I grew up having to hear about the following story my whole young life.
My mother had a significant birthday and my Dad was just awful at coming up with presents. Her single gift for her 40th birthday was a rubber hot water bottle (and I think it could convert to a douche bag!). He thought he was brilliant because he had heard her say once her feet were cold (and we lived in Newport Beach CA for heaven’s sake)
From that point on I took over and took money from him to go out and buy his presents to my Mom. He was very relieved to be off the hook.
I think the best approach would be to charge whatever you like to the cc and then show your spouse the gift.
"Honey, don’t you just love this new birthday present you got me? " (flash the diamond necklace)
I get this, because I love getting fun, surprise gifts. But I have had to accept that my wife simply cannot do it. She can’t even do it with advice from somebody else who understands this (like our kids). She is a very pragmatic person, so her idea of a good gift for me is something to replace a worn-out thing I already have, like a desk chair. My idea of a perfect gift, on the other hand, is something like the Mystery Box from Archie McPhee. So now I simply tell her what I want, specifically, and while I’m rarely pleasantly surprised, at least I’m not disappointed.
But she didn’t give me my worst gift ever. That was when my parents gave me (as a young teen) a set of barbells for Christmas.
Label a jar and call it “wishes.” Every time you find something that you would like write that on a small piece of paper , fold it up and put it in the jar. Ex. random flowers, the name of your favorite perfume, a book you’ve been wanting to read, a dream date, your favorite bakery or cake and exciting vacation. In fact you can have each family member do this so that each one has a jar. That way any family member can take a peak into your jar to get ideas of things you would like or want to do. You end up getting gifts that you’ve always wanted or experiences that are memorable that you are guaranteed to love.
I stopped caring about my birthday long ago (way before 50). It was the day I was born … big deal. You know, we were ALL born, we ALL have one day a year on which we mark another year on this earth. It’s not exactly a rare event in the scheme of things.
Maybe I am jaded by the fact that my birthday is right after Christmas.
Maybe it’s my practical side again but when you’re married any money spent by your spouse on your gift, you are really spending as well. It’s showing up on your credit card statement, comes out of your bank account.
Now gifts from your parents, that’s different. That feels like a real gift.
Kelsmom, my birthday is right after Christmas (and generally during Hanukkah). Why on earth I decided that same week would be a good time to get married is a question I’ve contemplated many times in the past 33 years!
I have an update on my redo birthday. My husband booked the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, booked a room on the club floor and the romance package (bottle of wine, chocolate, and late checkout) and a 1-hour massage with full use of the spa. The hotel was simply amazing. I highly recommend it if you live in NC or visit Asheville. Today after we checked out, we went to the Biltmore for lunch! What an amazing time. I expressed to my hubby how happy I was that he thought about all of this on his own (well after my melt down on my birthday :). Just him making my redo birthday special warmed my heart!
@rom828 Did you have a-chance to visit the spa? It was so amazing. It is like you are in a cave just pure bliss. They provide beautiful robes and slippers to wear all day at the spa
That is wonderful @nurse001 ! So glad you were able to have that wonderful trip.
I think it is so much how you are raised as to how you treat birthdays. My husband remembers having one birthday party as a child. His mother refused birthday cakes on her own birthdays. In my large family, from the moment you woke up on your birthday, you were the " queen" or " king" for the day and you were celebrated. There were fun birthday parties with friends and favorite meals, even for my mother & father. My parents would tell us about seeing us for the first time, bringing us home, how excited everyone was that we were born and we all felt cherished. It took me awhile to figure out that birthdays were not that big of a deal to everyone else! Dear husband does help the children make or buy:) a birthday cake for me every year but I quietly buy my own gifts & put them in the closet. Husband wraps them and my children think he is most the wonderful, kind, thoughtful man in the world. Win, win for everyone. Because he really, really is wonderful.
I’m fine with buying what I like, but it is touching when H and/or the kids make an effort to gift me with something thoughtful. S and D bought me the iPhone 6s and I use it daily and wanted it but was too cheap to splurge on myself. They also bought us a smart TV and a watch this past Christmas.
This year, I’ll be turning 60 and H will be turning 75. Not sure how we want to celebrate–may give it some thought.
My birthday is also too soon after the holidays for even me to feel festive, after having assorted family coming and going since Thanksgiving, doing the holiday decorating, taking all the decor down, throwing parties, etc., even I don’t feel festive on my own birthday. I have had a lot of dismal birthdays! This year we had agreed to host a meeting without thinking so I spent the evening cleaning house in a mildly grumpy mood. I told DH I get to pick that same day of some other month to celebrat
Here is a classic example of my husband’s gift giving. This Christmas , I gave him a list of some sweaters that I liked from the Sundance Catalogue. This is my favorite place for clothing and I rarely indulge because to me, they are kind of pricey.
He didn’t think they were " fun " gifts to get although to me, they were things I really wanted.
I was lucky, I gave him a few items from a wish list and he got all 4 of the sweaters
But a week before Christmas, he was beside himself over the gift he found for me…I had no idea what it was , but I went along with his enthusiasm.
He was just so excited about it …turned out to be a Furbo , which is one of those dog treat dispensing , video monitors that you can send out a treat and look at your dogs when away from home…
Cute but what he failed to remember is that we have two dogs, one of which is food aggressive . Shooting out cookies without human supervision is a big mistake in our house…he tried it out on Christmas morning when I was upstairs and the first try resulted in a dog fight
The other day when we were not home, our food aggressive dog finally figured out that there was kibble in the device and she chewed it apart to get at the few nibbles inside.
