Tonight I am attending a family gathering for my grandmother’s birthday party. As usually when it comes to birthdays everyone tries to find the person something that they would like. My mom decided to give her $100 from that climate action dividend cheque that people here in BC received not too long ago.

The funny thing is some people thought that is kind of weird as they believed that it almost fell along the lines of giving someone a present that you received from someone else which you have no use or interest in. I was thinking to myself how it’s just money and so it doesn’t really matter too much.

I often see people give away things that they have no use for as a way to not only save money but at the same time hoping that the new owner will find better use of it. While I have never been the recipient or provider using this method, I can’t see how people can be labeled as being say “cheap” for doing it if they genuinely thought you would like it.

Speaking for myself, in some strange ways too knowing that they didn’t have to spend much money on gifts for you is kind of a relief as I personally don’t like it when people think things like gifts are some kind of financial obligation.

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For a lot of people that I know, instead of buying friends and family members presents during the holiday they simply invite everyone to a restaurant and pay for everyone’s meal. That way, they avoid having to go through all that shopping frenzy while still accomplishing the goal of doing something nice for people.

It might sound little silly, but I am usually a bit conscience on what I order in these cases as I don’t want to rack up the bill for the person who is paying. Just like the other day where the person kept asking if I wanted to order anything to drink and I just insisted that water was fine. Similar to receiving gifts, I tend to not want people to spend too much financially on myself as you don’t need expensive things to make people happy.

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With the last weekend of the holiday shopping season it seems like every company has multiple flyers advertising last minute sales to entice impulsive shoppers. On top of that, stores are already sending out flyers to advertise post Christmas sales which kind of makes shopping for presents after Christmas sound like a smart thing to do.

In some cases it kind of makes you feel silly as you can clearly see how there will be so many price drops after the holiday as if it’s like you are not disciplined enough to wait one day to save 50%. I usually try to find out the best deals online nowadays first as you can usually find digital versions of store flyers before they even arrive in the mail.

Whenever I see a sale on a flyer I don’t usually focus so much on the price initially but rather from a business perspective that usually tells me that the company often has some kind of vendor promotion to enable them to sell it at such a low price. With that, if I am interested in buying the item in question I would usually ask someone who works in the field to see how good of a deal it really is. Most often in these cases, you can get it for even less.

A lot of these prices that I am seeing are pretty enticing as is though I must say.

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I was talking to a person before who mentioned that for all his friends and family members, he buys them their gifts after Christmas which they don’t mind. Reason being is that around that time things are usually a lot cheaper due to companies attempting to get rid of its excess inventory that it couldn’t sell during the holiday shopping time. That’s not including all the gift returns that happen as well.

Kind of spoils the fun I think though. At the same time, you probably could save well over 30% by buying it afterwards. Of course, one could always just go with the gift card route too.

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I was thinking this year for Christmas that for certain people I could actually create something that they would like a lot instead of doing the typical spend X amount of dollar approach that I would normally do.

Just thinking of some of the stuff that I have seen people do, I’ve seen people create their own holiday cards, an artist that draws pictures for people and even simple photo collages consisting of precious memories in a self-made frame.

The first reaction for a lot of people is that their profession isn’t exactly a creative one which rules out the possibility of being able to create something. To that, I’ve actually seen business oriented people just make up their own goofy gift cards type of deal to allow the person to get services from them that people would normally have to pay for. Or better yet, they get to make them to do something that is embarrassing or outside their comfort zone.

It’s all in good fun though and is one way to give things to others without putting a hole in your wallet.

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