Gifts Versus Expenses

In honor of Valentine's Day, here's my half-formed hypothesis: that a gift is just an expense unless it involves a sacrifice by the giver, and a desire to please the recipient. Let's test the hypothesis, shall we?

Example #1: Shiner's Valentine's Day promise to build me a stone path from the back deck to the garage after the ground thaws. It's a big expense in terms of time and labor, and something I have been wanting since I first moved into this house. An excellent gift!

Example #2: Homer's gift to Marge of a bowling ball. An expense, sure, especially with the fancy engraving... "Homer." Not so much motivated by a desire to please Marge. Fail!

Example #3: My Valentine's Day gift to Shiner. A gift certificate to his favorite homebrew shop. He loves it, and there are a number of new toys he's been eyeing, so I doubt it will last the weekend. But we had a modest $20 spending limit (which I misremembered as $25) and it certainly didn't take a lot of time or energy to plunk down a credit card, so I'm not so conviced that I gave a very good gift, even my my own standards.