Buying Gifts: Equal Number or Equal Value?

I had an inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tion with the clerk at Kohl’s today.

While con­duct­ing the trans­ac­tion, I men­tioned that I had to guess as to how much to put on the gift card because I couldn’t remem­ber how much I’d already spent on this par­tic­u­lar grandchild.

As I heard myself say this, it occurred to me how much dif­fer­ence there is in my shop­ping tech­niques for my imme­di­ate fam­ily as opposed to my shop­ping tech­niques for extended family.

The clerk was com­mis­ter­at­ing — she said she’d raised seven chil­dren and she was always care­ful to spend the same amount on each child.  Appar­ently the chil­dren were very con­scious of whether their presents were of the same value as the other children.

This is not how I shop for my chil­dren.  On Christ­mas, I gen­er­ally try to have the same num­ber of gifts for my children.  How much I spend on each just isn’t part of the equa­tion.  This year I think I’ve spent a good 3 or 4 times as much on The Daugh­ter as I have on The Son.  Some­times, for birth­days, we spend $50; some­times nearly 10 times that much.  It all depends on what the child wants or the inspi­ra­tion that strikes that year.

Shop­ping for the grand­chil­dren and my nieces and nephews is dif­fer­ent.  Gen­er­ally, I try to spend the same amount on each child (or each fam­ily, if I’m buy­ing a com­bined fam­ily gift).

In think­ing about this I’ve real­ized that there’s some­thing deeper going on here.

When I’m shop­ping from the deep, shopping-from-love-trying-to-find-just-that-right-gift place, it really doesn’t mat­ter how much I spend.  Some­times that per­fect gift costs $5.  Some­times $50.  What mat­ters is that it’s just the right gift for the right per­son at the right time.  I love that kind of shopping.

When I’m shop­ping from the I-feel-obligated place, it’s much more impor­tant to spend an equal amount on each per­son.  Yes, I’m mak­ing an effort to buy some­thing that the receip­i­ent will want and hope­fully enjoy.  But when push comes to shove, I’m buy­ing because I need to give that per­son a gift.  This type of shop­ping is unpleas­antly stressful.

How do you shop?  Do you pay more atten­tion to the amount you spend?  Or the num­ber of gifts?  Or some­thing else entirely?

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