Buying for Adult Children at Christmas Time

There it is, the holy grail of parenting, the adult child! Firstly, congratulations for not strangling the little monsters while they were growing up, as that alone is a major parenting accomplishment. On a more serious note, many of you are retiring (or retired already) and money is very inflexible. Instead of having one child to buy for at Christmas, it becomes its own family unit, a spouse, and 2.3 children of their own to buy for. On a baby boomer 401k, yikes! Hopefully these ideas will help your personal finances survive the season.

If your child has a full family of their own, consider one large family gift instead of many. It can seriously be cheaper to buy one Xbox for the whole family than a fifty dollar gift for child spouse and assorted rug rats. Deals can be pretty good when department stores want that stuff moved and if you are retired, you can go during work hours and avoid the traffic. If things are super tight, consider a family movie basket. Four tickets, some popcorn, movie candy, and a few sodas can be done for about fifty bucks at WalMart. Also, if grandma is handy with a knitting needle, think back to your parents. They didn't give Xboxes, they gave sweaters! You can make blankets, clothes, paint art, you name it. Everybody is good at something, and these are the things that get fought over in the will so spread some homemade love around, saving a few bills in the process.

It can be hard to make that transition from "Mommy and Daddy" to a grown man or woman's mother and father. Some families are so tight financially that they just agree to buy for the school age children. But if you really want to send your kids something for the holidays just make sure it reflects your current lifestyle. As my father likes to say, no amount of money will buy your life back, so spend your time and your money wisely at Christmas.

So often all our year's hard work to save and invest for our future is blown at the holidays. It will be hard to hold to any financial plan that doesn't include Christmas spending, so put it in your budget. Use the above tips and a realistic budget for your income and save for Christmas all year. You, your children, and your financial advisor will be glad you did.

Bill Spohnholtz the publisher of http://easylearnstockmarket.com writes from a unique perspective of a small business owner and a large company process improvement engineer attempting to help individuals use corporate efficency tools to improve their lives and small businesses.

For more reading check out How to Pay Off Debt Strategically