Making Me a Millionaire

Using Elfster to do Secret Santa

My husband and I come from large families so the holiday season is one of stress, chaos and near bankruptcy.  My brilliant sister one year had the idea of doing a Secret Santa exchange for our family and ever since then, that is what we did.  It saved us the stress of having to get gifts for so many different people (especially when we have in laws and coworkers and friends to shop for too) and the financial burden was a bit lighter.  Since we’re not getting gifts for everyone in the family, we’ll do things like send each other cards and give each other stocking stuffer.  Everyone in my family really enjoyed doing Secret Santa and this year we are doing the same with our group of friends.  We’ll have an exchange party and open our gifts there while celebrating the holidays with each other.

So how do we do our Secret Santa exchanges?  We use Elfster!  Elfster works for us because I live far from my family and many of our friends.  Everything is done online.  Here’s how it works:

1) Create an exchange on Elfster. – add all the people who will be part of the gift exchange.  Set a deadline for signing up and set a date for the exchange.

2) Build a wishlist.  Elfster is great in that you can search for products and link directly to them on your wishlist.  Since I have an amazon wishlist, I link directly to that.  I love that you get to create a wishlist because then people will get you something you want rather than buy you a gift you may not like and have no use for.

3) Elfster draws a name for you. This will be the person you need to get the gift for.

4) Throw an exchange party! If everyone is in town, it would be fun to have a party and see what gifts everyone receives.

I don’t recommend doing Secret Santa if there are young kids involved.  It’s more of an adult thing for those of us who already have pretty much what we need and are just looking for gift giving fun rather than stress.

Do you do Secret Santa or White Elephant or any other gift exchanges?  What do you prefer and what do you find to be the most economical?

Is it OK to Give Money for Christmas?

Now that Thanksgiving is over, we’re beginning to plan for Christmas gifts.  My husband’s brothers and sisters all decided to have babies last year so this year we have several nieces and nephews to get Christmas gifts for.  Thing is, they are all around 1 years old and I’m not sure there is any gift out there they would really appreciate.  We were thinking about getting them educational toys or stuffed animals or something but they all have so many toys we weren’t sure if they even needed any more.

After discussing amongst ourselves, we talked with his brothers and sisters to see how they felt about us contributing to our nieces and nephews’ college funds.  I was surprised to learn that they didn’t even have the funds set up yet and thought it would be a good idea to encourage them to open a 529 and contribute money to their college education for Christmas this year.

This wasn’t a very popular move with some people and I can understand why.  What fun is there in contributing to a college fund for Christmas?  I tell myself this will just be the gift of choice while the kids are young and don’t have materialistic wants yet.  Maybe when they hit their teens we’ll get them an ipod or whatever trendy gadget of choice.  It’s funny because both my husband and I think this is such a great idea and we’re excited about it but I can understand why it’s not such an exciting gift.

Perhaps I get this from my own parents.  In high school, my mom would get me SAT prep books for Christmas and stuff my stocking with things like batteries, underwear, pens and things that are considered “practical”.  I rarely got “fun” stuff.  After I started working at age 16, for Christmas every year my dad would give me an envelope with a note inside that said “I’m contributing $100 to your Roth IRA account”.  At the time, I had no idea what a Roth IRA was and I would whine and tell my parents they were the worst gift givers.  Today, I have over $16K in my Roth IRA account thanks to dad and I am very very grateful for what he did.  I guess I’m hoping that one day our nieces and nephews will be just as grateful that their crazy aunt and uncle decided the gift of education was the best Christmas gift.

So here’s my question:  Is it OK to give money for Christmas?  Is contributing to our nieces and nephews’ college funds a good gift?  Or should we supplement it with a “real” gift and also get them a small toy?  Would you rather get a “real” gift or would you rather receive a monetary gift such as a gift card, money, contributions, etc.