Re: Holiday spending (or not)
Billy said:
I don't wanna be a killjoy here by mentioning something like this, but holidays can really eat up the cash.
Has anyone here ever figured out how much a certan holiday has cost them? (I don't mean just presents...) but all the trimmings?
Try it in a household that celebrates both Christmas & Hanukah.
We've cut it way back. All the adults exchange cards or online websites. We have potluck dinners and everyone hauls away more food than they started with. (Grandma's baked yams-- priceless.) This holiday meal for five is probably about $40 of materials and a few hours of labor (mostly teaching the next generation how to cook it). Presents are selected way in advance, bought on sale, and stashed until it's time. This year both our hardcore TV watchers are getting $40 RF headphones from eBay. I'll probably get some power tool that'll save me more contractor bucks than we spent. Grandma & Grandpa spend a few bucks on Hanukah gifts, do it all over again at Christmas, and mostly spoil their grandkid rotten.
Our "worst problem" has been the schoolkids exchanging gifts. They're very generous with their parents' money and things get pretty competitive. When a circle of a half-dozen teenagers starts swapping $25 Wal-Mart cards, the guilt cost adds up quickly!
We tell our kid that she's getting these gifts because she's a good friend and because she helps with homework. She should smile, say a heartfelt thank-you, and not worry about reciprocating unless she wants to. While that advice may come in handy in a couple decades, the gift guilt is the teenage problem NOW.
So when the post-holiday garage sales start, spouse is always on the lookout for cute containers. You've seen them everywhere-- cookie tins, glass jars in the shape of Christmas trees, whatever. She buys them for a buck or two and builds up a stash of a half-dozen by autumn. When the Hallowe'en candy goes on sale she buys Hershey's kisses in their generic silver foil wraps. They go into the jars and that's the reciprocating gift. The first rule is to not initiate a gift exchange. But if she's ambushed, she responds another day with one of the containers. Her true friends appreciate the thought (and the chocolate) and everyone's happy. The not-so-true friends (who are keeping score) may be a bit disappointed but they probably won't ambush her gift next year, so the problem goes away by itself. I think all the grownups are looking for an excuse to get off the gift-giving treadmill and maybe this'll catch on in the next few years.
My personal peeve is holiday letters. Some of our neighbors & friends spend over $100 on stationery & stamps. Acquaintances who can't be troubled to drop a line all year will bombard us with four-page letters & photo albums all month. I always answer them after New Year's (when they're not lost in the shuffle and are more likely to be appreciated) with an e-mail and a photobucket link.
My next holiday pet peeve is fireworks. (In Hawaii, Asian families use fireworks as a cultural practice to bring luck in the new [western calendar & Chinese calendar] year.) Over the years it's turned into a he-man ordnance competition, and the smoke/noise/mess is unbelievable. Even after buying a $25 permit families will spend $100-$200 to create more trash than they can be bothered to sweep up. Due to two decades of military explosives safety I just can't bring myself to run around in a smoke-filled neighborhood setting flammables ablaze, so our kid knows that if she wants to burn her money then she has to save up for it.
This year's holiday is going to be a bit more expensive. It turns out that the fiber-optic Christmas tree we bought at a garage sale last spring is missing a few critical parts... but we can always revert to the unlit one we've been using for the last decade.
yet this is a perfect example of where to put money aside for later. Instead of spending, say, $300, why not just spend $250 and bank the rest? No one will suffer from the savings of those $50 bucks.. 8) (will they?)
