Here's a little tip from something I've noticed in my last two relationships. Buy a girl gifts if you care about her, but if you're on a budget, don't buy her food or drinks.

I'm in grad school, the girl I'm seeing is in grad school, and I've accepted --and even begun to enjoy--the fact that she wants me to be a provider. However I have to be smart about where I spend my limited funds.

Buying food, drinks, or other temporal items get you next to no mental points. She will forget that $38 you dropped on dinner no more than 5 hours later. I'll always remember my girlfriend when I was 23, who made more money than me after college, said a comment about how "I never spent money on her." I then recounted 3 times in the past 3 days that I spent money on her, but they were all for temporal items. It was a slushee at the fair, got her coffee and a bagel that morning, and a magazine for the bus ride. Those things, despite probably being $20, did not count.

What she wants are gifts that show you're thinking about her, or gifts that she can show her friends as a display of status. Flowers, or a necklace, or a little trinket from a visit, show that you're a giver. A provider. She'll remember those things, especially if her friends notice them. But buying her food or drinks, when it's just you two, is throwing your own hard earned cash down the drain. She's a big girl and can pay for her drinks on her own.