Sure is enjoyable to see people willing to give, kind of fun to receive too!

I don’t have a particularly large "immediate family". Since I’ve got no kids, I tend to consider my wife, my two siblings and their spouses, and my mother as "immediate family". But even the second category ("More than $100") in the poll would mean something like $1000 for Christmas.

I make a good living, but $1000+ isn’t an exchange of gifts with my family, it’s verging into "significant financial event" territory. I’d honestly rather we just got together for the big family dinner and skipped the whole gift exchange thing. As it is, I’m in the "Less than $100" group.

I think the other problem is that we’re all reasonably successful people. When I want something under $500, I go out and buy it – no need to wait for Christmas. The rest of my immediate family is in the same situation. It really makes finding an appropriate gift much more difficult, compounding the problem.

I find the choices to be somewhat strange. The second choice, more than 100 dollars includes everything else beside anything under 100 dollars. I think the choices should have been written as something like "100 under, 100-199, 200-299…"

There’s an option for less than $100, and one for more than $100, but no option for exactly $100 — which is what I’m supposed to be spending. Then I realized that I’m Canadian, and Omninerd’s figures are in US dollars, so factoring in the exchange rate, I guess I’m spending less than $100; which is what I voted for. Then again, I almost always go over budget, so likely I will spend more than $100 - or, well, anything except exactly $100. Truth is, I have no idea what I’m going to spend, just that I’m likely to break the bank doing it-but oddly enough in these economic times there are already a lot of broken banks floating around—including a few that had a lot more pennies invested than I did—so I guess we’re all in the same boat.

The same, leaky boat.

Man, life was so much simpler when people would just give each other pretty shells and rocks they found.

By the way, does anybody know where I can get some time? Of all things I can think of, time would make the most excellent gift, but you can’t seem to buy it anywhere… it’s always in such short supply.

Not that I’m cheap but I’ve never really thought of my self as one who liked to spend a lot on Christmas. Having said all that I had to be truthful with my self.

This year I wanted to make a soccer goal for my kids. That alone is costing me near $30 not including a ball or the last minute tools required to make the thing. All in all, in the end the one gift will cost twice that including the tools and ball. So I’m at $60 already with one gift. Then there will be the traditional sweater and clothes that they need anyway, and maybe another toy or two that I’ll probably spend more money making that buying the darn thing. So I had to be truthful and answer at least $100 per family member. At least I’ll be having fun making the gifts and in the process buying tool gifts for myself!!!