Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

this is the 1st holiday season that DH and I have our money 100% joint. it's causing some friction between us and sadly, it's all from my end. I just can't help getting mad at his logic and how much he wants to spend on his family, most of who don't even know we exist!

how do you handle buying for both sides without fighting?

Re: Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

I give him a big smooch and tell him I will handle the shopping for both families.

You also need to take into consideration how many people are in each family. In DH's family it 6 adults and a child. In my mine its only 3 adults. I am aware that we will probably spend more $ on his family, but when I see something for dad/brother etc that I like, I just pic it up.

I would also suggest that next year you can introduce to his family a secret santa? I do that now with his siblings, bc it was way over the top to buy for everyone.

HTH

Re: Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

DH is totally not into shopping so I do it all. I'll tell him what I'm thinking of getting people on both sides and see what he thinks. Plus we try to keep how much we spend on our brothers similar, our parents similar, etc. That really helps.

Re: Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

Posted by jxnoscar

I give him a big smooch and tell him I will handle the shopping for both families.

You also need to take into consideration how many people are in each family. In DH's family it 6 adults and a child. In my mine its only 3 adults. I am aware that we will probably spend more $ on his family, but when I see something for dad/brother etc that I like, I just pic it up.

I would also suggest that next year you can introduce to his family a secret santa? I do that now with his siblings, bc it was way over the top to buy for everyone.

HTH

Message edited 12/11/2006 12:54:28 PM.

Re: Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

We set an amount to spent on each person. My Mom & his Mom are given a gift of the same $ (about) and so on.

If he wants to spend $160 on his brother I'm spending $160 on my sister. (that's cause I like her, if I didn't like/talk to her it wouldn't be that much.)

Re: Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

We just basically send baskets to all our family and close friends...

Makes it easy

Re: Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

Can you set an amount total on what you want to spend for everyone? Say $500 on everyone or whatever the amount is. This way you can try to find gifts in a certain range for everyone?

This way you may only spend $20 on those people that don't know you exist.

Re: Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

we spend around the same one each others parents.

then we buy all our nieces and nephews presents.

my parents and brothers and sisters do a secret santa, so it is one gift there.

he is not a crazy spender so we are very agreeable.

Re: Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

I do all the shopping (even for his kids). He has no idea how much we spend and on who. He has no idea even what we get his kids. They are getting older and only want video games. His biggest thing is he wants to make sure there's at least one "big box" under the tree so it doesnt look like there's nothing there for them, so they always know the big box is clothes...

Re: Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

We both shop for each other's parents together. We never argued over how much we are spending. Once we like it we just go ahead and buy it.

Re: Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

Re: Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

Re: Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

You should do what we do for aunts and uncles- buy a case of wine. They used to buy us a little something and now they'll buy for our son, not us. We've been giving wine for the last couple of years, this year they will also be getting a photo ornament of our son. Now DH has a lot more aunts and uncles then I do, but that's not his fault. As long as it's the same amount on everyone, then there's no arguement.

Re: Holiday gifts for yours and your DH's family

I did 90% of the shopping for both sides, however I spend more on my family because they spend more on us...