Anniversary Snowball Effect

This is my wife's year to plan our anniversary. Since she's going to school and I'll be going to school (hopefully!) next year, we're trying to be frugal about it.

The first idea was having a romantic dinner at home. We love food, and we could splurge on things we normally don't get. We looked into getting some nice steak from Heartbrand Beef (which I've wanted to try for a while). It turns out that 2 steaks from there could run $75+.

This is where the snowball effect kicked in:

"Well, if we're going to spend $75 on steaks at home, we might as well spend $100 at Ruth's Chris or some other steak house."

We went to Ruth's Chris last year and loved it, but wanted to do something different. After asking around and comparing reviews, there are several comparable steak houses, but Cut by Wolfgang Puck was a notch higher. It also would run $200+.

OK, so we go to Cut, but then we need a hotel room so I don't have to drive 90 minutes after gorging on steak & wine. Now we're at $500:

"Well, if we're willing to spend $500 on food and a night in a hotel, maybe we can go somewhere for a few days."

This is the point where the snowball lost control. Feel free to add, "Well, if we're willing to spend (insert dollar amount) to go here," in between each line. Here is our progression:

• Weekend in San Diego - $750 (hotel, nice dinner, gas, Zoo tickets)
• Hawaii - $1800 (flight & hotel)
• Tokyo - $2500 (flight)

The scary part was that this wasn't wishful thinking at all. We had seriously talked ourselves into international travel from a conversation that started with a goal of saving money.

Our current plan is to see Barry Manilow in Vegas, which is fun, a little splurge, but not too over the top.

If you have any other suggestions, feel free to share! By the way, I don't feel guilty for asking for ideas since technically it's not my year to plan.