance/registration in case of a bike or having a bicycle routinely serviced, oiled and repaired, tires vulcanized etc. Unless you pay for it routinely, the gift will become unusable.

I bet you never thought this would be necessary, huh?

[flowerthief00]

I'd never think for one serious nanosecond of giving an expensive gift in the first place. If she needs a phone that badly she can have one of my old phones as a hand-me-down. Otherwise she can earn the money to get her own. Women make up 50% of the workforce now.

Good grief, is this how some people express love? A parent doesn't lack love for a child just because the child doesn't receive a brand new car for Christmas. A child doesn't lack love/appreciation for the parents when all the parents get on Father's/Mother's Day is a card saying "Thanks for being my dad/mom". Nothing more is needed beyond that. Anyone who expects that there must be more--whether on the giver or receiver side--is deficient in their understanding of love.

[MrMan]

If you give your GF a new smartphone, or a motorcycle or anything mechanical and electric, even a smartwatch, it will at one point break or will need to be serviced and she has no money to have it repaired or serviced.

So, now you are on the hook for maintaining your gift, a whole novel concept!

That is in addition to supplying phone loads or gasoline/insurance/registration in case of a bike or having a bicycle routinely serviced, oiled and repaired, tires vulcanized etc. Unless you pay for it routinely, the gift will become unusable.

I bet you never thought this would be necessary, huh?

If you marry and have kids, you have to pay for stuff, too. I pay for cars, cell phones, plants-- house plants, yard plants, tulips-- all kinds of stuff. There's also money for in-laws, in the past at least when her parents were both alive, and probably the bulk of the money for two funerals. Some other siblings chipped in some, or at least one. I was given some information on what I paid. I don't know all the details of what relatives contributed and it can be hard to figure out amidst the chaos and many meetings for funeral-related issues. There are all kinds of expenses to having a family and another set of expenses to having in-laws in an Asian culture where you are the rich white foreigner. My wife has lots of siblings. One had kind of done okay financially and is working abroad.

But I also remember when I was in grad school, my wife working so hard on our little business, harder than I did on the business at least...I had my studies.... to make it happen. She wouldn't eat or drink. I even remember a 24 and a half hour work day we had, amidst a three day gig that was extremely tiring. Then there are all the meals, all the manual labor. She'll paint walls, fences, furniture, till the garden, and all kinds of stuff. Then there is an extra 'chore' I sometimes have her do at night. I married a woman who has worked from the time she was a child. We both pull together and make things work.

I did provide for her a bit when we were dating. Right when we were first getting to know each other, she had college tuition coming up and was praying for how to get it paid. I asked her about it and paid for it, thinking of it as a gift whether we ended up together or not. I think it was around $50 at the time, which is probably like $80 today. After we started dating, I didn't want to go through a lot of traffic to see her, and I helped her rent a room near her school, which was near my house. That made dating her more convenient. By that time, I was getting surer I'd marry her anyway, and I figured it just made sense that I would keep her up if she needed it. I don't remember if I outright gave her cash to live off of. I think I may have so she would not have to work and I could spend more time getting to know her, small amounts. But I took her out to eat just about every day, too.

Her parents had sent her off to the big city to live with aunts and uncles, who kind of bounced her around amongst relatives, and she had to sell food at school to pay tuition. She worked out of high school, then opened a little business to pay for college. Her most recent endeavor had not worked out well for her. When we got engaged, she politely asked if she could have some money, maybe $100 to reimburse a man from church who'd let her have a little capital to start that business. It seemed reasonable to take on her $100 debt to marry her.

When we started to get to know each other, phone calls were expensive, by the minute, and she'd express a lot of concern about me running up the phone bill talking to her, part of the motivation for having her move closer so we could see each other more. She was concerned about me spending a lot of money taking her out and would ask for some lower cost food options. Some of the street food was okay, but some was not that great, so we ate more in malls. I didn't get a vibe that she was trying to squeeze me for cash.

But I bring in the bulk of the cash these days, and I might have to pay to get her cell phone fixed, too. But looking at the whole picture, I am getting a very good deal on value for money, even better considering some of the other options out there.