Oops I bought it again

Previously, I was lamenting the state of present buying, and how it could get out of hand when you started to acculumate things. I suspect a good lump of this is in my head, but a) I would feel bad by 'down-rating' my budget and buying less and b) my bank statements are hard to ignore.

Before we get that far: it's not necessary to buy for others. In my mind I know this, but it never feels right unless it's reciprocal, and it can be hard to broach the topic when your best opening gambit is “So, we're not buying for you this year … ”.

So let's talk money in ways that would make the British cry.

Money is a difficult subject, with something of a taboo around talking about how much your earn and the state of ones finances. This is stupid but oh-so-British, and while I'm sure there was a good reason once upon a time (why are you not allowed elbows on the table??), when everyone is feeling it in the wallet, now is not the time to be tight lipped.

This year wasn't substantially different from past years - we spend about £15 / head. It's usally more, and this is based on the appearance, ironically: one £15 present doesn't 'look' as good as one lesser value plus something else, but experience tells us it's hard to find much that we're happy with for less than £12-£13. Regardless, this gives us a good starting point to bounce ideas around. Between Pam and I we had 10 family and extended family to buy for, which comes in at £150 if we stick to budget.

We didn't.

So that's £200 or so before we've even moved into the realm of friends, and that's deemed necessary. You can chose your friends, but not your family, so I'm told.

As we get older, our wages should go up, so that's not too bad, and yet, that's 10 people who we had to find things for and try not to clutter up their houses.

Next, I have mental strata on 'friends'. Yes, even my friends get categorised and assigned values. I'm sorry, I can't help it! I'm more willing to spend larger sums on people I know better, so they get lumped into a £15 category (more like £20 by the end). Then it goes down from there, based on how recently you've entered the present-buying radar. Girl- and boy-friends of friends are broadly broken up into transitory (£5 - £10) and permanent (£10 - £15). Fiances, wives and husbands count as permanents for this strata.

There are some people who are not on a permanent present list, but because we're going to be giving our friends (their partners) gifts, it would feel rude not to get them something. They get catagorised as above.

Interestingly, I can recall budgetting in the past with considerably less uniform values, which was fine since I had a lot of single friends. They're not so single now, which means we're on a slippery slope to cutting out a lot of the meat from the per-head budget in order to buy the right quantity of presents. I'm not against spending asymmetrically in theory, but I have a very strong sense of equality, and since money is a very easy way to quantify that, I go with it.

Just quickly counting the number of people we bought for this year outside of family pushes me over to 13, and I've probably forgotten someone. That's another £200 before we count the tip-over.

Our tip-over averages out at about £3 per person.

Broadly speaking, the budget would be listed as £18 * 23 = £414 on Christmas presents. In reality it was a bit lower than this, since not everyone had the full £18 spent on them. However, that's not counting Pam either. Although we limited ourselves to one present each this year, so we can keep the savings going up and spend it when we want something instead of trying to cram it all into Christmas.

To put that into perspective (without giving my financial records away on the internet): I try to save £300+ / month, the interest-only mortgage is £250 / month and my phone contract is £35 / month. Christmas effectively wipes out a month of saving.

Christmas is mostly over now, but in preparation for the coming years, I'd like to propose a few ideas for present buying. I don't think I'm going to suddenly fall out with the friends that I have, and most of you are reading this anyway, so it seems like an excellent idea to start thinking about it. I will freely admit that I am one of the worst offenders of the reciprocal-present, so like much of what I do, these ideas are mostly about me. I hope they'll help others at least a little!

It can sometimes break my second rule of present buying, but at least I know that you're going to get something that you want and won't be considered house-clutter. This is very different to writing letters to Santa, however, since this can be written up a long time ahead of time.

Instead of a list of things that you want at the time of list writing, I'd encourage the use of the wishlist for your 'would like to buy' list. Every time you want to buy something, put it on the list. It'll sit there for some days/weeks while you consider the purchase, and those items that are less important to get now will make excellent purchases for birthdays and other events. Like Christmas. The people buying for you know that the list has been compiled based on purchases you would have made yourself, and you get things you would've bought for yourself. Win-win!

wishpot is the one Pam and I have been looking at using, since it allows other people to reserve gifts to reduce the possibilities of duplicate purchases, and the list owner can't see what's been reserved, but equally Amazon's Universal Wishlist would probably work¹⁾. This instead of having her manage my wishlist, and me doing a poor job of managing her wishlist.

This is a no-brainer that everyone should be doing, although the downside is that you can feel as though your presents aren't personal enough.

The problem with wishlists is that sometimes what you want is out of everyone elses' budget, making it awkward for someone else. Defeat awkward by splitting the cost amongst individuals! The key here is to remember that your spouse is not who you want to be splitting the cost with, since the chance is your per-head budget is between the two of you, so you're not actually splitting the cost at all.

Unless you're buying for only one person (ie: birthdays), this isn't going to actually save you anything.

Going one step further, when you know you're going to have a gathering, get everyone to agree to a secret-santa style present session. With 6 people (or 3 couples), each couple would usually have to buy 4 presents. For us, that's £60.

Set a budget at some level that's reasonable based on the people in the group, and then find some way of distributing names. It could be deterministic (arrange names alphabetically, buy for the name below yours) or random (names in a hat, pick one name), but regardless, each person only then has to buy for one other person. With a budget of £30, for example, that other person is going to get something awesome off their wishlist, and (in our case at least) we've just saved 50% of the present budget!

Works well if you know the thresholds before you opt-in (£30 is affordable for us, but might be total over the top for others), and allow the opportunity of opting-out.

Even if these ideas aren't new, there are a good many situations where I can see gift-giving ideas like these saving me a whole bunch of anxiety, and the reciever a whole bunch of clutter. The crux of course being that a lot of this requires communication to sort out who's buying for whom (or not), so don't be shy with your money concerns and shed that taboo like an ill-fitting coat.

Fully expect Secret-Santa style operations to occur for Christmas 2010, and let me have your wishlist links as soon as you've sorted them out!