My daughter isn't working due to medical issues and has a list of gifts to buy for friends. This is getting very costly every year and they only want gifts from certain stores. I feel $10.00 is enough and she feels it's not.

__________________

Without Health you have no Wealth!

I was going to ask how old she is, but if she's of age to work, she must be a teenager. I'd have to agree with you...I think that between $10-$15 is nice...no more! My sixteen year old son got three of his friends each a $15 Target gift card which I paid for. My fourteen year old daughter made up little bags with a candy cane, Hershey kisses, a lollipop, and a mini Beanie Baby teddy bear that I got last year on clearance in Walgreens (I got about eight of them at the time). I don't have the expense of tons of teacher gifts anymore like I did when they were in elementary school so I guess it all works out. ~Lisa

You don't say how old she is, but if she is old enough to work, then she is old enough to buy her own friends gifts. Since she is not working then she needs to do what other people who are short on funds do: make something, bake cookies, make candy, chocolate covered pretzels, fudge are always a hit, etc. My DD is 12, she buys her own friends Christmas gifts out of her own money, I will help her out if she really seems to be budgeting well and really trying to make her money stretch. If you are expected to pay for her friends gifts then IMO $10 is too much coming out of your pocket unless it's maybe 1 or 2 (but sounds like maybe more than 1 or 2), it would still be cheaper for you to offer to buy the ingredients for her to bake something.

DD 14 spent (my money) $20-$25 on her 3 best friends and got little stuff $5 for a few others.

My 13 year old gets an allowance and IF he choses to buy his friends gifts it will come from his own money. That is how children learn to save and budget their money. It is too easy to live beyond our means.

Maybe her friends could come over and they could make cookies/candies together and make a good memory. Maybe have a sleepover or something. Do some charity work together. Donate the cookies to a shelter. Make simple blankets for babies at the hospital. Spend some time with animals at a shelter. That's what is Christmas is to me.

IMHO I think the Christmas present thing gets WAY over done by most people. It is so commericalized. Do these friends really need to exchange gifts to feel that they care about each other? Most of us have enough clutter in our lives. Sorry. I'm over my Christmas rant now. :-) And please don't take that personally. This is just my feeling about Christmas in general.

__________________
Donna

My kids did a combination of some things from the dollar store, and some cookies that they baked. They made a "goody bag" for each of the friends they wanted to give a gift to.

How old is your daughter?

__________________


"Never loan your car to someone you have given birth too"

Ahhhhh......I think I'm liking having boys!

cj/

__________________
I was walking home one night and a guy hammering on a roof called me a paranoid little weirdo. In morse code. -Emo Phillips

I'm with ya CJ! But, then comes the GF gifts! Don't even get me started on that!!!

This is how we handle it as well. This all started because my son was saying that I was *cheap* because I wouldn't spend $20 on his friend's birthday awhile back so from that day forward, all gifts for friends come out of his money.

It really is best anyway. He gets a good allowance. He needs to learn a bit of frugality if he thinks I'm cheap at wanting to limit the amount to $10-15... He also needs to learn to give and share with others.

Kids.

I have boys and we have only ever bought one friend a present for xmas. I paid for it and we spent about $20. This was a best friend and the child was coming to stay with us the day after xmas for a week.


My boys are 16 and 13 now and they have never mentioned getting gifts for their friends. My 13 yr old did want to get a gift for his gf (shudder) this year and we got her a cross necklace that was $14.99.

__________________
Sell crazy some place else, we are all stocked up here.

Last year my DD (who was just turning 16) and her friends decided they were going to exchange gifts. My daughter promised to pay me back with her Christmas money (both my kids get money from their aunts & uncles). Everytime she bought something she had to turn the receipt over to me. Well, my daughter had a rude awakening when I came to her after Christmas with all the receipts which totaled almost $100! There went all her Christmas money! Needless to say, she told her friends she would NOT be exchanging gifts with them this year. Instead, she baked brownies and made up little bags and added holiday M&M's and tied them up with pretty ribbon. By doing this, she was able to give to all the friends in her "group" ~ not just the ones she is closest to.

My youngest DS (14) is so awesome. He gets good grades, helps in the community, is pretty much a straight laced, normal teenager. He has never gotten in trouble, doesn't give anyone trouble, and just is an all around sweet and adorable young man (yes I am partial!!).

As long as he continues this way, I do not put many, if any, restrictions at all as to what he can spend on gifts. Money is not the biggest motivator, but I think rewarding such great behavior, at least in our house, is a continual thing.

So no, we don't usually tell him "no" on too many things (within reason).

We don't buy gifts for friends. When I was a teen, if I wanted to buy gifts for friends, I could use my own money. My folks didn't out of pocket for gifts for friends and neither will we

__________________
Proud to say I haven't shopped at a Wal-Mart since Sept 2003

When I was a teenager if I wanted money for gifts my mom would always let me do jobs around the house to earn it. The ones she didn't like Like oiling the cabinets, weeding flower beds etc, not just simple everyday chores.

Sweet 16

__________________

Without Health you have no Wealth!

My DS is 17 and has 2 girl "friends" . We went to the Dollar store and bought 2 bags and 3 matching products-lotion,showergel,spray,for each... 8 dollars total for 2 gifts.

__________________


"Never loan your car to someone you have given birth too"

This year my DD, 15, gave her friends the 7 oz Hershey Kisses that were a special that came up on the LWIF board for about $2 each. Last year, she invited a group of friends skating at a local arena and paid all their admissions which included rentals, I think $5 each.

This reminds me of the 'gift exchange' I would do with my friends when I was a pre-teen/teen (small school and I had went to school with all of these girls since kindergarten, etc.). We would do a small exchange, spending about $5-$10 on each girl. Never would fail though that one girl in the group would always buy the same thing for each person every year--a $1 box of chocolate covered cherries (they weren't poor that we knew of anyway, but she said her mom wouldn't let her spend anymore than that). My oldest dd is 11 and so far the gift exchange between friends thing hasn't come up yet. Sigh. I love the idea of baked items, fudge or homemade candy. I'm a great cook and can pull that off easily and cheaply (somewhat cheaply anyway). I agree, all the gifts to EVERYONE is way out of control, but I do understand why the teens want to do the little gift exchange. It's just their way of preparing themselves for the grown-up world I guess. I will be making my dds accountable somehow for the funds, however.

My 15 year old daughter has her own money, so she buys gifts for the friends. When she was younger I would spend $10-$20 depending on how close the friend was. She never wants or wanted to buy for more than 2-3 girls.

Now, the 12 year old is a completely different story. She has the 1 best friend she does everything with. We spent probably $50 on her. Then there were the 11 girls at school that she plays soccer, volleyball, etc. with. Those girls all got Christmas decorated take-out boxes filled with homebaked goodies. My 12 yr old loves to cook, and her friends were all asking for different sweets about 3 weeks before Christmas. We probably spent an average of about $5 per girl when dividing out the costs of the ingredients, containers, and ribbon.

My 9 year old son has 2 "best friends". One is his cousin, so easy to take care of on that one. The other one is the younger brother of the 12 year old's best friend. We spent about $35 on him.

As they get older and have more money to work with, they'll have to buy the gifts for the friends like our oldest does, but not just yet.

Well here is what we did today at the mall which I thought went well.
Best Friend: We bought a $15.00 Hollister Card and a $15.00 Victoris Body Spray
Friend 2: Favorite Dvd on Amazon 17.00
Friend 3: Victoria Secret Body Spray $15.00
Friend 4: Really Cute xmas Gift set at Bath & Body $5.00 plus we have a xmas candy with it
Friend 5: Really isn't exchanging so a cute ice skate pouch and candy gift bag with beautiful xmas handmade lolli 5.00

Not bad at all and most importantly she is happy and for what she has been through I said heck she deserves to be.

Then of course more gifts for my own kids that I don't need.

__________________

Without Health you have no Wealth!

I don't think my 14yr. old is buying any gifts for friends this year. My 17 yr. old has bought a few presents, but w/ his own money, so I have really not been keeping tabs. For some friends, he is getting gag gifts, for another, a giant candy bar, nothing too costly. One thing he is doing, is having a bunch of photos printed, of him and that specific friend, and then buying cheap frames. He has the writing paints, and is embellishing each frame. Ora, I think $10 per kid might be a little high, especially right now w/ everything else going on (I can imagine you are up to your eyeballs in medical bills). Do you have a Five Below store around you? There are some great gifts in there, all of course, under $5. Also, maybe for next year's gifts, this might be therapeutic for your daughter-find someone to teach her how to knit those really cool scarves. That's something she can do when she isn't feeling well, but is bored @ the hospital.