Here’s what we did.
My dh’s family always spends ridiculous amounts of $ at christmas. i don’t mean
to sound ungrateful, but it is usually tons of cheap stuff that obviously wasn’t
bought with any care or thought. (for instance, my mil knows what perfume i
wear and that i wear it exclusively, we have talked about it numerous times but
every time that she has given me perfume it has never been what she knows i
wear.
btw, what i wear is not expensive-jovan musk)
when we had our first child, we decided that we couldn’t continue to buy for
everyone in the family (there are 7 of them) so we proposed exchanging names. I
didn’t think that my mil would go for it, but she did. christmas came and the
whole family did exactly what they do every year, only they added the extra
presents for the name exchange on top of it all.
that was the final straw. we told them that we were no longer able to buy gifts
for adults (dh and i don’t even exchange) we buy for the children in our lives.
add in all of the extra food, higher electricity bills, decorations, travel
expenses, christmas cards, postage, film, photo printing, etc. and we still
can’t afford it but we don’t see a way to trim down much more.
kim