A Dollar a Day? Shove it!

I read a "charming" story the other day of how a husband gave his wife $17,885 (about 12,000 pounds) on their 49th wedding anniversary. The figure symbolises every day they have spent together as a married couple - he said it was "just a token of his love and a modest payment for half a century's companionship".

I'm sure he meant well but if the Ball & Chain comes close to handing me a "payment" as a birthday or anniversary present, I'll smack him into the middle of next week. Surely I can't be the only one who doesn't think this token quite so lovely?

Why? It just irks me on so many levels, but let me try to expain.

• The fact that he is giving her such a large sum of money on their anniversary suggests that he sees it as "his" money. Surely most couples, if they're going to spend that much money on anything, discuss it with each other first?
• And then...given that it's a marriage, what's with one partner giving the other one money anyway?
• Don't we enter into marriage because we love that person? OK, I get that there are many reasons why people might stay in a loveless or abusive marriage, but I don't think this was the case. I find it odd that giving your partner over 17,000 individual dollar bills should be seen as a token of love.
• A dollar a day. That's all she's worth? (This would be where the B&C received the full force of my wrath.) It doesn't say what their dometic arrangement was, but statistics show that most working married women still do about 80% of domestic chores. If he was even thinking of paying her, perhaps paying for a cleaner at the time would have been a better gesture.

I don't know, it just really got my goat! What do you think?