My wife and I have a standing argument about whether or not this particular Grandparent gift practice in her family is craptastic or not.
They give our niece and nephew (7 and 9 yrs) some token gift for like $15, and then drop a pretty good sum into their college fund each year- like several hundred bucks.
My thinking is that this is kind of a cruddy grandparent gift, because the gift to the kid is the $20 dollar gift, and the money in the college fund is essentially a gift to the child’s parents, not to the kid.
Maybe I’m kind of sensitive- we didn’t have much cash when I was a kid, so I counted on that $25 (in say… 1985 dollars) from my grandparents to let me save up for $50 and more items. Getting a $5 item would have seemed cheap by comparison, and when I was 10, I wouldn’t have appreciated the college fund gift.
So, am/was I an ungrateful shit, or is that dinky gift/college fund money practice kind of a cruddy way to give gifts to children?
My grandparents did much the same for me – I think they’d usually give me $100 cash for a combined birthday/christmas present, and also buy a few $100 savings bonds for me, intended to help pay for college. That ended up paying for a good proportion of one semester, essentially saving me from another several thousand in student loans. So it definitely counted as a gift to me, even if I wasn’t able to really appreciate it until I needed it.
Now in my case my parents didn’t give me any sort of college fund, though they did pay about half of the “expected financial contribution” (i.e. tuition minus a hefty grant and all the subsidized loans I could get). I was left paying that remaining several thousand per year with private student loans and whatever I could save up from summer jobs.
Yeah, sorry, I can’t see you as being anything other than ungrateful. I think it’s not only a generous gift, but potentially a lesson for the recipients, too.
Ungrateful. Almost all of my “special occasion” gifts (Christmas, birthdays, etc.) from my grandparents were a donation to my college fund, though my grandmother usually got me a piece of jewelry on her various travels, another thing I didn’t appreciate until I was old enough to know better.
First, a gift is a gift. Neither you nor your children have a claim to a certain sum from the grandparents. Children have a claim* to a certain minimum amount from the parents as pocket money**.
To me, 20 $ sound far enough.
Secondly, the question isn’t about the money amount of the gift. As the cheesy Master Card commercials point out: Teddy bear 130 Dollars, card board box that provides hours of play priceless. A good gift is not the expensive one, but the one that’s suited for that specific child. A good book can cost less than 20 dollars, but open a whole world. A movie ticket, seen with grandpa, can be a special memory (and a time-out for the parents, too). A camping trip with the grandparents, when the parents are too busy at work to get days off, … not to be measured in dollar amounts.
Third, there are many good educational toys and books on the market today, and also a load of crap from fisher-price and Barbie that spends a lot of time on shrill ads that psyche the kid. Even with good toys, it’s easy to overwhelm a kid and bury them in stuff (that’s why it’s a good idea to rotate the toys - put them in several big boxes during the year, and every three months, one box is put away, and another opened. Keeps things fresh and appreciated, instead of sitting in a heap of toys and being bored by all. Or give old toys to needy children in the neighborhood once a year before Christmas brings new stuff). So less stuff can be better.
The most important thing is not a thing, but time spent with the children, and there, quality time, not quantity. You don’t say anything how your children react to the gifts or to your grandparents, which should be the most important question, not your snubbed childhood memories. Your children are not stand-ins to relive your childhood, that’s a harmful attitude for them, if you take that road.
Are your children delighted at being given a book, a magnfiying glass and a catcher to explore the creek outdoors? Or do they yawn and want the last Pokemon/ Barbie because they are already consumer-oriented and measure their peers according to money spent on toys? Do your grandparents live nearby and spend a lot of time with your children, which the kids enjoy and look forward to? Or do gramps live across several states and sends gifts to make up for time missed? Those are the important questions, not how much money.
Lastly, I think the idea is wonderful, to give your children some thing right now, which is what children want, but also think of their future and help them saving without being too hard on the kids by having to give up sweets.
Under German law, the courts and consumer advocates set guidelines for pocket money, so the parents give enough considering today’s value of Euros.
** Taking into account the actual amount the parents can spend of course. A welfare receipent parent can’t be forced to give his kid the 10 Euros a week pocket money that is recommended.
Yes, you are an ungrateful shit if you look towards your own grandparents only / mainly as source of income. You shouldn’t encourage that in your own children. Grandparents have an important function as adults that don’t carry the responsiblity, and therefore, being able to spoil a little (and a little spoiling and relaxing of the rules is also important for children, as psychologists know). They also easier have time than parents working full-time.
So make sure that your kids enjoy your grandparents as people - provided gramps are the kind of good grandparents that can fill that role! - and don’t infect them with your money-measuring attitude. Money is not everything, not even close.
And precisly because kids at 10 can’t appreciate the gift is why it’s such a good idea to give both, a real gift now and a future later.
The only issue would be if the choice of gifts goes against the kids wishes, more than once: if they keep giving sports equipment to the kid who loves to read because they believe that a “real boy” should play ball, instead of accepting the kid. Or giving only dolls to a girl, because that’s what women should learn. That would be inadequate choices, regardless of how expensive.
I think it’s a wonderful gift, and they are teaching them a lesson too - namely, about the benefit of long term goals and building up for long-term goals.
My parents do this too, and I think it’s wonderful.
If the grandparents gave the kid nothing but the $20 toy, that would already be completely acceptable. I think most of the birthday and Christmas presents I got growing up were less than that. I can see no complaint against them also going above and beyond that to contribute to the kid’s college fund.
It’s a win win, the college fund grows by magic, and the cruddy cheapo box of fleeting thrills is something you would never buy the child, but kids love that crud!
For my birthdays, I got no gifts from one set of grandparents, and a couple of dollars (I think the most was $5) from the other grandma. And I stopped getting anything from her when I was 10 or so. I didn’t begrudge the grandparents who didn’t give anything (it actually never occurred to me they might have until just now, in fact), and I was very grateful to the grandmother who did. I was brought up to understand that gifts are just that, gifts. The recipient doesn’t get to decide what they should get or how much it should cost; their job is just to thank the giver, whether they actually like the gift or not. And we didn’t get an allowance at all, so I appreciated the hell out of that $5.
Now, I was a little hurt when my cousins told me that they had gotten something like $100 each from our grandma for their birthdays. But I knew better than to say anything to them, and asked my dad about it later. It turned out that my aunt and uncle were embarrassed that grandma could only afford five bucks, and so they gave their kids a more “respectable” sum. :rolleyes: Apparently, they didn’t think their kids would love grandma (or believe that she loved them) if they weren’t getting wads of cash from her. Even as a kid, I found this completely appalling.
What your in-laws give your wife’s siblings kids, is their business. The gift to the college fund is a gift to the kids. Maybe that will help the kids to afford a different school than they could go to otherwise.
One more point to make. To me it sounds like you’re assuming that the parents will pay for their kids’ college. If they’re not or will only pay a portion, that means that the kids will have to get jobs during college and/or take out student loans, essentially starting life after college already in debt, probably significantly so. Mitigating and potentially preventing that is certainly a gift to the children and worth it’s weight in gold, IMHO.