Christmas gifts question

I have two siblings. One is single, lives at home with Mom. The other has
moved in with his g/f and her DD. My question is, in the case of siblings,
do you spend the same amount on the single sibling and you would on the
other siblings and his family combined? For example I usually spend $50 on
my siblings. This year I have to buy 2 extra gifts for one sibling as there
are now 3 people to buy for instead of one. So I will be spending around
$100 on that family ($50 for sibling and £25 each for g/f and her DD) So
should I then spend $100 on my single sibling to make it fair?

Sorry for being long winded. This is the first year this issue has come up
in our family and I want to be fair to everyone. What do you do?

Laura wrote:
I have two siblings. One is single, lives at home with Mom. The other has
moved in with his g/f and her DD. My question is, in the case of siblings,
do you spend the same amount on the single sibling and you would on the
other siblings and his family combined? For example I usually spend $50 on
my siblings. This year I have to buy 2 extra gifts for one sibling as there
are now 3 people to buy for instead of one. So I will be spending around
$100 on that family ($50 for sibling and £25 each for g/f and her DD) So
should I then spend $100 on my single sibling to make it fair?

Sorry for being long winded. This is the first year this issue has come up
in our family and I want to be fair to everyone. What do you do?

I tend to spend per person not per family, but its by no means equal. I
have a budget I stick to, but if I find the perfect gift below or above
budget I'll try and work it out.

Mary Ann

"Laura" wrote in
:

I have two siblings. One is single, lives at home with Mom.
The other has moved in with his g/f and her DD. My question
is, in the case of siblings, do you spend the same amount
on the single sibling and you would on the other siblings
and his family combined? For example I usually spend $50 on
my siblings. This year I have to buy 2 extra gifts for one
sibling as there are now 3 people to buy for instead of
one. So I will be spending around $100 on that family ($50
for sibling and £25 each for g/f and her DD) So should I
then spend $100 on my single sibling to make it fair?

in my opinion, no.
it's not the cost of the gift, it's the thought behind it. if
you find the perfect gift for single sibling & it only cost
$10, would you then only spend $10 on the other sibling & $5
each on GF & child?
i don't think i've *ever* spent the same amount on each of my
brothers. some years i find something really cool & expensive
for the older one & some years it's the younger one. older
brother lives with our parents. younger brother is married &
has a stepdaughter (who just had a baby! yay!). i have
actually spent *more* on the stepdaughter than my brother some
years. i have a budget for gifts, but i don't even think about
equal division for the relatives (which is a good thing
because *my* SO has 6 siblings, 13 neices & nephews (and some
of them have SOs now) & we just added a niece's baby on that
side too).
buy something they'll like & don't worry about spending more
on one or the other. it's not a competition (if it is, don't
get either of them anything!g)
lee

"Laura" wrote in message
...
I have two siblings. One is single, lives at home with Mom. The other has
moved in with his g/f and her DD. My question is, in the case of siblings,
do you spend the same amount on the single sibling and you would on the
other siblings and his family combined? For example I usually spend $50 on
my siblings. This year I have to buy 2 extra gifts for one sibling as
there
are now 3 people to buy for instead of one. So I will be spending around
$100 on that family ($50 for sibling and £25 each for g/f and her DD) So
should I then spend $100 on my single sibling to make it fair?

Sorry for being long winded. This is the first year this issue has come up
in our family and I want to be fair to everyone. What do you do?


When the last of my siblings (there were 5 of us) reached age 18 (some 20
years ago), my family, realizing that, with nieces and nephews, the burden
of gift exchange was getting out of hand, mutually decided to no longer do
gift exchanges between the adults with one exception: you could give a gift
if it was something to which you significantly contributed in producing,
i.e., a batch of cookies, and handmade scrapbook, handmade sculpi
refrigerator magnets, etc.. We do custom notepads, every 4 years or so,
which are a big hit, and one year, did a CD photo album with a years worth
of photos, which, in hindsight, was probably too much, but each CD was
actually custom tailored to the recipient. What is strictly prohibited with
our arrangement is purchasing and giving things already made.

This year, my SO and DD and I are going to do a mutual effort in developing
individually customized home pages, using various photos and illustrations,
for all family members' browsers (with easy links to sending emails to
individuals and groups), as this year, for the first time, all family
members have internet connections at home.

--
"There are 10 kinds of people in the world:
those who understand binary numbers and those who don't."
-----------------------------
Byron "Barn" Canfield
http://www.headsprout.com
"Where kids learn to read."

Laura wrote:

I have two siblings. One is single, lives at home with Mom. The other has
moved in with his g/f and her DD. My question is, in the case of siblings,
do you spend the same amount on the single sibling and you would on the
other siblings and his family combined? For example I usually spend $50 on
my siblings. This year I have to buy 2 extra gifts for one sibling as there
are now 3 people to buy for instead of one. So I will be spending around
$100 on that family ($50 for sibling and £25 each for g/f and her DD) So
should I then spend $100 on my single sibling to make it fair?

Sorry for being long winded. This is the first year this issue has come up
in our family and I want to be fair to everyone. What do you do?


You sort of negotiate it out as a family. If you
keep spending as much on each person as you used to, as the
family grows you'll get hammered at Christmas. On the other
hand, the single and childless sibling can sometimes get a
bit put out. Another solution is to cut back slightly on
*everyone's* gift so that the total budget stays reasonable,
but you're not doing a strict tit-for-tat for each sibling.

Best wishes,
Ericka

Laura wrote:

I have two siblings. One is single, lives at home with Mom. The other has
moved in with his g/f and her DD. My question is, in the case of siblings,
do you spend the same amount on the single sibling and you would on the
other siblings and his family combined? For example I usually spend $50 on
my siblings. This year I have to buy 2 extra gifts for one sibling as there
are now 3 people to buy for instead of one. So I will be spending around
$100 on that family ($50 for sibling and £25 each for g/f and her DD) So
should I then spend $100 on my single sibling to make it fair?

Sorry for being long winded. This is the first year this issue has come up
in our family and I want to be fair to everyone. What do you do?



After about 20 years of dealing with this, I've decided that it's not
the amount of money spent, but the amount of thought and appropriateness
given to each gift. So, I spend $7.50 on the perfect gift on my niece.
It could take me forever to find *any* gift for my three nephews that
cost $7.50.

Sometimes we spend a lot on a specific family. For example, one year my
sister and I pooled with our parents and bought our brother and SIL a
microwave, but I probably got a National Geographic calendar from my
sister along with Christmas ornaments made by her children that year. I
certainly didn't gripe about the money aspect - as a graduate student, I
was thrilled to get more ornaments for my small, bare tree.

Jeanne

In article ,
"Laura" wrote:

I have two siblings. One is single, lives at home with Mom. The other has
moved in with his g/f and her DD. My question is, in the case of siblings,
do you spend the same amount on the single sibling and you would on the
other siblings and his family combined? For example I usually spend $50 on
my siblings. This year I have to buy 2 extra gifts for one sibling as there
are now 3 people to buy for instead of one. So I will be spending around
$100 on that family ($50 for sibling and £25 each for g/f and her DD) So
should I then spend $100 on my single sibling to make it fair?

Sorry for being long winded. This is the first year this issue has come up
in our family and I want to be fair to everyone. What do you do?



I think the issue is people not 'entitlement' of each branch of the
family -- in my extended family there are couples and couples with
anywhere from one to 4 children. We don't give the niece in one family
a present that is 4 times as expensive as the 4 we give to the nieces
and nephews in another family. And the couple gets the same family type
gift that the couples with children do -- not extra to make up for
having no kids getting gifts. People have to pay attention to their
own resources -- so some families give very small tokens and others are
more generous -- but we don't allocate per family as if it were some
sort of taxation or entitlement.

If resources are very limited, families sometimes work up gift exchange
plans -- in which case each person receives a gift from some other one
person.

If it is important to you to be even handed per sibling, then a food
type family gift can be given in which case, each family gets the same
thing.

Laura wrote:

Sorry for being long winded. This is the first year this issue has come up
in our family and I want to be fair to everyone. What do you do?

I really don't care all that much about 'fairness'. To me it is
important that I can find something I know the person will enjoy,
whether it's just $10 or somewhat out of my range. So one year I
will buy a person a cheaper gift, but next year if I find something
I know they will really love, I will buy that even if it is more
expensive.

Unfortunately, there are always people who will judge their gift
based on what it costs...

--
-- I
mommy to DS (16m)
guardian of DH (32)
TTC #2
War doesn't decide who's right, only who's left

Sorry for being long winded. This is the first year this issue has come up
in our family and I want to be fair to everyone. What do you do?


Personally, I would get a combo gift for the sibling with the girlfriend, like
a game they can play or something they can both use for the kitchen, that kind
of thing. I think $50 is a lot to spend on a sibling, but that's just my
opinion! You can easily get an inexpensive gift for the DD. No, I definitely
wouldn't up the ante and spend $100 on the other sibling.


laurie
mommy to Jessica, 2.5 years and
Christopher, 7.5 months

x-no-archive:yes


Laura wrote:
I have two siblings. One is single, lives at home with Mom. The other has
moved in with his g/f and her DD. My question is, in the case of siblings,
do you spend the same amount on the single sibling and you would on the
other siblings and his family combined? For example I usually spend $50 on
my siblings. This year I have to buy 2 extra gifts for one sibling as there
are now 3 people to buy for instead of one. So I will be spending around
$100 on that family ($50 for sibling and £25 each for g/f and her DD) So
should I then spend $100 on my single sibling to make it fair?

Sorry for being long winded. This is the first year this issue has come up
in our family and I want to be fair to everyone. What do you do?

I had one sibling and my dh had two and we also gave gifts to my
husband's uncle's family. After the siblings got married (we were the
oldest in each family and the first ones married), and started having
kids (eventually we had 7 nieces and nephews), I went to a family gift
per family - a food package, or some kind of game or a magazine
subscription. I also started making presents - like embroidering
handkerchiefs or monogramming an item of apparel, or giving them a
needlepoint that I'd done or a macrame pillow. (I was a SAHM)
Eventually I stopped giving any presents to siblings at all (I just
announced one year that I wasn't going to do it anymore as we couldn't
afford it) and just gave gifts to dh, my parents and my children.

As few as 5 years ago, I'd spend $100 on my mom and dh, and about $75
each on each child, and about $50 on each grandchild and $25 on each
inlaw.

Now that all (4) of my children are married and I have 9 living
grandchildren, and I'm retired, I've again cut back and I give each
child a nice present but more in the $50 range, each inlaw gets
something and each grandchild this year gets a magazine subscription.

I try to give more or less the same to each tier of the family - that
is I try to give more or less the same amount to each child, each
grandchild, and each inlaw, but if it doesn't work out, I just go
ahead and give what I think they will like and don't worry about it
too much.
grandma Rosalie