To Agree with Money Saving Expert?

[backtolifebacktoreality]

Martin Lewis said this a few years back. I think it's very very true!

"Christmas has become a retail festival and it shouldn't be. Christmas should be joyous but causes some people unhappiness, debt and worry. Many people feel obliged to buy gifts for others that they know they won't use, with money they don't have, and cause themselves stress they don't need ... The gift of giving can be selfish as it can mis-prioritise people's finances and create a financial burden. If you give a gift to someone they're effectively forced to buy you one back ... It's time for us to get off this gift giving treadmill. Sometimes the best gift is releasing others from the obligation of having to give to you. Let's work together to ban unnecessary Christmas presents ... (However, if you feel you want to give something) Do a Secret Santa or give to charity instead".

Let's work together to ban unnecessary Christmas presents

YANBU OP, but I'm not sure how you would be able to 'ban' this

We're not doing gifts this year. I'm totally skint and can't afford anything. We're just going to do a little stocking for the young adult dcs with some sweets, magazine, fruit in. Dh and I don't need anything so we're just not bothering.

I've cut down the number of presents over the years and this year my kids have decided that they both have almost everything that they could ever need.
DD1 has asked for some perfume and DD2 would like some money to buy new clothes in the sales.
I frequently tell people not to buy me anything, I did for my birthday this year because I didn't need anything.
I did get a peony bush though a few months later, I saw it at the garden centre and DH bought it. He would have done though whether I'd had a birthday gift or not.

There are no children in my family or extended family. So we no longer buy and I am donating to charity instead. I have also requested no birthday cards now or birthday presents. Family are making small donations to my favourite local charities. If all adults did this what a difference we could make!

@backtolifebacktoreality

This was actually something he said on his show in 2018. I remember hearing it and thinking how accurate it was.

I have friends who over indulge in their present buying. As lovely as it is, everyone around them then has to raise their game to keep up with them! It just gets out of hand!

why though, sure they will moan that they get granny £500 worth of stuff but all she gets them is a candle. If its made clear then not your problem.

and if you're talking about what they buy for their kids, again not your problem

Completely agree.

We do very little gift giving in our lovely family, especially as the children are older.

When we visit family I always bring a gift of nice speciality food treats, a jar of my curry paste that everyone loves, a couple of bottles of wine, yummy consumables basically.
We all have enough "stuff".

A couple of years ago my OH bought me two gifts I really wouldn’t have used. I bit the bullet, explained that, he returned them and bought a couple of much cheaper gifts that I still use everyday. It was a bit awkward but the right thing to do. We have really small families so not many people to buy for, but my mum has downsized and very firmly told me she doesn’t want anything except food and drink gifts. Rum and chocolate it is!

This thread sort of makes me sad. I love Christmas, we are comfortably off and give money to charity too but I just love getting very carefully chosen presents for my family ( why are presents always called "Tat" on Mumsnet?) I learned from my mother to listen carefully all year and work out what people wanted or wished for. It might be soething little, like a blue plant to go in the border with the pink ones or a pear tree because they only had apple ones, or an ice cream scoop for someone who she had seen struggle with a spoon week in week out. It might be a big bottle of someones favourite perfume when i'd noticed they were nearly out. I can see the point of not giving if it isn't wanted by most of us don't buy ourselves little luxuries or even necessities we would like to have and the secret of good present giving is to get these.
I will be sending cards, i love getting them, sending them, writing little notes to go in them and displaying them in my home. I'll be spoiling my adult sons with nice presents. There will be no tat! When all the decorations go back in the box on 5 January (yes, I make it last the full 12 days) I'll be a bit sad and start thinking about next year. I'm very aware there are other views on this but don't brand all of us Christmas lovers as unwanted tat merchants please!

Years ago now I initiated a £10 max present limit for adults in the family

We now don’t buy at all for my husbands brother and children or my brother and his partner or for my husband and myself

We buy for children in the family so thats my brothers 3 and both our dads….one is just a bottle of haig though so thats dead easy 😀

The only one thats a wee bit irritating is that a friend buys for me and my adult children which means i need to buy for her ….and her children once they reach adulthood (obviously i buy for them now)

We do spend a fair bit on the children which includes cash but honestly i said about it just being about Christmas and i felt we could do without presents and just have a lovely day and you’d have thought id killed a puppy and made them eat it…difficult though because we will have to cut back when they are all partnered up

In our family we do a list and it's only close family (four of us, my Mum and my DB). Kids are easy to buy for and generally have a long list to choose from. Adults are harder so what we try to do is if we want to get ourselves something and it can wait for a bit then we put it on our list. So, for instance, my DB usually buys me coffee beans. We don't have any financial pressures, we can all afford to buy ourselves and each other things within reason, but the list system avoids having to guess and then giving things that the other person might not want.

A no present pact only works if everyone’s on board. My side of the family, yes. We scaled back to children only a few years ago & so we’ve been working up to net zero for all. It takes away a lot of pressure and emotional admin. DH side of the family? Tricky. One if SIL/BIL ( no dc by choice, financially very well off) did a major flounce about no adult presents as it meant that their household wouldn’t get anything, ‘so it wasn’t fair’. This is the person who’s never hosted a family anything at their home, but never misses an opportunity to attend when someone else is doing all the work. This person is infamous (in our house) for coming empty handed every single time. Once, they even had them cfery to demand reimbursed for the milk we’d asked them to pick up on the way to yet another dinner at ours. I’ll be wrapping up a sprout …

In one half of our family we have a secret santa, so one present limit of £20. It is great and it really doesn't reduce the excitement / pleasure that we all get from it. The other half don't agree with that approach and now that dc are grown up the adult presents get more expensive and more elaborate. The ornaments are more expensive, the pottery mugs are more expensive, the toiletries are more expensive... It's difficult because members of that half of the family seem to really enjoy the whole shopping experience, going to little craft shops, luxury wrapping... I feel like an ungrateful wretch!

*Bonesintheocean
*
I'm not talking about what they buy their kids or grandma. Of course that's not my problem. It's not my business either.

What I'm talking about is when they buy me and my kids very expensive gifts. Of course they are lovely but I then feel I have to buy gifts back of the same value!

I absolutely agree. However, I think it works for families who were already of a similar mindset and who weren't prone to unnecessary gift giving in the first place. It's very hard to do this unilaterally.

H's family are VERY big on gift giving, with a "more is even more" approach, and this appears to be one of the main ways they express love. The Opening Of The Presents is a big deal in their house at Christmas, whereas at ours it's all about the food. MIL and SIL never turn up to our house empty handed, and even the DC have commented that this is a bit unusual. For us to try an institute even a reduced gift giving policy (as opposed to no gifts) would I am sure be very hurtful for them. So we plod on, and thank our lucky stars that we can afford to buy extra gifts, even if we'd prefer not to.

We don’t buy for adults but children are different. Christmas is a wonderful, magical time for them and I have no desire to give them two gifts at Christmas. They have their entire adulthood for that

I've made a few deals around this. Once kids arrived, we agreed no presents for the adult siblings at Xmas and had a £20 limit per child. With a few close friends, we agreed no Xmas or Bday presents - all of us have Xmas birthdays as well - so we now go and do something together like afternoon tea - rather than pass round cash or vouchers or buy small gifts.

I've opted out of my friends group secret santa and the work one this year. Everyone is nagging me not to be a Grinch, I'm the only one missing out etc. Its so pointless I always end up wasting my money and effort trying to get something nice and then end up with random crap that I chuck away. For both we are going our for a meal to do the exchange-why can't that (spending time together and having a nice meal) be enough of a celebration without introducing random tat into it!

100% agree with him and have been moving in this direction for years and fighting very resistant DM, who still remembers the Christmases of her youth, when it was a massively special and anticipated event, with few presents, each of which was treasured. Every year the pile of 'stuff' under our tree causes me massive anxiety, because I know most of it isn't wanted, won't be used, and all the planetary pollution from the packaging and the wrapping is therefore completely unnecessary and just utterly distressing.

For both we are going our for a meal to do the exchange-why can't that (spending time together and having a nice meal) be enough of a celebration without introducing random tat into it!

Agree!

Oops, early post! As I’ve gotten older I much prefer spending time with friends/family - going out for meals, experience days etc. Free time has become so precious and it’s rare for everyone to be able to get together so it’s lovely to do something together that you’ll all enjoy and remember rather than having another present in a drawer.

@Pixxie7

I agree in principle but I buy gifts because I actually enjoy giving gifts, not because I expect getting anything back.

Me too. But it’s only consumables and/or cash now, for adults and teens outside the immediate family. Immediate family get either something I know 100% they would like, or could really do with, or have specifically asked for. Plus cash for dds.

Only the little Gdcs get anything else.

We buy for children until they turn 18. We go out for a big family meal together instead of buying gifts for adults. It means we spend fun time together and never feel resentful that we’ve spent more than was spent on us or have to pretend we’re overjoyed to receive what was clearly a bogof gift

H's family are VERY big on gift giving, with a "more is even more" approach, and this appears to be one of the main ways they express love. The Opening Of The Presents is a big deal in their house at Christmas, whereas at ours it's all about the food. MIL and SIL never turn up to our house empty handed, and even the DC have commented that this is a bit unusual. For us to try an institute even a reduced gift giving policy (as opposed to no gifts) would I am sure be very hurtful for them. So we plod on, and thank our lucky stars that we can afford to buy extra gifts, even if we'd prefer not to

@TheTurn0fTheScrew

I swear we have the same in-laws. DHs parents turn up every single time with a pile of presents for the DC and they refer to them as 'Presents Granny and Grandpa' (the DC are little!) I find it extraordinarily stressful but it is how they express love. My family prefer to feed you into a coma

We used to celebrate Thanksgiving with some American friends where the focus was on being with loved ones and eating amazing food, far preferable.

These days when everyone has an Amazon wish list, and if you want something you just buy it whenever, the magic of receiving gifts seems to have waned. Nobody has the patience to wait until Christmas for that Dyson hairdryer when they can just get them on Klarna. I feel old and grumpy.

How original you are OP! It's not like we hear this every single year is it?