Katsmeow
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2009
- Messages
- 5,308
Do you give gifts to your spouse for occasions such as Christmas, birthday, anniversary, etc.?
If so, do you give gift cards or physical items only (or a mixture I guess).
I have put up a poll so would love any explanations as well as weighing in on my situation.
I am trying to decide if I should suggest to DH that we stop doing Christmas presents and birthday presents. (We already stopped anniversary presents, but we do go out for it).
Issues I am having.
1. We often don't really know of anything specific to get as a physical gift. Usually if we really want something we have already bought it. But, occasionally there are exceptions and one of us gives the other a great gift. Last year I got DH a Keurig which was a huge surprise to him and he loves it.
2. I have had some success with giving him a list. For the last couple of years I've created an Amazon shopping list of Kindle books that I want and he looks through it and buys me some. That is fun as it is often books I was interested in but on the fence about buying. We tried doing this for physical items though and it didn't work as well. It was a chore to find items to put on the list.
3. So, we have often gotten gift cards. Of course if I give him an Amazon card and he gives me one that might seem like we didn't really give anything.
However, we usually each year allocate in our budget spending money for each of us. So the gift card does measurably add to that for each of us. And, we don't always give gift cards to the same place. I might give him one to Best Buy and he might give me one to Pandora.
But -- more importantly -- I think I am going to suggest that we get rid of the spending category in our budget. It is time consuming to keep track of and I analyzed it and the spending we do on that category is not so much money that I think it is worthwhile to separate it out in that manner. We can just put books in Entertainment for example.
So, without having a spending money category doing a gift card really is even more useless. If I give him a gift card and he buys books with it. He hasn't really gotten anything since he would have bought the books anyway.
4. I was talking to a friend recently and she and her husband don't exchange gifts. But, they buy themselves something special for the household around Christmas time. That seems reasonable. I could see maybe extending that to birthdays. That is, on my birthday I go out and do something special for myself that I don't ordinarily do, etc.
Does anyone do anything like that?
If so, do you give gift cards or physical items only (or a mixture I guess).
I have put up a poll so would love any explanations as well as weighing in on my situation.
I am trying to decide if I should suggest to DH that we stop doing Christmas presents and birthday presents. (We already stopped anniversary presents, but we do go out for it).
Issues I am having.
1. We often don't really know of anything specific to get as a physical gift. Usually if we really want something we have already bought it. But, occasionally there are exceptions and one of us gives the other a great gift. Last year I got DH a Keurig which was a huge surprise to him and he loves it.
2. I have had some success with giving him a list. For the last couple of years I've created an Amazon shopping list of Kindle books that I want and he looks through it and buys me some. That is fun as it is often books I was interested in but on the fence about buying. We tried doing this for physical items though and it didn't work as well. It was a chore to find items to put on the list.
3. So, we have often gotten gift cards. Of course if I give him an Amazon card and he gives me one that might seem like we didn't really give anything.
However, we usually each year allocate in our budget spending money for each of us. So the gift card does measurably add to that for each of us. And, we don't always give gift cards to the same place. I might give him one to Best Buy and he might give me one to Pandora.
But -- more importantly -- I think I am going to suggest that we get rid of the spending category in our budget. It is time consuming to keep track of and I analyzed it and the spending we do on that category is not so much money that I think it is worthwhile to separate it out in that manner. We can just put books in Entertainment for example.
So, without having a spending money category doing a gift card really is even more useless. If I give him a gift card and he buys books with it. He hasn't really gotten anything since he would have bought the books anyway.
4. I was talking to a friend recently and she and her husband don't exchange gifts. But, they buy themselves something special for the household around Christmas time. That seems reasonable. I could see maybe extending that to birthdays. That is, on my birthday I go out and do something special for myself that I don't ordinarily do, etc.
Does anyone do anything like that?