Christmas presents and family budgets.

It’s a given that come the holidays strain everyone’s budget. However as grandparents of blended families things get insane.   I raised 2 kids, she raised 4 they have children and suddenly we’re buying a hundred presents. 

The first to suffer is the racing budget.  I’m used to that, even though historically I’ve gotten the best deal just before Christmas. Now days if something is too good to pass up I put it on the never never card 

But with a fixed budget  it’s harder and harder to do that.  

My family has well over 30 members and is getting bigger every year. We draw names. This includes my parents. 

In my family, once the kids hit adult age they go in the "name draw" pool. Everyone in the name draw pool only gets one name to buy presents for. Until they're adults we lavish them with gifts. Seems to work pretty well and it keeps the budget and clutter under control. Otherwise, yes, we have 30 people we would be buying gifts for and that would be insane.

Even for the little ones we try to keep it sane. We have two little ones at home (first Christmas for the little one!) and the last thing we need is a pile of presents from all 30 people. How old are your grandkids?

i have 2 kids, 15 and 12.  i bought one a cookbook.  i bought the other one  a pair of landscaping gloves.  i hope they're picking up what i'm laying down.

Can’t agree more with the name-drawing. My friends family as they were kids did long before adulthood.

Gotta be realistic and neither live in a fantasy land where you have unlimited funds nor stress out so much about being the awesome grandpa that your health suffers.

We have tried a number of solutions in my family.  Name drawing works well if everyone is of similar economic ability or sticks to the stated spending advisory (many people don't in the past). 

In my mother's family we went to a system where everyone brings a wrapped gift (~$10) and gives it a title.  We roll dice to do the choosing/stealing thing for about 10 minutes.  This is so much better than any other system I have been a part of.  No little kids in this scenario, though.

My personal current solution is to move away from everyone and opt out of exchanges.

Sounds like it's time for a family meeting.

We're a family of six, now that one son is married and a father, so it's not bad at all. I have bought nothing for my wife. She says there's nothing she wants or needs. We'll be under $1000 for Christmas at the rate we're going, but somebody better get me the hockey gloves on my list.

In my family we did the name draw thing for the adults for a few years, now not even that. The last couple holidays just the kids and grandparents get presents.  Anybody between the age of 18 to 60 doesn't get visited from santa.

Kids aside, we started a new tradition borrowed from another member of the extended family. He worked for years in glass, and made really beautiful glass beads. A number of years ago, at the big gathering, he'd pass around a bowl and let folks pick their own.

I don't make anything quite so lovely, but I hit on a similar approach: I take a sizable cardboard box, divide it in two, and fill one half with socks (neat ones, fun patterns), and the other half with airline-size bottles of booze. The box goes to my parents' house, and the extended family gets to pick what they want when they drop by.

It's got a good combination of novelty and stuff folks actually enjoy, while not being too expensive. And it only takes me an hour at our local fancy sock store (it's Portland) and fifteen minutes at the liquor store.

I buy presents for my kid. Maybe swmbo. We'd rather take each other to do stuff than wait one day a year to give E36 M3. 

In my family, we stop giving presents once the kid gets out of college more or less. 

DeadSkunk said:

I have bought nothing for my wife. She says there's nothing she wants or needs.

IT'S A TARP!!!!!111!!1!!

Seriously, get her something, even if it is just a thoughtful little inexpensive thing.

We used to do the whole everybody-exchange thing.  I have 3 sisters, and with extended families it was like 25 people. We did a big hint list compendium with individual gift exchange, plus stocking stuffers, then opened everybody's presents more or less one-at-a-time.  It took forever to prepare for and execute.  It was stressful, but we kept it up for tradition's sake.

What killed that is one particular sister and her progeny basically stopped GAF, and it became very one-sided.  Sorry, but if I have to pry hints out of you, and you barely reciprocate anyway, we're done here.  They were on a limited budget, and I get that - totally not the issue.  If you find the perfect $5 - or free - gift that shows me you were thinking of me specifically, I'll be thrilled.  But if you show up with identical cookie mixes or similar crap for everybody and stiff me because you don't even have enough to go around, then I'm going to have a hard time worrying about what to get you next year, or even bothering.

Eventually we made the suggestion to just limit it to inexpensive stocking stuffers.  We still try to tailor what we get for the people we care about, but in general, it's simpler, cheaper, and less stressful.

Convert to Judaism...give everyone a dreidel.

Ovid_and_Flem said:

Convert to Judaism...give everyone a dreidel.

Then you need to give 8 nights of presents...for each kid.  I grew up in a Jewish household and that's what I always tried to pitch.  Somehow it never worked out that way.

My wife and I really only have to worry about our own kids, almost no other family to speak of.  But that doesn't make it cheap, the kids are getting older and want more expensive stuff.  On the GRM related side, both of my boys...but especially my 10 year old...so badly want to race.  So a K1 gift card may be in their stockings.

Everyone over 18 goes into the name draw with us. Mostly because my crew has fun with the unwrapping in a group in front of the fireplace more so than actually getting a gift. Like getting to play at being a kid again while the little ones unwrap theirs.

As my extended family grew in size, we went from everyone giving everyone else gifts to the name draw. After a while, that became an exercise in "what do you want" and just getting them that - things that people would just buy themselves anyway.

Now we do a dirty santa/white elephant gift/junk swap game that is entertaining and has a low price of entry. It's about spending time together instead of spending dollars.

we also do a white elephant, with about 25 participants.  i guess i'm doing it right because the crap i've given away in year N has always been re-gifted in year N+1.

Then again, maybe i'm doing it wrong because i always use my turn to take back a gift i've given in previous years.

In reply to Duke :

Honestly, based on your description...I'd probably stop GAF about such unrealistic expectation gift exchanges too.

When all of the kids got to be high school/college age, we started doing a "favorite things" exchange.  Each person picks something they like at a price point (say $10) and buys 4 of them.  Each person then draws 4 numbers to get 4 of the other items.  It's fun because it limits your cost to $40 in this case, you get multiple items, there is camaraderie amongst the people that drew the same number to receive teh same favorite thing, and then bartering can happen afterward.  Some of the things last year were a 4 pack of craft root beer, a CD from a local artist, tokens from vacation travel, coffee, etc.  I was going to give voltmeters, tape measures or flashlights from Harbor Freight (a $10 value!) but SWMBO was on to me and nixed the idea.

Driven5 said:

In reply to Duke :

Honestly, based on your description...I'd probably stop GAF about such unrealistic expectation gift exchanges too.

When everybody was in it together, it was fun.  We'd have a good time looking for interesting presents to give others, we'd get a lot of things we wanted but might never buy for ourselves, and we also got some nice surprises that ended up being favorites.  But when the effort was all one-way, it quit being fun pretty damn quick.

I buy stuff for my two adult daughters, but it doesn't necessarily happen at Christmas.  If I see something I think they would like, I get it.  If nothing strikes me, I give each of them a couple of hundred dollars.  I specifically ask for nothing.  If they want to take me for supper, great. 

I hate the stress of Christmas, whether its obsessing over gifts, or risking my life hanging lights, or worrying whether all the poop stains are gone in the toilets.  Come to my house.  We will eat, drink, visit, and enjoy.  Wear your blue jeans.

Meh, I bought a house a few months ago. 

I've already informed them as far as I'm concerned, they are all on Santa's bad list and aren't even getting coal. 

In reply to Duke :

It sounds to me like it quit being fun for her, long before it quit being fun for you.

Driven5 said:

In reply to Duke :

It sounds to me like it quit being fun for her, long before it quit being fun for you.

Possibly.  But it was also becoming an apparent pattern through all of our interactions with her and her kids (who were already adults in the time I'm discussing).  They're great at accepting hospitality but not so great at offering it.  And by "accepting" I mean "showing up unannounced at a variety of random times unrelated to the invitation and not bringing anything".

Eventually you get tired of pouring time, effort, and care into a bottomless hole.

[Edit] Sorry to drag this so far O/T.