Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard this question several times from various people who find me on their Christmas gift list this year. I’m guessing they’re all thinking more or less the same thing: what do you get for a guy who doesn’t really want anything? So they ask me, and then I’m left with that difficult question to answer.

Frugal people are often the hardest to buy winning gifts for. Quite often, frugal people don’t want things that don’t have obvious utility or that don’t match their tastes well – it’s just “stuff” that takes up space. At the same time, they don’t often go for the obvious gift stuff, either – they really don’t need another tie or so on.

So what’s a person to do if they’re going to buy a gift for a frugal person? At the same time, what kind of sane answer can I give in response to that question?

Over the last few years, these questions have confronted me face to face many times. After some careful consideration (both for my own purposes and for The Simple Dollar), I’ve come up with a handful of general guidelines that will help in purchasing gifts for any frugal person – or might help a frugal person come up with gift ideas.

Focus on core passions. Get to know the person you’re buying for. What are they passionate about? What do they spend their free time doing? For me, the answers are pretty easy – I read, I write, I cook, and I play games with friends. So, for me, books are a good idea, as are nice notebooks. Good kitchen items are good, as are quality food items (like great cheeses). Board games are also good.

If you don’t know what specific item to get, get a passion-focused gift card or gift certificate. For example, a gift card for me to Barnes and Noble or Williams-Sonoma or Funagain Games wouldn’t be a bad idea. Why? This lets the person indulge in what they’re passionate about without feeling guilty about spending their hard-earned money on something extraneous.

Buy a single quality item instead of several of lower quality. Frugal people value things that are well-made and that will stand the test of time. Get a frugal person one good gift instead of three low-quality ones. Get them one good knife instead of a block of mediocre ones.

Consumables usually work. If you know a frugal person who likes chocolate, get that person a few bars of really good chocolate. If you know a frugal person who likes cheese, get them a chunk of Maytag Blue. If you’re gifting a beer loving frugal person, get a six pack from your local microbrewery – or if the person likes wine, go to a local winemaker.

A high quality food item in line with their tastes is usually quite enjoyed for several reasons. For one, it’s an indulgence they would likely not spend their money on. For another, it’s not yet another item that takes up space in their home because it’s consumed.

Avoid stuff that isn’t obviously useful or isn’t in line with their core values. Frugal people are often utilitarians, which means they don’t see great value in items that don’t fulfill a specific need or a specific use in their life. Avoid the kinds of gifts that rely heavily on aesthetic appeal unless you intimately know their aesthetics. If you miss their aesthetics, you’re just going to give them a gift that frustrates them.

In general, these are good gift-giving strategies for most people. The real core of the message here is to simply put a bit of thought into the gifts you give. “It’s the thought that counts” is often said tritely, but it’s really true: a little thought at gift-giving time goes a long way.

A few days ago, I received an interesting email from a person I vaguely knew from college. This person “rediscovered” me via The Simple Dollar, befriended me on Facebook, and sent me one or two emails.

Out of nowhere, though, the person emailed me a link to their wedding registry. It had been emailed to a lot of people, apparently – everyone in their email address book. The email included a generic invitation to pick out one of the hundreds of items they had selected.

I deleted the email. This was greed, pure and simple.

After receiving it, though, the issue of gift registries stuck in my mind. What exactly is tasteful behavior for a gift registry? Also, what kind of items should one put on such a registry?

Here are some of my accumulated thoughts on the matter.

Should I Have A Registry At All?
Over the years, a few readers have emailed me asking whether or not they should even have a gift registry for their wedding or baby shower. Usually, their concern was tackiness – isn’t it tacky to make a big list of the stuff you want? Didn’t we outgrow making gift wish lists when we were kids?

To tell the truth, I’m completely in favor of gift registries for such occasions. Most people have large social networks that want to buy gifts for weddings or for new babies, but they might not necessarily know what a good gift is. By making a registry, you help them out – and also (partially) ensure that you don’t get redundant items.

How Should I Let People Know Tastefully About the Registry?
Similarly, I have no objection to letting people know about the registry under one condition: they’re invited to some sort of celebration of the event.

For example, if a person isn’t invited to your wedding or reception, they should not be told about your wedding registry. Similarly, if a person is not invited to a baby shower of some sort, they shouldn’t be told about your baby registry.

Thus, I find the appropriate place to mention a registry is in an invitation. Include a simple extra slip of paper that simply says, “For your convenience, there is a gift registry at Target” or whatever location is useful to you and to your guests.

Do not suggest people buy gifts from your registry if they’re not close to you – or at least not close enough to receive invitations to your event. Doing so will not get you more gifts, but it will ensure that those people look poorly upon you.

What Should I Ask For?
Many people simply put everything they could think of that they could possibly want on their registry. I know we did this – we simply walked down the aisles at Target and put literally hundreds of items on the registry.

Bad strategy. We wound up getting a bunch of things that we didn’t really need on our wedding day.

Instead, the best place to start is with a list at home. Over a period of time, identify the things you would actually use. Look for things that really need to be replaced if you’re making a wedding registry. If you’re doing a baby registry, ask parents, particularly those with kids under the age of four or so, because there are many baby items that seem like a good idea, but are actually pretty useless in practice.

Also, make sure you have a wide variety of values on the list – and have more less-expensive items than very expensive items. Don’t load your registry down with a bunch of $300 items – not many guests will be able to easily afford those items. Instead, seek out items with a wide price range – it’s fine to put a few big items on it, but have more inexpensive items on it. Think of it this way: even if someone is intending to spend quite a bit on you for a gift, they can always grab multiples of the less expensive items.

A final tip: if you choose items of direct and immediate use to you, there are several benefits. First, it becomes much easier to write thank you notes for the item, because you can comment truthfully on how you’re using the item instead of having to find tactful things to say. Second, if it’s something you’re actually using, it’s made your life easier and saved you money and probably time, which is what gifts in these situations usually hope for. Finally, it’s much easier to show your item in use to gift-givers should they stop in – for example, if you ask for a pan you’ll actually use, you don’t have to “drag it out” to impress someone.

In short, if you’re authentic from the start about what you want and need, that authenticity follows all the way through, from the gift itself to saying thank you for it and when you’re actually using it. And that’s the best outcome of all, for both the giver and the recipient.

Any other thoughts on gift registries?

One of my readers related a story to me over a long conversation that, rather than posting a bunch of long quotes, I’m going to paraphrase.

This reader, who we’ll call Maggie, receives an over-the-top lavish gift from her great aunt each year. Her aunt loves buying the perfect gift for everyone in her family and, because she’s well off, she can afford to spend the time and the money in order to find that gift.

What I found interesting is that even though quite often the gift was a truly thoughtful and beautiful gift, Maggie reacts to it with only mild happiness towards the gift. I would have been ecstatic to receive the most recent gift – an Amazon Kindle with a $250 gift certificate to the Kindle Store – but Maggie did not.

In fact, what she felt was a mix of feelings, and most of them were negative. She knows her aunt loves her without the lavish gifts. She thinks that the money spent on the gifts would be better served going to charity or even kept in her aunt’s coffers so that she’d be okay in the event of something awful. She appreciates the gifts, but often finds much more meaning in the much less expensive gifts given to her by her mother, which are usually handmade or are extremely carefully thought out. And she also finds it difficult to relate to the life of a person who can throw around money so easily, buying everyone in the family gifts that push into the four figures for every holiday and birthday.

Maggie’s aunt has her heart in the right place, don’t get me wrong. It’s awesome that she’s so giving of what she has. But Maggie might better be served giving smaller gifts and instead perhaps putting the money she wants to give to her family into accounts for each of them, to be given when she passes away. This way, the aunt gets the joy of giving thoughtful gifts, is able to show her love through her largesse and make the recipient’s life more enjoyable, and doesn’t have to deal with the side effects.

Are you like that aunt, giving sometimes over-the-top gifts to the people you care about? You might be surprised to find out that sometimes the gift isn’t really all it’s cracked up to be, like the gifts from Maggie’s aunt. Here are six things to consider.

Overspending is not love.
Maggie knows her aunt loves her regardless of the gifts that she receives from her. This love isn’t formed under the Christmas tree. It’s formed with phone calls, afternoons on the front porch, family reunions, and big life events. Maggie doesn’t love her aunt because of Amazon Kindles – she loves her aunt because her aunt has been there for the big moments in her life and has been there for her when she needed her. That’s what love is, not stuff.

Overspending puts you at risk, and that hurts the recipient.
While Maggie’s aunt might be in a very strong financial position, many big gift-givers are not. Consider what happens if you give an expensive gift, then find yourself declaring bankruptcy soon. You’ve just given a second gift to your recipient: guilt. Your loved ones do not want to see you in a financially pinched situation where it’s difficult for you to live your own life. Don’t stretch things just so you can buy a gift that’s actually beyond your means, because the consequences will hurt both you and the recipient.

Overspending can create family rifts in unexpected places.
Imagine, if you will, Maggie’s mother. She might truly wish to be able to afford such lavish gifts as Maggie’s aunt tosses out, but she cannot. So she may feel inferior and guilty because of it. Imagine, for example, Maggie herself, who receives the items but then wonders whether the money used might not have been better used somewhere else. Little tics like that add up over time, over a period of many years where expensive gifts are sent and little bruises add up. I’ve watched it happen in my own family over similar circumstances – little, seemingly insignificant things build up and erode away a once-strong relationship.

Overspending can create inflated expectations.
Alternately, imagine one of my old school pals whose grandparents got into a routine of giving him amazing Christmas gifts. One year he received a Nintendo from them, followed later by a Sega Genesis and then the following year a computer. He loved those items, but he also came to expect something awesome from his grandparents, so when their financial situation changed and they skipped Christmas one year, he accepted it on the surface, but on a lot of levels he was hurt by the change. He had spent months looking forward to a great Christmas surprise that suddenly had disappeared. While this may seem like a greedy child, it actually was not – he didn’t actually care that much about the items themselves. He mostly felt, through the emotional lens of a child, that he had somehow done something wrong and let them down, and it really dragged him down for quite a while.

Overspending doesn’t compensate for other mistakes.
Many guys tend to try to cover up for a big faux pas by buying an exorbitant gift for their wife – it’s so common, it’s often joked about in pop culture. While the gift might be appreciated, it’s not the gift that brings about the forgiveness for the mistake – it’s the fact that the husband seems to be truly showing regret. Instead of feeling like an exorbitant gift is in order, perhaps a more direct and true showing of your feelings might actually be what’s needed – and it might save a pretty penny, too.

Overspending can send the wrong message to others.
One year, I splurged on my nieces and nephews and bought them some stellar Christmas gifts. I found out much later that other members of the family didn’t interpret these as gifts for children, but as attempts as showing other family members up by buying the “best” gifts for the kids. What was intended as a gift to make a child happy instead turned into underlying resentment and some form of “Christmas Cold War” that wound up basically eliminating our family’s gift exchanges after a few years.

If you’re tempted to really splurge on a special gift for someone, think carefully about the reason you’re doing it and the potential consequences. Not only might the purchase be the wrong financial move, it also might be the wrong choice for everyone involved, including the recipient.

Because of this, I encourage people to give carefully considered gifts, not exorbitant ones. A well thought out $20 gift for someone is almost always better than an off-the-cuff $100 gift, any day of the week.

A few days ago, on the very day I pledged to reduce my personal book buying budget to $0 for the coming year, a little surprise came in the mail: a $25 gift card.

To a bookstore.

Ordinarily, this kind of thing is just something to laugh off and not worry about, but the whole situation made me think seriously about gift cards, and it made me realize that there are a lot of interesting little problems related to them.

Should you use a gift card as soon as possible after receiving it? I’ve come to believe that this is the optimal strategy for gift card use. Why? First of all, if you don’t use it, you tend to forget about it (and potentially lose it). According to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, “More than 10 percent of the $58.3 billion in gift cards bought [in 2006] won’t be used”. Why? Often, it’s because they’re simply lost or forgotten about in a desk drawer somewhere. I know that we had a spa gift certificate for years floating around – it finally got lost in the move.

A second factor to consider is inflation. Let’s say, hypothetically, that you have a gift certificate worth $100 to a health food store. With inflation at 9%, if you hold onto that card for a year, you’ll only get roughly $91 (in today’s dollars) worth of stuff when you finally use it. Our spa certificate was for $50 off a couple’s massage – when we received it, the couple’s massage at that spa was $89. Now it’s $129.

My advice? If you have a gift card, use it as soon as you can. This eliminates the risk of forgetting about it or losing it and also prevents inflation from eating away some of the value of the card.

How should you handle spending “over” the amount of the card? I know that if I walked into a bookstore with a $25 gift card, the likelihood is that I would spend some small amount over the value of the card just to make sure I used all of it. If not, I’d keep the card around in my pocket and then use it in such a way in the future.

In either case, the presence of a gift card often subtly encourages us to spend money we wouldn’t otherwise spend. I often use them as justification – I can now get this $29.99 item I don’t really need for only $4.99! – for completely unnecessary purchases.

What’s a good strategy to adopt here? Go with a friend or two and then spend less than the value of the gift card. Then, if your friend is also making a purchase anyway, slip them the remainder of your card. Not only will they appreciate it, you also won’t find yourself stumbling to spend the last little bit of that gift card.

What if you don’t want the gift card at all? Not too long ago, I won a gift card to Sephora. For those unaware, Sephora is a store that sells cosmetics. What use could I have for such a card, really? I’m a guy living in Iowa who prefers to dress in blue jeans and comfortable shirts.

You have several options here, but my favorite is to simply re-gift such a card. Find someone you know who might actually use the card and give it to them, either for a gift-giving occasion or just because you can. This either serves a purpose of giving you a very inexpensive gift for someone or else helps you cement a relationship with someone. In either case, it’s an added value for you.

In my opinion, gift cards only work as a gift if you know they fill a specific desire of a person. Give a book lover a gift certificate to a bookstore and they’ll love you for it (especially if you’ve slipped it inside a gift of a paperback you think they’ll love or one that holds special meaning for you). Give it to someone you don’t know well and they’ll probably just shrug their shoulders. If you’re in a situation where you’re giving someone something as generalized as a Target gift card – one that doesn’t match any sort of specific interest or attribute about the recipient – just give them cash. Cash is the gift card that works anywhere, after all.

As for my book store gift certificate, I’m going to hold onto it until the end of my pledge. Using it now seems like cheating – and a sure way to convince myself to spend a little more and completely destroy my pledge.

… they come from the heart.

In most of our lives, there seems to be a never-ending string of gift giving occasions – birthdays, graduations, baby showers, wedding showers, and so on. That often means a never-ending string of gifts to give, and because we’re all so busy and harried, it’s often easier just to pop onto Amazon.com or into a local shop and quickly pick out some material item that we guess they’d like. A few minutes, a few dollars, and it’s done: a social check-box filled with a material item that both of you will forget in a month.

The amazing part of all of this is it’s often less expensive, much more meaningful, and often less time-intensive to give a gift that’s meaningful and personal. Gifts like that don’t involve a trip to Wal-Mart (possibly for components, but not for the gift itself) – they involve just a bit of thought and care.

Doubt it? Here are some ideas.

A blank card where you write the note in your own handwriting. Don’t spend $5 on the Hallmark special for a card for an occasion. Instead, just buy a bunch of blank ones and write notes on the inside in your own handwriting. Don’t know what to write? Save poem snippets and such that you like in a box somewhere and use those for the right occasion – if you read a poem that makes you think of someone, save it and use it in there. The minute it takes you to write a nice handwritten note is far less time than it takes to sift through the overpriced cards at the store – and more meaningful and cheaper, too.

Baby shower? Give a certificate or two for nights of free babysitting. Again, this just takes a minute or two now – write it out on a slip of paper and put it in the card. Later on, when they redeem it, it’ll be a gift that they’ll cherish – an evening of free time with their spouse to have a nice dinner and rekindle their marital relationship without the child around. That’s an amazing gift – and it comes from being a caring friend, not from being a department store shopper.

Graduation? Send homemade care packages to a college student. Give them a card telling them that you’ll give them their graduation gift when they go away to college, then send them a few hand-made care packages – homemade cookies, snapshots of their home and families and places they hung out at in high school or local events, or even better, a letter bundle – collect short notes from several of their friends still at home, wishing them well. Make a video tape or a DVD of stuff from home and include it. Send some basic toiletries, too (whatever you can get very cheaply with a coupon) – I was always glad to receive these in college. Two or three of these throughout that first college semester will mean far more than $20 in a Hallmark card at the graduation party.

Wedding shower? Make them an address book. Ask the organizer for the names and addresses of everyone attending the shower, then fill out an address book for the person getting married. You can even contact the organizer of other showers to help with this. A basic address book can be had for pennies, but you can make something incredibly special out of it by doing this.

Or make them a “friends and family” cookbook. Ask all of the guests for recipes (esp. of foods the married couple liked as they were growing up), then assemble them together in the cookbook. Aunt Martha’s lasagna recipe, written out in careful detail, will alone mean more than the blue light special.

Anything you can make is a great gift. Here are a few cool ideas I’ve experienced.
- I like making food items for people as gifts – homemade bread and pasta, especially.
- My wife likes making homemade cookies and also makes homemade soap.
- One of our closest friends is a great photographer who likes finding personally meaningful things for people, taking the photographs, framing them, and giving them as gifts.
- Another person I know does the exact same thing with her sketches and watercolors.
- One friend crochets and knits all year long when relaxing, making scarves and socks and sweaters and afghans for people as Christmas gifts.
- My sister-in-law once gave us a journal made out of homemade paper and a piece of wire. The paper and covers had been washed, pulped, gently colored, and re-pressed into handmade sheets. My wife and I loved it.
- I’ve received many compelling and thoughtful mixtapes over the years that introduced me to lots of interesting music (india.arie, for one).

It works even for kids… One of my son’s favorite toys is a sturdy handmade picture book depicting all of his family and people he knows with their names spelled out under them. It’s just photos glued firmly onto stiff scrapbook pages with writing underneath. He went through a phase not long ago where this was his favorite item on Earth.

What do all of these gifts have in common? They all say “I care” far more than the Wal-Mart special – and they’re all quite thrifty, too.

After an offhand mention of souvenirs recently, several people commented on the topic, indluding Cyde Weys, who left this one:

And as for souvenirs while traveling, my solution is simple: I don’t buy them, period. Souvenirs are synonymous with schlock in my mind. I can return from a trip with the memory card in my digital camera full of pictures and have more than enough to remember the trip by. I don’t need a physical item to remind me of somewhere I’ve been; my memory is good enough.

I guess the question really is what value are souvenirs – or what are souvenirs – for the frugal traveler. For example, my idea of souvenir isn’t a snow globe or a t-shirt at all (although I do sometimes buy shot glasses for my father, who has an enormous collection). Typically, I don’t buy souvenirs for myself (I’m content with memories and pictures), but for others. Because of that, and because of my own lack of interest in the items, I don’t buy the usual souvenir junk.

I try to look for the following:

Distinctive postcards If I have time when traveling, I try to send a distinctive postcard to people I care about. It takes a few minutes and only a dollar or two, and it always raises a smile, as it’s a reminder that the human connection between the two of you is valuable. You were willing to stop on your trip and take the time to send them a quick note and a visual reminder.

Items that aren’t native to where I’m from The further I travel from home, the more unusual the fare becomes. Thus, I usually try to look for items that aren’t native to where I’m from, but aren’t tourist schlock, either. On one trip, I picked up some salmon that had been smoked overnight, flew home with it, and gave it to my father in the evening – he utterly loved it. That, to me, is a great souvenir, not some schlocky t-shirt.

An item the recipient will genuinely enjoy When I travel, I try as hard as I can to find a local chocolatier to get local chocolates for my wife. Sometimes I am successful – I found some incredible spicy chocolates on one trip – but other times, I end up with regional brands that aren’t particularly special but aren’t found in our local area either.

In short, I attempt to find things that have value outside of the context of the trip itself. I try to find things that would bring genuine enjoyment to the people that would receive it, like the simple and personal touch of a postcard or some distinctive chocolate for my wife. If it becomes an unwanted item, gathering dust or being only worn on weekends while cleaning the house, there’s no reason to bother.

In the end, souvenirs are in the same boat as any gift-giving situation: is it something that the recipient actually would enjoy and value? If you’re not sure of that answer, the souvenir should probably stay on the shelf.

Both of my children have received a pair of savings bonds as Christmas gifts this year. While the gift is wonderful and very much appreciated, I am considering cashing them in and putting that money straight into their college 529 account. Let’s look at the pros and cons of the choices.

Why I Should Cash Them In

The cash value will almost assuredly be greater in the long run in a 529. As I discussed before with my own savings bonds, the amount of money one could make in another investment far exceeds the returns one could expect from a savings bond. By cashing the bond in now and moving the cash straight into my child’s 529, the return is likely to be much better than just sitting on the bond.

Since these bonds were given as a gift for the child’s future, it makes sense to maximize the return. Savings bonds are given to children with the intention of providing them with money later that, in theory, they’ll use responsibly. That’s the exact reason why I’m putting money into their 529 – to provide them with money that they’ll use responsibly in the future. Why not consolidate the money where it will get the best return?

Why I Shouldn’t Cash Them In

The gift was not a contribution to their 529. The gift that was given was a savings bond, not a contribution to a 529. A savings bond quite often is bought for different reasons – the money is being invested in the government, not into corporations, for example, and the bond money, when cashed, can be used for any purpose, not just education.

The bond offers a guaranteed rate of return – the 529 does not. Although the odds are good that the 529 would put more money in the child’s pockets in eighteen years than the savings bond would, the bond is the one that guarantees a rate of return. The other investment does not.

Cashing in the bond might be socially questionable. It’s the equivalent of taking a gift that’s just fine and exchanging it because it doesn’t match your tastes. For some, that’s completely appropriate – for others, it’s a questionable social move.

My Plan

In the past, I would have just shrugged my shoulders, stuck the savings bond in our safe, and not worried about it. This “solution” was mostly borne out of a fear of money management and also a fear of how to talk about money with others. Now, my solution would be somewhat different.

First, I would have a conversation with the gift giver about the reasons they gave the bond to the child. Did they want the child to use it for college? For something fun when they were older? Did they really not care that much – they just wanted to give a financially responsible gift? Maybe it was just a way to buy a government bond.

Based on that discussion, I might tell them about the 529 and (possibly) ask about whether they would want the bond to contribute to that. This is usually the best option if the gift was given without a purpose, or with just the purpose of paying for school – if there are other issues at play, I’ll usually just put the bond away. I usually explain how the 529 works, how I’m contributing to it, and answering any questions they might have.

Regardless, I won’t convert the bond and add it to the 529 without approval. Most of the time, honestly, the bond will likely remain as a savings bond. However, in the case of at least one of the bonds, I’m pretty sure I will be redeeming it and depositing it into their 529 account.

What it really comes down to is this: was the gift given to help a child with college? If that answer is yes and you’re able to have a healthy and mature conversation with the gift-giver, it might be worthwhile to see how they feel about it. Otherwise, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth – leave the bond as it is.

Each year, my grandmother gets me and my wife an exorbitantly expensive gift, usually something way out of her budget. One year, she managed to procure a small library of Kurt Vonnegut novels all signed and with individual notes inside in his handwriting. Another year, she managed to find me several pounds of fresh imported truffles. Another year, she bought us apartment decorations from Turkey and Belarus done in an Eastern Orthodox Christianity theme.

I am continually blown away by the creativity and generosity of this woman. She lives on Social Security and saves up throughout the year to do this for us. She’s a quiet old lady who lives with her disabled son. She doesn’t have internet access and mostly spends her time reading and such. We talk on the phone each week and I make a strong effort to make sure she sees her great grandchildren each month.

Because of her relative poverty, I feel a strong sense of guilt when I receive her Christmas gift. She’s really the only person whose gifts I feel guilty receiving, because everyone else is spending at least somewhat within their means.

She puts a tremendous amount of thought into the gifts, and it’s one of the high points of her year when she sees me sit there in almost stunned silence, appreciating the gift. And I do appreciate it – more than perhaps any gift I receive in a given year, her gifts come with a lot of love packaged with them.

At the same time, I am aware of the challenges she faces in her life. I know she has difficulty paying her bills sometimes, and I know that the financial burden placed on her by her son’s situation makes things very tight at times for her.

I’ve found, from talking to many people, that there are a lot of us out there who are in a similar situation with someone in their life. A friend, an older relative, someone who showers us with overabundant generosity to their own detriment. We often receive their care with great appreciation, but also with a sense of guilt and confusion about what the appropriate response is.

After some discussion and thought about it, this is how my wife and I have decided to handle it.

We will accept the gift gracefully and happily. The gift is very important to my grandmother to give – it’s something that makes her quite happy. If she chooses to spend her money in this way, so be it.

We won’t compete with her in terms of gifts. Some people might decide to try to make a “gift race” out of it. All that does is encourage consumerism. We’ll continue to get her appropriate gifts, but we won’t turn it into a gifting arms race.

We will offer her help in other ways. I keep in contact with her throughout the year and, if she runs into trouble with her bills or something else, I’ll help her out. Similarly, I continue to make an effort to keep her as a part of my life – she’s my grandmother, and she’s been wonderful to me since the day I was born.

We don’t feel confrontation or a request to cut it down would really help. First of all, it creates a sense of hard feeling that doesn’t need to be there. Second, she’s far too stubborn and would likely ignore us anyway. This is something we’ve actually gone back and forth on, but we finally decided that the downsides of discussing it and encouraging her to stop isn’t worth the joy she gets out of the gift giving.

How do you handle this situation in your own life? Please speak up in the comments.