not buying for extended family next year

**favesis37** · 12-17-2005, 04:10 PM

after talking to all my sisters and sister in laws, we have all decided not to buy for each other next year. this will cut 20 people from my list alone. most gifts average between 10.00 and 20.00 so a big savings. this is going to be tough on me but i know i need to do it. we have decided to buy for my sisters birthday's instead, i still get to give but not at christmas time and it wont' be so expensive.

**kaykwilts** · 12-17-2005, 04:37 PM

A wise decision. This will take away some of the stress of Christmas.

**Mom23boys** · 12-17-2005, 04:38 PM

I am thinking of doing the same thing. It is getting way to expensive and out of hand!

**midwestgal** · 12-17-2005, 04:57 PM

Wise decision! Sometimes someone just has to be brave enought to broach the subject!

**AmyMCGS** · 12-17-2005, 05:01 PM

Good idea. Think of how much less shopping and stress you will have next year.

In our family, we draw names and set a firm spending limit -- then we all still get one gift, and we still get to buy, but it's WAY less expensive.

**favesis37** · 12-17-2005, 05:05 PM

lol, if you only know how afraid my sisters were to approach me with this. i am a huge christmas person, so they talked and picked numbers to see who had to approach me on it.lol. little did they know i was thinking the same thing

**PrairieRose** · 12-18-2005, 02:29 PM

We did this many, many moons ago and I'm so happy we did. It certainly makes the holidays more enjoyable for me and really, who needs more stuff....?

**slowtypinwoman** · 12-18-2005, 02:43 PM

It got to the point in my family, where all we were doing was exchanging G.C.
So, we stopped that a long time ago.

**staceyy** · 12-18-2005, 09:38 PM

We decided to all meet for dinner out sometime during the holiday instead.

**dolphin** · 12-19-2005, 12:15 AM

Some families get so big you just HAVE to do it. We did it many years ago. We went to drawing "families" and that worked well. There were 7 of us kids and Mom and Dad so we just put each of us kids and Mom and Dads name in and one person from each family drew a name. We had to force Mom and Dad to do it but it really took a lot of worry off of their finances since they were still trying to buy for all of us kids and all of the grandkids.

Now that we've moved so far away we only give to extended family if we make something and send it to them.