Avoiding the too expensive family gift...a solution

ElTam

Mon, Dec 19 2011, 12:31 am

This is late, but maybe it can help people for future situations.

DH is one of five kids. The older siblings are much older, established in careers making six figures. The younger siblings don't have kids and spent money on expensive travel, hobbies, etc.

We are the only frum ones, so the one ones with the cost of kashrut, day school, etc. DH and I both work (him full time, me part-time) but we don't have a lot of extra cash. We typically don't buy each other gifts and gifts to the kids are small and inexpensive. We are very, very frugal.

For holidays, anniversaries, what ALWAYS happens is that one of the sibs will pick out some crazy expensive gift where everyone has to pay something like $50 for DH's parents. I didn't spent $50 on all of my kids Chanukah gifts total. I'm talking ALL gifts for 3 kids added together.

They do this every year without talking about it before hand or asking. They just buy and tell us what we owe and we wind up paying in some crazy amount of money to buy Dh's parents stuff--some of the gifts have never even been used, which makes it worse.

So this year I got smart, I bought for Dh's parents very, very early. Something in our budget that they will like. Then when SIL sent the email saying we're buying this $350 gift for parents and dividing it five ways, I just said, "Oh sorry, didn't know. We already bought for ILs! Sounds like a great gift idea! I'm sure they'll enjoy it."

Worked great. No discomfort (one year we had to say no because we just couldn't afford the gift they had picked out), no pressure. There wasn't anything they could say.

Hope that helps someone else!