Christmas Presents AIBU?

[Fibbertigibbet]

Fully prepared to be told IABU or a CF!

Right, a bit of background for this. I am married, and have one brother who is 22 and not in a long term relationship. My husband has one brother, also married. Both of us have had tumultuous relationships with our brothers which we are currently working through but things can still be a little bit sticky. DH and I are not doing very well financially this Christmas season, neither is my DB, and so my DM has suggested the whole family only buy gifts to a total of £20 per person. Sounds great to me, that is a workable budget. DB is less keen because he really likes Christmas and spending money, but has tentatively agreed.

Now for my AIBU. Today I got a message from my DM asking if we were buying DB two gifts (one from each of us) or just one, and said that if we were buying only one my brother might resent having to buy two gifts, one for me and one for DH. I said we were planning on buying one, as DB is one person, and that we are two people- if he was in a long term relationship, we would buy two gifts, one for him and one for his partner, just as we do for DBIL and DSIL. DM then pointed out that we are two people, so therefore by that logic we should buy two gifts. This has never been an issue before, because normally we would buy my brother a few gifts from both of us because we spend more money on Christmas, and my brother would buy us one gift each.

I can kind of see her point, but extrapolating from that, do we need to now buy two gifts for everyone because there are two of us? Am I being a CF thinking one gift is enough?

My BIL is in the same situation, we normally spend a bit more on him than on SIL because it's just him whilst she's married with 2 kids. For example this year we've got them tickets to different Gigs, BIL ticket was £60ish SIL and her husbands were just under £40.00 each

So for receiving gifts you are two people, yet for giving you are one? YABU

Just suggest that he buys you a joint present.
These types of discussion are barely worth entering into, he is probably just being a bit awkward because you have suggested this and he's not fully on board.

Another vote for a secret santa, so everyone gives, and gets, one gift.

If I was your DB I would buy you and your DH a joint present

This. In my family, couples give and receive joint presents. Kids get their own presents, obviously. Birthdays are when the adults get individual presents!

'The norm' seems to be that couples give as a couple but receive separately. It's not fair on single people. YABU if you can't see that

I'm single. I buy for my brother, SIL and 2 children. I get a present from the children and one from my brother & SIL. So yes at Christmas and birthdays I spend more and give more but that's ok. It's never bothered me in the slightest.

Hhhhmmm the norm is to give as a couple but really this is probably the only instance where this is seen as acceptable, if a couple go out with a single then rounds are per lesson, meals, taxi sharing so technically present buying should be too

Thanks everyone for all your responses, it's really helped me get my head around this whole thing.

For those suggesting secret santa, I agree it would make sense, but my DB does not want to do this, so we're buying individual presents. he also didn't want to set a price limit (despite him also being in financial bother at the moment), and had refused a lower £10 limit.

Yes, we usually do give as a couple and receive as separate people. This is because usually we are in a financial position to spend about twice what we would per person as what we are spending this Christmas. We shop for all the gifts together, and the money is joint (actually the money is DH's, as I am studying at the moment), so the gifts are from both of us, although people receive more gifts that what they did when we were single. For this reason, it has never before been an issue. We often spend more on my DB than we do on anyone else tbh, including my DBIL, because he is the kind of person to notice these things and as I said in the OP our relationship has been strained in the past.

Alexsmum89 I agree it's really sad, but things like this really do matter to my brother. It's all coming up because now we are both more financially pressured than last year and because last Christmas involved him having what I can only describe as an angry mental breakdown, so tensions are running high.

I think I'm going against the grain here, but I think it's fine to buy one gift from both of you, as long as the value is £40. Number of gifts does not matter, but you should both spend £20 on him, whether two gifts or one combined one.