That’s a very good point. Just because you can buy your children whatever their heart desires, should you? Impulse buying or worse guilt motivated buying, is a dangerous budgeting tool.
Just because your daughter wants a pony, or your son wants an F-4 phantom jet, doesn’t mean you should buy it for them. If your wife must have a new mink coat, perhaps buy her two minks and tell her it can be her little DIY project?
Turning Christmas/Chanukah/Kwanza/Holiday Season into a competition to see who can give the best and most expensive gift, is a recipe for a Holiday Hangover that is worse than the one I plan on having for January 1st (i.e. really bad). Yes, everyone loves getting presents, but spending yourself into a huge debt load for a bunch of stuff that your kids may never remember is not the way to go. What does it teach your kids? Out-of-control spending is OK, and their parents are walking banks that can afford whatever their heart desires?
After watching commercials on the weekend, I came up with a better question: Who buys someone a CAR for Christmas? Seems like the thing to do, the only cars I got for Christmas were Hot Wheels. Anybody else buy someone a car for Christmas (or better still received one?). I did get a car from my wife one year, it was a Radio Controlled Formula 1 car (a Williams Nortel Car actually (how ironic)).
It is the season of giving, but not the season of GIVING UNTIL IT HURTS!
This is exactly the approach I’m taking to giving gifts this year. Instead, I’m going to be giving Christmas cards. Can I give gifts? Probably. But I’ll also put myself in a bind financially for something my loved ones most likely aren’t going to use on a regular basis.