My family stopped giving gifts to save money, but we liked it so much that 5 years later we still haven't started again

Katie Oelker

Dec 6, 2019, 01:15 IST

My family stopped giving gifts to save money, but we liked it so much that 5 years later we still haven't started again

Courtesy of Katie Oelker

Katie Oelker with her family in December 2018.

My husband and I stopped giving each other wrappable gifts years ago, when we were saving money for travel instead.
As the years have gone on, we found that we enjoyed the gift of spending time together much more than anything tied up with a ribbon, and slowly phased out gifts with our respective families.
Buying experiences, whether trips or concert tickets, isn't usually any cheaper than buying gifts to give. But we're not doing it to save money anymore - we're doing it because we like it so much better.
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In 2014, my now-husband and I decided to do Christmas a little differently. We had just spent Thanksgiving visiting my dad and his fiance in Ireland, and were saving money for our upcoming honeymoon to Australia. We have always loved traveling together, and decided in an effort to save more for travel that we would stop purchasing gifts for one another.

Thus the "Gift of No Gifts" era began. Instead of buying and exchanging gifts for one another, we picked an event we really wanted to go to together. Typically these are concerts, as we love live music, but they have also been dinners out at restaurants we've been dying to try, tickets to a local sporting event, or flights to someplace in the coming year.

Since starting this tradition for just ourselves, I've been able to convince my own family that we should stop exchanging gifts, and we have even stopped exchanging gifts with my husband's family, with the exception of gifts for the children.

Our new tradition quickly spread beyond Christmas

This ixnay on gift giving started with Christmas, but slowly spread to birthdays and anniversaries as well.

For my husband's birthday a few years back, I planned a surprise trip to Washington DC. He ended up finding out where we were going before the trip, but we had so much fun exploring and celebrating his birthday that we made a pact to continue to choose travel and experiences over gifts and material possessions for all special events moving forward.

My birthday is in mid-March and almost always falls over spring break, which is a great excuse to travel. I used to be a high school teacher and thus we always tried to plan a trip during that time to someplace warm. Although I no longer teach, we still typically go someplace over spring break with my husband's family. It's such a nice treat to be traveling during my birthday and by far the best gift I could ever desire.

While we started this tradition to save money, I'd say that buying experiences is as expensive as - if not more expensive than - buying gifts. However, it certainly doesn't have to be. It all depends on the number of gifts you buy and how pricey the experiences are. We've realized that our experiences don't have to be fancy or expensive, and the kids don't seem to care or know the difference. Sometimes we score really great deals on websites such as Groupon! Of course taking trips are more expensive than the typical gift, but we utilize credit card points and make sure to plan ahead.

We're no longer keeping our tradition just to save money. Despite the cost, we believe that the memories we make far outweigh the expense and are more important than any physical possession we could give.

We're even moving away from gifts for the kids

After a few years of buying gifts for our niece and nephew, we decided to scratch that, too. Now for both birthdays and Christmas we buy them tickets to events that we can all go and enjoy together. We've taken them to Minnesota Wild hockey games, Vikings football games, Gopher Women's basketball games, and a magic show at the Ordway Theatre, among other events. Because our niece and nephew are older now (10 and 12) and have so many toys already, they do seem to really enjoy the events that we pick to go to together. Our in-laws like it, too, as it just means less stuff to clutter up the home.

Now that we have our own children, we've been trying to determine the best way to go about gifts this holiday season. Last year when our oldest daughter was one-and-a-half, we didn't partake in the Santa and gift-giving extravaganzas. She's two-and-a-half now and we still haven't decided what we are going to do. Our kids have been spoiled by grandparents, and we buy the things they need when they need them. We will likely frame up Santa as someone who is make believe and just for fun, and who brings gifts to children in need.

My husband and I are looking forward to starting some new traditions with our family. We recently moved into a new home and ended up buying a tree (seems kind of silly being we don't really do gifts, but I wanted one to enjoy the lights at night!) and may put one larger gift for the oldest under it, along with some small items in stockings on the mantle.

According to a study by the National Retail Federation and Prosper Insights & Analytics, Americans spend on average just over $1,000 on Christmas gifts. We would much rather funnel that money into travel or experiences. We just booked flights to Hawaii with our credit card miles we've been accumulating and are also planning a trip to Australia in December 2020, so we have some saving to do!