WSJ Your Money Briefing - How to Give Gifts for the Holiday and Stay on Budget

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

The holiday season often comes with the pressure to find the perfect gift for all of your loved ones. WSJ’s Jessica Chou joins host J.R. Whalen to discuss shopping strategies to balance being festive and frugal.  Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Amazon Q Business is the generative AI assistant from AWS because business can be slow like waiting through mud. But Amazon Q helps streamline work. So tasks like summarizing monthly results can be done in no time. Learn what Amazon Q Business can do for you at aws.com slash learn more. Here's your money briefing for Wednesday, December 11th. I'm JR Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. Here's your money briefing for Wednesday, December 11th. I'm JR Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. It's the season of giving, but making a list and checking it twice

can get pretty expensive. What if you can't afford to buy something for family members and all your friends? The WSJ's Jessica Chow is wrestling with that very issue. I have a friend who I call the Martha Stewart of my life because she's so chic. And she said something that really resonated with me and that was, look for something that says I see you but with my price point and sensibility. Jessica will join us to talk gift giving without breaking the bank after the break. Investing in sports, a four-part series from exchanges, the Goldman Sachs podcast, informed

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Jessica Chow is a senior supervising producer with The Wall Street Journal. She wrote about this topic and she joins me. Jess, how did this story come about? Are you going through this? So my older sister is the fanciest person in my life and I always try to impress her, I think to prove that I'm a real adult. This year for Christmas, I was thinking about

what to get her and I was really stuck because I was trying to limit my budget a little bit and be a little bit more frugal. I feel like it's harder to be frugal when you're buying things for other people because you just want to spoil them a little bit and be a little bit more frugal. I feel like it's harder to be frugal when you're buying things for other people, because you just want to spoil them a little bit. Oh, she's going to hear this. She doesn't listen to podcasts.

It's fine. Sorry, no offense. Since she's not listening, what are you buying her? I got her a few things. I like to collect small things and I put them in a box and I packaged them nicely. But her big, like the centerpiece of her gift is a vintage Gucci shoe horn,

but it's like really heavy and it looks substantial and it looks vintage. You spoke to financial professionals about this, that it can be a challenge when shopping for other people. What's the first step they talked about? They said start early, and it was starting early not just in thinking about what you're getting them, but also in planning for the budget.

It was kind of a twofold thing, is like come up with your list early and start seeing what's out there, which allows you to A, take advantage of free shipping deals, B, not have to rush shipping and then see if there are any sales going on. You can take advantage of that too. And then in terms of coming up with the budget, it was like start your gift budget earlier and think of it as a sinking fund. So in the same way that you would save up for vacation, do the same thing with gifts so you have a sinking fund that you can just be pulling from throughout the year

and not going into debt when it comes to December. You mentioned something in the story that I love. It's the idea of trying to buy champagne gifts on a Prosecco budget. What kinds of conversations can you have with loved ones ahead of time to help ease the financial burden of gift giving? So I talked to Giovanna Gigi Gonzales, she's an author and financial educator. She recommended that we do something called loud budgeting, which is something that was

all over TikTok. We talked about it on the show a few months ago. Oh yeah, go listen to that episode. But it's essentially being forthright about your finances. And one thing that she was saying is it's okay to say, Hey, like, I'm really thinking about my budget this year. I'm like really saving for something. And that kind of helps set subtle expectations of like how you're spending your money. It's not just for gifts. it's also for everyday life. Though I don't want to spend this money on a concert ticket

because I really want to spend this money on a vacation. Is it okay to pull money together? Maybe some family members get together and buy a gift for someone so that any one person doesn't take a financial hit? Yeah, actually this is a side product of me not planning ahead enough. In past years I would ask my sister

why she got my parents and then just be like, can I Venmo you 50 bucks for it? And then just put my name on the card. And not great, but I do think financially it's really helpful. And if I had put more thought into it, then it would actually be quite a good gift because my sister and I could brainstorm

and pool our finances and then give them the best possible singular gift. So it's more like quality over quantity. Buying gifts for friends can be a challenge because maybe you wonder what you should get them, but our friends go through things like being out of work and their finances may ebb and flow. Do the financial professionals you talked to say it's okay to have that kind of discussion

with friends? Yeah, and I also talked to an etiquette expert, Micah Myers, and she was very pro-transparency with the people you feel comfortable with, she's like, you should probably not talk about this with your boss, but maybe with your friends who you've established deeper connections with, if someone's like, oh, I got laid off, or oh, my roommate left suddenly,

you just sort of know that they're under a little bit more financial pressure. It's okay to share that as well. You talk to a lot of people about this. What's the most inventive thing you heard from them about buying gifts for somebody but trying to stay within a budget? The favorite gift story that I heard

was from Micah Meyer's etiquette expert. She was telling me about how her brother wanted bookends for his house and she was like, and he has such great style. She was just like, these bookends are so expensive. And then she went to the Brooklyn Flea and saw these duck bookends that definitely needed some fix up and they were $30. And she bought some polish and she polished them herself. And then he loved it. And I think it's something nice about the time spent searching for it, the time spent fixing it up, that gives it a story that is unlike

anything you could buy off the shelf. It's like you can put a signature on it. Yeah. And then you also give them the gift of bragging about it to their friends when the friends come over and they're like, oh, these are such great bookends. He can be like, oh yeah, my sister got them and they're vintage and she fixed them up herself and no one else can have it. And I like the idea of giving a gift that gives them bragging rights.

So it's not always about the absolute monetary value. With gifts, some people say it's the thought that counts. So what are some ways that people can find a perfect gift for their loved one that's within a budget? Almost every expert I talked to said, go vintage, go secondhand, or go for customization or personalization. And then I have a friend who I call the Martha Stewart of my life because she's so chic. And she said something that really resonated with me and that was, look for something that says, I see you, but with my price point and sensibility.

And I think that's really smart because my sister and I actually have very different tastes. And so for me to be able to find this shoe horn that's vintage, but like has that like high fashion element that she likes, but is also weird and quirky. Feels very good. She's already going to get the things that she wants.

She's always going to buy what she wants. And I can just deliver the thing that she didn't know she could have. That's WSJ's Jessica Chow. And that's it for your Money Briefing. This episode was produced by Ariana Asparu with supervising producer Melanie Roy. I'm JR Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for listening. This podcast is brought to you by CME Group, the world's leading derivatives marketplace, offering the widest range of global benchmark products across all major asset classes.

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