Jym, I’d go with a restaurant card or something around $50. One of S2’s friends is getting married and I know we won’t be on the guest list, but want to wish them well. For this particular couple a gift card to a craft beer and ribs joint would be perfect.
Countingdown, I’m sure those nieces and nephew were thrilled to get those small gifts from you over the years. When I was in college my grandfather would send a $10 or $20 check to me a few times a year and it was fantastic. It meant I could go skiing for day or buy a book or jeans or eat for 2 weeks.
Or you could have some relatives like we have in my/my husband’s extended family. Although we live frugally and keep a low profile regarding $, because we outearn family members and are good at saving there seems to be this feeling among some that WE should gift very generously to them. We do gift more than others but not ostentatiously but have heard comments about being cheap. There is no winning either way…
@CountingDown, I like your sensitivity. We also out-earn my siblings and though my H is very generous and has given them money for big things, which they asked us for with trepidation and with the intention of paying back, but I’ve urged him to let them do things like grab the check now and then when we eat out. That’s been good.
We’re going to a wedding this summer of one of our D’s friends. We’re friends with the groom. The families are in a very different socioeconomic strata than us, and H wanted to give a big gift, but I do not want to embarrass anyone. We’ll give a nice present and leave it at that. These occasions are not for making anyone feel uncomfortable.
Just make sure the $50 restaurant gift card is enough to cover at least a moderate dinner.
I agree with @lookingforward
I gave a restaurant gift certificate to my in-laws neighbor as they are very helpful. I checked the menu online, came up with a number, and rounded up to the next 25. They probably wondered how I came up with $175.
“My point is that I am not comfortable gifting an amount to a niece or nephew that is larger than what their own parents could afford. And, yes, if I wrote a $1,000 wedding check, that would be common knowledge in short order, precisely because it is so out of the norm in my family.”
I hear you. Otoh, we make more than my sister / her husband and when my niece was born, we put $x in a 529 for her education and for the first few years, each birthday we put an additional $x into it (and asked some other family members to consider doing so). Obviously my sister isn’t going to reciprocate for my two kids - not the point at all. It was our delight to do so and take advantage of interest over time to supplement what they will be able to put in. Is that different? It’s not “equal.”
Likewise, my sister was still a kid (age 14) when I got married. When my sister got married I was in my mid-thirties, established in my career, married to a physician. Obviously I could give her more than she could have given me!! Not a contest.
I used to spend a lot of time and energy counting what my ILs gave my H and his 2 siblings and fretting when it wasn’t equal or whatever. My life improved dramatically once I stopped keeping score and just took it at face value instead of comparing or equalizing or fretting that I did too much or too little.
There are many ways of quietly being generous it hot making people feel awkward. It doesn’t have to be a huge gift for a special occasion–grabbing the check, treating the kids, sending care package to folks away at college, building an ed fund for the kid are all nice ways that shouldn’t make folks uncomfortable.
Agree. Weddings are pretty public, so other ways of showing generosity are better imo.
@jaylynn I’m not sure what you mean by “weddings are pretty public”.
In my area, the amount of wedding gift costs from the guests are NOT public…at all.
A generous wedding or special occasion check IS quietly being generous.
As I have mentioned before, when my sister went on her honeymoon in Europe we called ahead and paid for the rooms as a surprise. Who would ever know? I doubt anyone in our real life knows, other than them and my parents (whom I told). It’s not remotely public. Well, you guys know 
but that’s different!
Thanks. We were also invited kinda last minute to a wedding we knew we couldn’t attend. IIRC, we picked something not-too-expensive (there wasn’t much left) from their registry.
It may also depend on the family’s interpretation of the occasion’s context and the item being gifted.
For instance, being gifted a laptop computer…like being gifted money to cover textbook purchases/lab fees no matter how expensive to a good student going off to college would not have been interpreted by either the giving or receiving family in my extended family as an example of largesse to be concerned about or refused.
If anything, the one giving would have regarded it as a great honor to be supporting an aspiring scholar and the receiving family would have regarded it not only as an example of generosity, but a chance to give the giving family the honor of supporting a good student in his/her educational endeavors.
On the other hand, the same perspective wouldn’t have happened if the gift concerned had nothing to do with directly facilitating one’s educational goals such as a video gaming console set, jewelry/fancy clothes, etc and extended family members would have felt free to refuse such gifts if too lavish.
@cobrat This scenario with the laptop was a gift from my daughters friend and her parents for a high school graduation. That was more than what any member of my family gave. ($1000 laptop from a school friend) Laptop was purchased September of senior year and given in June when she graduated.
I waited till August to purchase one since the engineering school had specific laptop technical requirements for engineers. We also had leftover scholarship money for a laptop and books that we had to use.
That part really boggled my mind a bit as the nature of the computer market is such that buying a computer several months ahead of time before one gifts it or intends to use it makes no sense from a financial or technological standpoint.
It’s also a bad practice for warranty reasons as the manufacturer’s warranty starts from the date of purchase and holding it several months before gifting/using means one lost that amount of time to find and fix problems related to manufacturing defects or poor quality control at the outset.
That’s just information for you and anyone else on this thread for future reference.
@cobrat I understand. I believe the intention was to give it during her senior year but we hadn’t met in between as dd was busy with the college application process. I purchased ours a few weeks before the first semester of college started. She was pretty persistent as when she mentioned purchasing one I had declined then. (but she still bought one and till today reminds me how angry it made her that I didn’t accept it.) It didn’t meet the technical reqts needed.
@thumper1, I just meant ‘public’ in that gifts might more easily be displayed (as discussed above) or known amongst the parents or family more than a check for a birthday or other occasion might be. Parents of the bride and groom especially might be in the know about gifts from family members.
“Look, if most folks around you can give a $50 gift and some can give 150, you don’t think a $600 check could be, um, maybe excessive in the context?”
My IL’s have 5 grandchildren, including my 2. For their bar/bat mitzvahs, they gave each child the same five-figure sum via Vanguard funds. In context – my parents gave perfectly nice gifts, but nowhere in that ballpark. My grandmother on a fixed income / Social Security gave probably $36 to each kid. The vast majority of other gifts were the “normal” checks and small token gifts.
So what? Who am I to tell an 75 yo man he “shouldn’t” give generously to his grandchildren because my side of the family isn’t able to “match” him? It’s not a contest. No one is competing with one another. No one’s keeping score. No one took out front-page ads telling everyone what everyone else gave. You say thank you and you move on.
Re: the bridal shower for H’s cousin’s daughter I mentioned that I am unable to attend. I wound up buying a king blanket off her registry. With the ubiquitous BB&B discount, it wound up being somewhere around $100. I am dropping it off with someone who is attending and they’ll open it at the shower. Likely some of the bride’s young friends will be at the $25 level and perhaps there are older relatives who will spend more and get her a KitchenAid or something. I don’t know. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Everybody just needs to be happy for everyone else’s good fortune. All this mental tallying-up of what other people spend gets exhausting and it just doesn’t serve anyone well.
It’s not unusual for grandparents to seed their grandkids. And perhaps you were generous to a sibling and nieces/nephews, over the years. You have it, they don’t. Imo, these sorts of relationships can allow for that (though not always.)
And sure, it can be generous for the a millionaire friend to give more. But at the point I said that, we were talking about ostentatious. Maybe it’s spitting hairs. Or maybe it’s worth considering. There can be sensitivities on both sides.
Many people do value some sort of reciprocal relationships- that doesn’t mean you included friends as guests at a fancy dinner out, so they can’t invite you to a simple bbq, in return. Or you took their kid on a cruise, so they have to spend the same amount on yours. It has to do with the back and forth, give and take, ways of showing affection and support, including the small, over time. The relationship.
“Everybody just needs to be happy for everyone else’s good fortune.” I agree with this. But sometimes, what it morphs into is: Everybody just needs to be happy for MY good fortune. That would be tricky.
Of course. But I think for something to be ostentatious, it has to be public. If my FIL had stood up at my kids’ bar mitzvah and said “hey! everyone! guess what I’m giving PGtwins!” that would be ostentatious. All of the things we are talking about are being done in private. No one other than the giver and recipients really knows (unless recipient cares to share).
Let me ask point blank. If I’m giving this $100 blanket at a bridal shower when the bride’s young friends might be at the $25 range, is that “ostentatious”? A blanket still fits within the towels/sheets/everyday items category. At what point would a gift fall under ostentatious? Keep in mind that the price tags are removed from the items. I was at a bridal shower once where someone gave the bride a KitchenAid mixmaster that was, I’m guessing, ~ $500. Was that ostentatious? Or a really special gift that helped complete their kitchen?
And no, I’m not trying to make this about my good fortune. I’m very aware that there are people on CC who could buy and sell all of us before lunch!!