How fair are you in your gift giving?

[OrangeBirdGirl]

As I'm wrapping presents, it makes me wonder what people with multiple kids do? Keep the dollar amount within $x for each kid? Same number of presents?

No kids and only people DH & I exchange gifts with our my parents. They are married so they see what each other is getting. Dad is getting 2 gifts. One gift is a 6 pack of BBQ sauces from a restaurant across the country he loves. Mom has 5 gifts. I didn't want to wrap all my dad's BBQ sauces separately so I split into 3 boxes, then his main gift. That put him at 4 gifts to open with mom 5. So then I had a small combined gift for them (chocolate covered macadamia nuts) so I will put that in dad's stack to open so they open the same amount of gifts. But then I realize I spent $50 more on my dad over mom. But my mom got 2 pairs of Levi's as part of her gift, where I got each about $25 off (totals the $50 price difference if I paid full price). So while I might leave the gifts alone, if I can come up with something of $50 in value for mom, I'll get her something else. Then to even out presents they open, I'll have to get my dad something else. LOL, never ending cycle. But if it came to that, I'd just get my dad something like a bag of Christmas wrapped mini Snickers.

When DH's grandparents were alive they were extremely fair for all grandkids and even treated an in-law grandkid the same as a biological one. They did it based on dollar amount, $200 per grandkid (which I felt was extremely generous). We'd get cards at Christmas with our gift and inside the card would be a check for a very random amount to equal $200 minus the price spent on our gift.

 

[Meriweather]

We've always done $ amount.
Still do, for grand kids, DD, DS, DIL and DH and me.
Number of presents doesn't matter and none of them care.

 

[disneydreamer1980]

We have five kids and I keep track of every dollar spent and they all get an equal amount of money spent on them. I also try to make the quantity of gifts as even as I can.

 

[prairie_girl]

I’m the oldest of four and it would never occur to me to keep track of how many gifts each of us got or what the dollar amount was.

If I had multiple kids, I think I’d keep track of $ and try to keep it close over number of gifts.

 

[DVCjj]

We definitely gave each girl the exact same amount of gifts to open like my parents did for me and my sister.
When they were young, they couldn’t care less about cheap vs expensive. Maybe because they were 7 years apart.

Both middle class homes, my Christmas was tons of gifts. Only child Husband’s were small amount of things he was pleased to get. he was.
My mother enjoyed shopping for Xmas gifts though mom in law didn’t. Both sets were average people with average homes etc. I’m old so this was quite many years’ back.

I’m a gift giver even now. I think because my parents were.

 

[ralphie]

I used to keep it even for all, but three gifts apiece. Now, sometimes one may get more money spent for something special, but still three gifts each.

 

[jalapeno_pretzel]

I keep the gift number even between kids. I don't really track the cost, but I think it's probably close.

 

[WLWildlife]

Same amount of money and same amount of gifts for each child.

 

[LoveDaisy]

Same amount of money and when they were little same amount of gifts. Now that they are adults set amount of money but number of gifts may very. DD1 wants 2 expensive things this year and DD2 wants several less expensive things. Both get stockings.

 

[disykat]

Same approximate amount of money, same amount of gifts. That might have been different if my kids were further apart in age though. My kids were close in age so it was the same - except the year one was a toddler and one was an infant. The infant definitely got shorted!

 

[Cannot_Wait_4Disney]

We don't impose an exact equal number of gifts or a dollar amount. But we wouldn't give one kid 500 bucks worth of stuff and another 5 bucks worth of stuff or one 20 presents and the other 2.

 

[barkley]

it's just us and our 2 adult kids. I have a dollar amount I budget so it's about the same amount dollar wise* and I'm pretty good at having a very similar number of packages to unwrap as well-my youngest is on the spectrum and while my oldest would'nt think twice if there were a different amount of packages my youngest would and would either feel slighted or feel someone else was being slighted.

* as far as 'dollar wise' goes it might not be the same actual dollar amounts spent b/c there are some items I know to watch for good deals on like my youngest's coveted (and in my mind-overpriced) d&d books which I never pay full price for but I don't nesc. roll those savings into spending more on him than the combined value of what i've budgeted.

 

[amcnj]

When the kids were young I tried to keep things pretty even. Especially the number of gifts, as they tended to alternate opening them up. Sometimes more of any joint gifts were given to the one with less to open. Now that everyone’s an adult, I still try to keep around the same dollar value, but the number of gifts isn’t as important.

For other adults, such as parents and siblings, I never really cared about the number of gifts, but had dollar amounts in mind. Now everyone is in the “don’t need/don’t want anything” stage so numbers and dollar amounts are way down.

 

[Kitty 34]

We tried to keep it even toy wise but not down to the penny.

Now with the three sons and wives we just give each money and a couple of small gifts

Grandkids we splurge on but we keep the gifts the same number; they learned to count quickly!!

 

[sam_gordon]

We try to keep it close on money and number of gifts. May be off a little, but as PP said, you don't want one to be opening 10 gifts and another to open two. Guessing they would notice that. We don't match money down to the penny, but probably within 10%. Kids won't know (probably), but it's the principal of the thing.

Our gift count and cost each has gone down as the years have progressed. It's not as easy to shop for young adults as it is kids.

 

[slo]

When my girls were little, Santa brought them the same amount of gifts, if one daughter had a more expensive gift, I would still wrap up frivolous gifts, just to make things equal. Kids like to open gifts, even if it’s just a fun pair of socks.

Today, we just have my DD22 with us, so I don’t need to be concerned about equality anymore.

In regards to parents….each parent gets 3 gifts. The money spent is different with each parent. Not because a parent is favored, but because things were bought on sale. Then each set of parents (a togetherness gift) gets 2 restaurant gift cards and those are equal money spent. We all get together on the same day, so everyone does see each other’s gifts. I don’t think anyone is adding in their head how much money was spent on each person.

 

[AnnaS]

Three kids - all married/family

6 grandchildren

The grandchildren each get a card with $ and a small gift to open - $ always same amount and gift is more or less same amount. Might be a difference of a few dollars.

Children/spouse - card $ with Christmas scratch off

I did cut the amount of cash to everyone in half since my DH passed last year

 

[MamaMermaid]

I've got one kid... you can imagine how Christmas goes

 

[kdonnel]

For the kids we always made sure they had the same number of wrapped gifts and tried to spend a similar amount of money but never added it up other than roughly.

Otherwise we reached agreements with people to not exchange gifts.

 

[Luv Bunnies]

I've always made sure both kids get the same number of gifts at about the same dollar amount. As adults, they have very different wants and needs. One has moved to a colder climate and wants new long underwear, another blanket for his bed, sweaters, etc. He also wants Starbuck's and other gift cards. The one who lives at home wants a new keyboard for his computer, gift cards for an online gaming site, a few things for his model train set-up and some video games. I'm throwing in pajamas and a couple new shirts that he needs but didn't put on his list.

My sister and I act as personal shoppers for our mom. She wants to give everyone two substantial gifts from their lists, plus $100 in gift cards. She always throws in checks for everyone too (we have a nice mom!). Since my sister retired last year, she voluteered to take care of everyone except herself, of course. So I got mom's gifts for my sister. I had them shipped to my house so she doesn't have to open all the boxes and try to figure out who gets what. I'll label them and take them over this week since she likes to do her own wrapping. Works out nicely!