My husband and I have always gone all out for Christmas gifts for our 3 kids. Hubby now wants to scale it back, and spend less.
The kids are 30, 28 and 23, so it’s not like they’re little! The older two are newlyweds, and my 28 year old daughter and her husband are expecting their first baby! Yay! The youngest is single with a boyfriend, and still in college so I would probably still do more for her.
Anyway, what does your family do? I haven’t explained this yet to my kids. I know they’ll be disappointed. I used to buy them really nice gifts and also always included their spouses and the boyfriend.
We know the gifts are not what Christmas is about, I will of course, still have the big dinner and family gathering, just not so much $$ will be spent, I guess.
Ideas?
I am just like you, last year we did buy for the 30 year old son and his girlfriend, the 28 year old son and his wife, the 22, 20 and 16 year old daughters and the 18 year old son; 1 grandson and each other. Lots of money spent. I kept gifts to a maximum of $30.00/per person except for my husband, the 18 and 16 year olds and the grandson.
Just like you, I also cooked dinner and provided spirits… Note my husband also bought gifts for all the kids as well so basically it turned out to be $60.00/per person..a lot of money.
I am glad you are bring this up now. We have got to talk about this over the next 30 days..
My family decided to put the names of everyone 21 and older in a bowl. We each pulled out a name and we are to buy that person a Christmas present with a value of $35. Will still have to decide about the children. How much is too much? They like gift cards so it is really easy, but my brother let it slip that he wasn’t sure if they even used the gift cards from last year. We really don’t have money to burn.
btkdiva:
We had the discussion after Thanksgiving dinner. The decision was to spend no more than $20.00/per person except for mom and dad. My husband and I have decided we are only giving one gift that represents both of us to each family member so we don’t do $60.00 per person this year.
Regarding your comment on the gift cards, I bet the kids did use them last year. Those are usually the FIRST item they use.