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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Not the OP, but I too would really love to hear people's advice about how, specifically, they got their families to agree to this.  How did you broach the idea?

I am pretty certain my family would think we are selfish, lazy and cheap if I made this suggestion.  The thinking would be, if everyone else in the family can make the effort (AND they all make less money than us) what is our problem?  It doesn't help that my mom really loves shopping for gifts -- we end up with so much stuff we don't need or even like all that much.  It would make her sad if we told her we didn't want to exchange gifts anymore, or even just limit it to the children.

Compounding the problem, my husband's family goes even more overboard than mine.  We literally receive hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of gifts  from his side of the family, and it is embarrassing that we don't spend as much on them, even though we buy a lot of individual presents for everyone -- and this happens EVERY year.  I'm getting to the point where I really hate the holidays because we have over a dozen people to shop for, and each of them has to get multiple presents.  Gift cards are a no go, it would be considered lazy and thoughtless.  It is ridiculous.  I hate it so much.

I just would really love to hear specific advice for how to deal with this issue with families where EVERYONE else seems to love buying tons of gifts for everyone, making the person who disagrees the spoilsport.  [/quote]

It was easy in my family. As a child growing up I noticed that my grandparents gifted money to my parents and to us (they still do, as my grandparents are still living). When we got older (25+), my parents started gifting us money as well. They'd say "please buy a new washing machine/microwave/shop vac with this money." And voila! When kids were young we just asked for college money or if they actually needed anything, we'd have grandparents buy that. My mom is a little harder since she actually wants a real gift and enjoys opening things. But at least she's one person.

With DH's family we all have amazon wishlists and we all really enjoy buying off the wishlists. We put fun ideas up there, activities and things we'd like to get. We aren't greedy, but it ends up being things we'd buy anyways.[/quote]

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