Gifts - are we being cheap?

[Lindsey]

I need some advice about gifts for neices and nephews. Growing up, I never got gifts for birthdays or Christmas from my aunts and uncles, unless we were spending the day with them. I don't know if it was just a money thing, but I was always pretty close with my cousins and our families spent time together, but I guess I never expected gifts and my parents were never expected to send gifts to all my cousins.

Anyways, we buy Christmas presents for all of the neices and nephews. I'm okay with that. We don't get anything in return from Scott's side of the family, since his sisters decided that instead of buying presents for each other, they'd just buy for kids. So their kids get presents from all of us, and we are the only ones without kids so we get nothing. I know it's not about that, but I wish it felt more like we were giving for the sake of giving, and not because the family says we have to buy things for the kids. On my brother's side, we buy something for all of them (normally something for the two of them, and seperate things for the girls), and they, as a family, buy something for us (or not even FOR us... last year they donated in our name to buy a donkey for an impoverished family in Africa - I thought that was a great idea!).

For starters, we do not buy birthday presents for my neices on my side. And we spend more time with them than any others. We bought them gifts one time when we were invited to their party and went. We've never been asked to buy them birthday gifts, and as far as I know we have never been expected to! We say happy birthday on Facebook/text or a phone call.

Our little neice who lives five hours away turned one in Febraury. We did not get her a present but we both sent happy birthday greetings over Facebook or text or whatever. When our nephew (and Scott's God-son) turned three in August, we were down there visiting Scott's parents that weekend so we went to his sister's house and had supper and cake with everyone and brought a present for him.

Now that boy's little brother is turning one this weekend. Scott's mom called and asked if we were coming down this Friday for the get-together. Scott said we haven't heard about anything. Nobody talked to us. His mom said his sister is going to have a big family supper. Well, we weren't invited and knew nothing about it. So his mom said if we aren't coming down, we need to at least send our present in the mail. We didn't have a present.

Scott told me later he didn't want to get one because it feels like we will be roped in to have to buy for every birthday from here on in for every neice and nephew (and there will be more!). We are not particularly close with either of Scott's sisters or their families. They never call or talk to us, and we only happen to see them if they come to Scott's parents' house when we are visiting. If Scott and I have kids, I would not expect his sisters or my brother to buy presents for them. Money is tight enough as it is. Scott said his mom made him feel really guilty about not doing enough for his nephew. He said she thinks we have tons of money because we can afford vacations... but we work our butts off to do these things before we have kids. It's not like it's just saying "Hey, let's go on another huge vacation" ... we look at our savings and see what we can get with our budget. We don't have extra savings! This is our first Christmas as husband and wife and can't afford to buy each other Christmas presents. We just decided love is enough, and in the end we are getting the trip of a lifetime!

Anyways, I wonder if we are being guilted about it because we didn't get anything for the neice either... has that been brought up behind our backs? When Scott mentioned we would be seeing everyone in a month at Christmas so we don't have to drive down for this birthday, his mom said well we can just spend more on his Christmas present then, or get him something extra for missing his birthday. He is ONE - will he care? We already have his Christmas gift, and it cost the same as all the others. After going back and forth on it, we decided to just buy a card and send it in the mail.

Is that enough?