Money might not be able to buy love, but it sure as hell can buy a dope Valentine's Day gift.
On the surface, the holiday is a celebration of love; a day to spend with someone you cherish, promising to never let them go. But we all know that what really matters on February 14 is what you're buying for your significant other.
Not all areas of the country pony up for a sweet gift for their sweethearts, though. A new study from Finder.com surveyed more than 3,000 people across the country, and asked them how much they planned on spending on their lover's V-Day gift. They averaged their findings by state, and the results may surprise you.
We took the liberty of mapping out the data, which reveals some interesting trends about the price that people from different parts of the country puts on love.
Romance is cheap in New England
There must be a lot of dog houses in the Northeast, because people there spend less money on Valentine's Day gifts than they do on a tank of gas. New Hampshire was found to spend the least on V-Day presents ($31), presumably because everyone's finances are gummed up from $27 donations to the Bernie Sanders campaign. Vermont and Maine aren't much better, each spending an average of $36 on gifts.
Rural America goes big on V-Day
Residents of Kansas led the way in terms of Valentine's Day making-it-rain-ness, shoveling out an average of $117 on gifts. North Dakotans spend an average of $108 (all of that new oil money has to go somewhere, right?). Nevada and Idaho were the only other states on the mainland to surpass the $100 mark at $112 and $111, respectively. When you live in a middle-of-nowhere town where the most romantic restaurant is a Denny's, I suppose you've got to compensate with a lavish token of love.
Are Arkansans buying their lovers gifts at Wal-Mart?
You'd be hard-pressed to find a location in Arkansas that is more than a stone's throw away from a Wal-Mart location (the company is based there). Residents in the Razorback State spend an average of $93 on V-Day gifts, which is the sixth-highest in the entire country. We're led to believe that people there are cashing in on all of the small business-crippling deals that the retail giant offers. In any case, Arkansas seems to be the only Bible Belt state that demonstrates its love through expensive presents.
Illinoisans, New Yorkers and Californians could do better
New York and Illinois are home to two of the biggest metropolises in the country, yet those states are pretty frugal come February 14, spending an average of $65 and $55, respectively. Perhaps New Yorkers are spending so little because, well, people there tend to be completely undateable. Illinois is on the precipice of one of the biggest pensions crises in the history of the world, so there's a good chance that folks in the Land of Lincoln are padding their bank accounts for the tsunami of tax hikes that are inevitably coming their way. Californians spend an average of $82 on V-Day gifts, which, granted, is relatively high on the spectrum, but you'd think that all of that Hollywood and Silicon Valley money would bump the figure a bit.