How to do a shopaholic intervention before Christmas

[Anonymous]

You can't control what your sister does. You can change how you react to it.

"Sis, we're not buying gifts this year. We're going to give to the food bank instead."

And if she buys gifts for you anyway, say thank you and move on.

[Anonymous]

Your sister has an addiction that she cannot control. The only thing you can do is not feed it. She gets a dopamine hit by shopping for things and uses gifting as an excuse to feed it. I could not participate knowing it hurts her financially. Any sign of approval from you or your spouse and children will encourage her to continue.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One of my sisters is a severe compulsive shopper, she also has several kids and a job that is not secure. Every holiday, she over buys gifts for everyone. We have all asked her not to buy gifts for everyone but she does it anyways, then we all have to buy more gifts for her and her family. It's out of control. Her spending is causing everyone to overspend at holidays. She has credit card debt so it's putting her finances and credit at risk. Anyone have an answer for this? Have you done an intervention on an overspender?

you do not have to buy her and her family more gifts -

Ask for receipts and return them and see if they can’t be credited back to her credit card. If not, give her the money back yourself.

[Anonymous]

Everything is so much more expensive this year, I fear is going to be a financial disaster for everyone. We have tried the secret santa/one gift in the past and she still ended up buying stuff for the kids. She probably needs medication - is there a drug for this? Ozempic for shopaholics?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tell her this year you are not doing a family gift exchange including her.
Pick reason: a) concern for economy b) making donation to Food Bank/WCK/something you chhose.

Tell her you are are serious. Tell her not to buy gifts for your family.

This.

[Anonymous]

This is my SIL. We have never, ever reciprocated with a similar gift strategy. She rolls up with like 7 gifts per person for my family of four. Her kid gets a gift. She and her hsuband generally get a joint gift. And then my husband adds 1 or 2 more things. Often some sort of food stuff (like chocolate we bought in Belgium).

Virtually everything she gives me is donated. I don’t need serving dishes with Bible verses or most of the other MLM stuff she gives me. I’m not a stuff person. I go to church every week, but I’m not putting Bible verses all over the house or candles, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is my SIL. We have never, ever reciprocated with a similar gift strategy. She rolls up with like 7 gifts per person for my family of four. Her kid gets a gift. She and her hsuband generally get a joint gift. And then my husband adds 1 or 2 more things. Often some sort of food stuff (like chocolate we bought in Belgium).

Virtually everything she gives me is donated. I don’t need serving dishes with Bible verses or most of the other MLM stuff she gives me. I’m not a stuff person. I go to church every week, but I’m not putting Bible verses all over the house or candles, etc.

Do you redonate it? That would be so annoying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Everything is so much more expensive this year, I fear is going to be a financial disaster for everyone. We have tried the secret santa/one gift in the past and she still ended up buying stuff for the kids. She probably needs medication - is there a drug for this? Ozempic for shopaholics?

Not that I know of but bankruptcy puts the brakes on for a while.

[Anonymous]

This is about you, not her. Sorry sister, money is tight this year so we won’t be giving gifts for Christmas. The end. Her habits are not your problem, you clearly have enough of your own.

[Anonymous]

Just announce that you're not doing gifts this year.

You enabled this monster, OP, but reciprocating. As soon as you stop, she's going to stop.

Everyone needs to stop giving her family gifts.

[Anonymous]

we had a similar but not this extreme situation. we tried picking names one year but that didn't work. so then we started setting budgets and making lists. this really helped. we've been able to ease up on the rules since we started.

[Anonymous]

This is easy. We declared one year that we are only giving gifts to people under 18 or people who had no kids (I’m not going to stop shopping for my niece and nephew just cause they are in college) and we were only accepting presents for our kids. Took a year, we stuck to it, now everyone is on board.

[Anonymous]

You set your boundary-no gifts and make it clear you will not accept them. You do not reciprocate. When she brings gifts, you calmly give them back. You cannot control her, but you can have firm boundaries, and you must with an addict.

[Anonymous]

When multiple members of my family got like this, we announced we weren't doing extended family gifts anymore. It was the only way to get them to stop, and even that took several years. We send cards. People have too much stuff. We don't even do a ton of gifts within our family, just stockings and a few items, kids get some extra stuff like books and art supplies.

[Anonymous]

Turn off the gifts for everyone! People can buy gifts for their own kids, but that doesn't have to be part of the extended family celebration. Other family members will probably appreciate this, too. If you must give gifts, do "books only," as those are under $20.