Gift Giving

[BuntyBearBess]

AIBU to get my friends something really nice for their 21st birthdays this year when I only get my extended family token gifts for birthdays.

I love my family but we are low income and large so it is always someone's birthday which is expensive and exhausting just with token gifts. Plus despite how much I love my family and how much they love me, I am very much the odd one out and if we weren't family we wouldn't have anything to do with each other because they have nothing in common with me.

Whereas the friends I've made at uni I genuinely like, we have a lot in common and they like me for me. I don't have to be someone I'm not with them like I do at home and want to get them something that shows that. I found some lovely cufflinks for the guys (b-days a month apart) one fidget spinner and one combination lock, which very much sums up their personalities and I'm probably gonna suggest splitting the costs with our other friend and my housemate because they're not cheap. But I'm already getting stick from my family because they know I'm going to send one of the guys care packages over the next year while he studies abroad.

From their point I can see why they'd be upset but if I were to give 'nicer' gifts to my family everyone other than the recipient would be annoyed because they'd feel like I was showing them up.

Just don't mention to your family that you are getting them a gift, it's none of their business who you give gifts to, or how much you spend.

You are an adult, spend your money as you see fit.

I'd say it depends, OP. I think what you're planning is a lovely gesture and of course a 21st birthday should be adequately celebrated, but how expensive are we talking here? Enough to be obvious and become embarrassing if your friends can't/won't be able to stick to the same budget for you? Are those the first birthdays in the group, so likely to set a 'precedent' of sorts? What happens if your housemate won't split with you?

Not your AIBU, I know, but regular care packages are generally a thing for family or a partner to arrange. They're expensive and a hassle for the sender. I'd be mindful of not putting the recipient in difficult position if he's unable to reciprocate. Forget what i said if you're indeed his girlfriend!

Pasturesgreen, my friends are relatively well off, they're the first big birthdays (I'm 23 so a mature student with decent savings) but we're a group where it's very much the thought that counts. So the cufflinks are around £200 each (what I spend on one I spend on the other) plus its a big birthday so very much a one off and my other friend and I are putting together a box each with novelties and handmade gifts together for them for christmas. I would in no way expect any sort of gift of that price in return and would be happy with a homemade card or even a happy birthday comment on facebook but one of my friends will be spending his 21st estranged from his family and the other will be alone so I think they should be celebrated anyway.

In regard to the guy I'm going to send care packages to, we're not dating but have an odd relationship because according to anyone else we're 'flirty and tactile and very coupley' as in we're very much he and I together when we're together. But with him being away for a year we're not pursuing it. But he has already asked that I come visit him before Christmas and then travel with him to meet his family before I come home for Christmas and then he would like to come spend New Years with mine.
Add that to the fact that I have ASD and he's a very odd NT and we're both Christian things are a bit more complicated. But he's also alone and working in an unfamiliar city and I've already promised to send him cookies monthly because at the moment I make him a batch a week.

My plan is to send an actual care package with 'bigger' things in at the start of September and then send him cookies/homemade snacks of some sort and the odd trinket each month.