Hopefully the readers of this blog were smart enough to stay out of the bubble and still have some cash to through around at Christmas. I'm not a big fan of the commercialized orgy of buying that Christmas has somehow morphed into. I'd prefer to go back a few decades and have a simpler version. Of course my kids look at me like I'm some kind of whack-job. But buying gifts for the sake of buying gifts just seems silly to me. It seems every year I'm expected to buy gifts for more and more people. Since gift buying is so hard, now we just exchange gift cards. What's the freaking point of that. I get a $50 gift card from uncle Fester and he gets a $50 gift card from me. Why don't we just exchange crisp new $50 bills. Better yet, why don't we just pour each other a nice dram of single malt (scotch) and toast a happy holidays!
However, if anyone wants to buy X a gift, a nice bottle of single malt would do nicely!
3 comments:
You have the right idea with the single malt, X. For my nieces and nephews, the signature gift this year is American Silver Eagles. They get a beautiful coin and a lesson to go with it.
Semi-related to this, while out doing some shopping I thought I'd stop by some of the jewelery stores in Tyler Mall one day to see if there was any good jewelery for my Mom. I did not get anything as jewelery is kind of a waste, but boy did they have "enticing" offers. I would point out a piece I was interested in, ask the price, and they would read the tag and say "well, I can give it to you $250" instead of the $450 on the tag. When I said oh that's alright I'm just looking, the offer dropped to $150, and ended at $100 before I walked out the door. I guess the jewelery biz is really hurting this Christmas.
The only store that stuck to their original prices was Ben Bridge, which I guess is not surprising.
Last year it was custom skateboards for the kids...this year - we have budgeted only $70 for presents and have spent $65.00
$50 of that was for Guitar Hero that they could share....we have told them that we are paying down bills and saving for a home - they are pretty hip on that since we had to move from our rental this year when it went into foreclosure - they have learned the ugliness of this housing mess first hand.
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