Money Moral Dilemma: Should I buy gifts for both halves of a couple?

marich

What a miserable , mean and grudging bu66er you are !

For goodness sake - if you don't really want to , then why exchange presents at all ?

Really !

Tinxmum

If it was me I'd just give them a card .

sclare

I can only assume that most people who've responded are married or well off. Such smugness.

I've only recently realised how much single people lose out where traditional gift giving etc are concerned. And as a married person, I was oblivious for decades. The rounds system means a single person among coupled friends, has to buy twice as many drinks in a night, than each of the others. And a single person with friends/relatives who are married and with families is going to find Christmas very much more expensive than the other adults in his/her circle.

I think it's ok to occasionally feel fed up about this. And I think it perfectly ok to buy a gift for the couple. My husband and i were certainly happy to have couple gifts.

fierystormcloud

sclare wrote: »

I can only assume that most people who've responded are married or well off. Such smugness.

I've only recently realised how much single people lose out where traditional gift giving etc are concerned. And as a married person, I was oblivious for decades. The rounds system means a single person among coupled friends, has to buy twice as many drinks in a night, than each of the others. And a single person with friends/relatives who are married and with families is going to find Christmas very much more expensive than the other adults in his/her circle.

I think it's ok to occasionally feel fed up about this. And I think it perfectly ok to buy a gift for the couple. My husband and i were certainly happy to have couple gifts.

Wow. ^^^ Good grief. I have never heard anything like it Smug? No-one is being smug! People are just giving their views! And they are perfectly valid! What a bizarre way to read into people's posts.

As for all your complaints about being single and sooooo hard done by, because of everything you had to do, buying all these gifts, and all these drinks at the pub and so on and so on; you didn't HAVE to do anything. Nobody made you.

I think it's sad that anything and everything you did, you clearly held grudges over. Even all these years later, you are clearly still miffed, even though you are now married!

Life is too short. Let it go.

As for the OP complaining about having to buy 2 gifts for a couple who are supposedly her 'friends,' when she only gets ONE back; there is a simple answer: just don't buy. Not if it's bugging you that much buying gifts for people.

I'd hate to think someone resented buying me and my husband a gift each for our birthdays when they only get one back! :eek:

As someone said earlier in the thread, how rude for couples to not share the same birthday to make it much more convenient for the OP. Jeeeex, with friends like this, who needs enemies?! Good grief.

Kynthia

My friends all decided to only do birthday gifts and not do Christmas, as we all have so many gifts to buy at Christmas and receive plenty at Christmas so it made things a little easier. Plus we don't buy gifts for partners of friends as we aren't as close and probably aren't invited to any celebration. If we are close and celebrate their birthday then we do. We do buy for partners of family as they become family.

I can imagine it gets more expensive for a single person and if their gifts were cheaper I'd assume it was because their budget was smaller, having one income, and it has to stretch across a number of people. Same with anyone I know that doesn't have a lot of money, if they've put thought in the value is irrelevant.

I can't believe there are couples that count themselves as one until when it comes to rounds! I think that's terribly selfish and would never do that. Rounds are based on the number of people drinking.

silvercar

You have a niece/ nephew, you enjoy that relationship, you buy them a b'day/ Xmas present. When they are older, and you very much older, I'm sure they will visit you. They could turn out to be the only family you have. Cherish them.

JStuart

Gosh there are some harsh replies on here! Perhaps these are the people who are in couples and only buy one gift when they receive two?! I often wonder about this myself too, with my sister and her husband, so you're not alone. It can get very expensive for a single person whose siblings are married and have children. It shouldn't be about the money, so I try to go with thoughtful gifts which are handmade (I make jewellery and various other things as I get the urge). I buy them joint presents for Christmas, and I don't buy her husband birthday gifts, as he has never bought me one. I still get my sister a birthday present. I'm quite happy with that. However, with my brother and his girlfriend I buy for them both, as they both get me something. I had to think about this when I was made redundant last year, and money was very tight. It makes you think about why you're buying in the first place, as often we get into "political present purchases" and lose the spirit of gift giving

pixiebel81

At Christmas there are two solutions:

1) Stop doing presents and suggest a night out - book tickets for something maybe so everyone pays the same

2) Implement a secret Santa system - everyone draws a name out of the hat and only buys for that person

lesley_wyld

You shouldn't be buying them anything if that's how you 'evaluate' things! Gifts are an expression of many things - caring, thank-you,

Lily-Rose_3

I do think that the OP has a point, but the way they have presented themselves isn't great, as they have come across as being very resentful of buying their friends things. As a few on here have said, just don't buy anything anymore and tell them that you're stopping gift-buying, because you wish to pull in the purse strings.

My take on it is that it must be hard if you are single and having to buy for loads of people, and the answer is to just stop if it bothers you so much. Or spend a lot less. As people have said on here, nobody is forcing you to buy anything.

My personal experience with situations like this is I have not really been single since the mid 80s, so don't have this actual issue (with being single and buying for couples.) However, I do have a large-ish extended family. (5 cousins and a brother,) and 2 of my cousins have 5 kids each. They are all older except my brother, and all started having kids way before me. (Again, except my brother.)

My eldest cousin had kids first, and had two within a year (back in the mid 80s,) and these were the first babies in the family since my brother! (So about 10 years.) And everyone bought them gifts, including me, for Christmas and birthdays. Then it really snowballed over the years as the other cousins had kids too, and within 10 years, they had about 13-14 kids between them.

I had gotten into such a habit of buying by then, (and it was expected too,) and I just couldn't stop. So me and my husband were buying gifts for some 13-14 kids and not getting ANYthing back, because we had no kids LOL.

Then we had our daughter, and when she was little they bought her a gift back, then when she got to about 4, one of them just stopped, and when I asked my aunt if my cousin was not joining in with gift buying anymore, she said it was because she hadn't got much money! She could still afford to smoke, go to bingo 3 times a week, and keep 16 pets though! As I bought for all 5 of her kids, and also her 3 GRANDchildren at this point, I was actually really peed off that she couldn't buy one small gift for our ONE child.

Anyhoo, I digress. The upshot is, if you are single - or indeed part of a couple - and you know people/are related to people with bigger families than yours, you DO end up spending more, and buying more gifts. And although we shouldn't put a price on things, and it should be 'all about the giving yada yada,' it does breed resentment when you're getting one gift for your one child, and having to buy 5 or 6 back, for someone with lots of kids, or if you're single, and having to buy for a family.

So I do 'get' the OP, but the only answer is to stop buying really. The crunch came for me when our daughter never got a gift for her birthday off this one cousin, and she claimed poverty, yet 2 weeks later, swanned off to Euro Disney with all 5 kids.

At that point, I announced to all 5 cousins that I was no longer buying for any of their kids, as it was all becoming a bit much, as there was so many now. The following Christmas, 2 of them didn't even send a card to us, and later on, it emerged they were cheesed off with me and my husband stopping the gift buying!

I'm sure someone will say 'your cousin has a right to go to Disney with her family if she likes,' (or something similar,) but the fact is that she happily took gifts for many years off us, and then decided she couldn't buy even a box of maltesers for our ONE child, as she 'couldn't afford it,' then she went to Euro Disney with her whole family. So we reserved the 'right' to quit buying gifts altogether for her children, and grandkids.

And while we were at it, we took the opportunity to stop buying for the children of cousins (and also their children, as it was getting ridiculous.)

We only bought for my 2 nephews after that, and my husband's 2 nieces. I think THAT annoyed them too, that we were still buying for them, but tough! These are the children of our brothers!

It's such a relief to only buy for 4 kids now!

As an aside, I know my cousin had a right to stop buying gifts, but to still keep taking them off us for HER kids, when she had no intention of giving one back, was very rude IMO.

Just my twopennyworth! Don't jump on me LOL!