Cash is an under rated gift.

Can get creative with different denominations and presentations. For example, my in laws will give a jar of Nutella as a Christmas gift, with some bills taped to the bottom. Always a little bit of surprise as to where the cash will be. Kids especially love this!

One Christmas, had the grand kids sing a silly song in order to get a dollar or two.

Lots of ways to turn giving cash from an impersonal gift, into something fun and creative!

I've come to prefer giving (often cheap) gifts that are intended to be disposed of, but lead to a bit of fun.

Quick example: I got my family (parents, sister, cousins, etc; no kids right now) a bunch of santa hats from the doller store for christmas that were each a little different and one was technically a chair cover (but looked like an incredibly oversized hat). Then I let them duke it out over who got which hat. Also shutter shades.

They still talk about that Christmas. Experiences are something worthwhile.

Refrigerator door culture. At some point in life you will no longer be permitted not to have magnets on your fridge. I made it until I got married.

Weaponized clothes are a thing too. Everyone knows nobody likes getting someone elses choice of clothes as a gift, especially not kids, but it is a socially acceptable weapon to kinda "get" the recipient. More a slap to the face than a punch to the face, but none the less kinda an aggressive act.

My father hated fridge magnets and resisted for years. Then he remarried, and it started happening, slowly. One year, he bought a very nice refrigerator for xmas. It's completely non-magnetic. I couldn't help but ask, and yes.. it was intentional.

This is why scotch tape exists. :)

Hah, same here. We made it until friends started having children. I think there's still a refrigerator door somewhere underneath all the cute pictures.

Yeah me too. I had to make a rule where if it was over a year old then we could take it down.

I don't know, I've gotten lots of clothes I liked. I don't much enjoy going clothes shopping, so I appreciate other people putting in the effort as long as their impression of the things I'd wear is reasonably accurate.

I don't enjoy clothes shopping either, but Mom and I hit the stores soon after Christmas and take massive advantage of the sales.

Stainless steel refrigerators look nice and are non-ferrous so the magnets don't work!

While I like the ideea of this lifestyle, I can't do it. I simply love my tools too much. And I have a lot of them. And lopts of parts. At a first look, some might looks superfulous, for example, I have this wierd star-shaped screwdriver. Most of the time, I don't use it, but boy, when I use it, does it save me a lot of time.

I want to live like this too, but I need tools. I need automotive tools. I can't afford mechanics bills, nor trust the workmanship. I need tools to repair watches--which turned into a side business. Plus I have home contractor tools. It's the tools that has me waited down.

I have a library I can thin down, but it's hard. It's 99 percent refrence. And the first editions--well I like them more than some people. I wouldn't have ever started the library, but didn't think books would be so digitally available.

I have a couple of vaccumes I could get rid of, but who would cut my hair? Flobee--and they do work, if you have a little bit of coordination. I hated going to the hair salon.

That said--if I had to go leave real quick, I would take all my watches, and jeweler's tools. I could fit everything in three legal sized boxes. I would take another three legal sized boxes of books. I would leave my tool chest, and put all tools in six legal sized boxes.

I might need to move quick in the future. I'm not sure where I will go. I won't pay Bay Area rents again. I go out at night, and the people I would interact with moved away. The Bay Area is just not that fun anymore. Never thought I would say that, but then again couldn't imagine living in the Midwest.

I am greatful I never had a kid. Never thought I would say that. I like them, but I never thought life in America would be this ruthless.

I gave away my inheritance, from a pretty brutal father. At the time, I didn't think I would ever need it, nor wanted anything from the man. I gave it all to a family member. I should have kept some of it. It was a lot too.

On the positive side, when I'm dying, I won't need to make to many amends. I haven't screwed over anyone--I can recall. My exes don't want to keep in touch. One told me, "You can be really hurtful. You have hurt my feelings more than any other person." She's now seeing women. I knew I was kinda a handful, but I didn't intentionally want to hurt her feelings. I just couldn't continually agree.

Got off track.

I don't know why but this was really moving. Upsetting, a little, maybe, but so moving.

I thought I was reading an excerpt from some cult book of some kind. I think it's the honesty that resonates for me. Thanks for sharing, marincounty, and keep it coming.

Edit - just realised mc has been behind many of the most interesting comments I've read over the last few months. Might not agree with it all, but enjoy reading them!

Nothing wrong with that, I'm fairly minimal in the stuff I own but I have a tonne of cycling stuff (all of which is used, UK climate means you have to change up gear a lot) and tools since it's just not practical to buy those when I need them.

Tools and parts. One of my weak points too. There's not much I don't fix myself.

I understand.

I assume you've tried to explain that you enjoy practical things? How 20 years from now you will pull out the old battered screwdriver they gave you (assuming it was a good screwdriver), put together some furniture, and think of them?

One of the best gifts I ever got was a Craftsman hand tool set from my father.

(Caveat, of course, is I was a raging petrol-head and kept swiping his tools, so he knew I would use it)

Yup. This risks my receiving cheap screwdrivers that get chewed up on first use. But hey, it's the thought that counts :)

Does anyone use Amazon wish lists to solve this sort of issue? Do they even exist? Asking both out of interest of this thread's topic, and because some time back I consulted to a dot com startup where the product was to be a gift related site. Startup was executed very poorly so I left (and it shut down soon after). But the idea may have had merit.

My family all has Amazon wish lists for exactly this issue, in fact. Before Amazon was popular, we all posted wish lists on a closet door in my grandmother's house, and we either went in the den to look at them or called her and asked her what was on the lists.

My girlfriend's family doesn't do any of this stuff, and so I've had to do "educated guess"-type gifting, which I'm usually somewhat decent at. They tend to get me clothes, which is fine, everyone's gotta wear clothes.

I do. I've trained nearly everyone in my life to accept that I'm happy receiving nothing for my birthday and Christmas, but my dad refuses to get on board. I always have a list of stuff saved in my Amazon cart that I want eventually, but not enough to buy it right now. So every time a holiday rolls around and he wants to buy me something, I just chuck all of that stuff into a wish list and send it to him.