I\u2019m not sure if Katie and I are getting each other Christmas gifts this year. In fact, since we\u2019ve been married and merged our financial lives together, gifts in general are sometimes a bit silly.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s different with family members. We don\u2019t see our parents or siblings all that often and buying a gift for them or getting a gift from them during the holidays is a good feeling, especially if we manage to pick something that they genuinely end up loving and using in the upcoming year.<\/p>\n
But for each other? Our money all comes out of the same bank account and, most of the time, if we need something, we\u2019ll buy it then and there (or wait for a specific time when we think we can get a deal on it). So, all holiday-timed gifts would be things that we as a household don\u2019t need<\/em> but would rather be in the category of items that we would probably not honestly buy ourselves given the choice. Which makes it all feel a little\u2026unnecessary<\/em>.<\/p>\n A few years ago, we did something quite fun. Katie and I both went into Target a few weeks before Christmas and set ourselves a limit of $20 to buy the other as many gifts as we wanted. It turned out to be quite fun. We managed to retain the element of surprise; we checked out in different lanes and wrapped our presents before the other person could see them. We also both knew that neither of us had spent over $20, which was a very reasonable amount to spend on frivolities.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a phrase that we\u2019ve all heard through our years of gift giving and receiving, but it seems to become extra true once you truly share everything: it\u2019s the thought that counts. In fact, at a certain point, the thought is the only thing that really counts at all. The rest of it? It\u2019s just buying ourselves stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m not sure if Katie and I are getting each other Christmas gifts this year. In fact, since we\u2019ve been married and merged our financial lives together, gifts in general are sometimes a bit silly. It\u2019s different with family members. We don\u2019t see our parents or siblings all that often and buying a gift for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[290,17,38],"class_list":["post-636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-year26","tag-gift","tag-marriage","tag-money","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=636"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/636\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scott-n-katie.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}