Beyond the fact that Santa Claus is NOT REAL and as a MAKE-BELIEVE character he does not deserve to take the credit for all of your hard work that goes into providing for your family! You would be well served to just say no to Christmas because the money you spend buying depreciating goods would be better served if you used it to save for your retirement and/or a rainy day.
I'm not sure if you heard this but one-third of all Americans have no money saved for retirement and about the same fraction of Americans have no savings at all. Despite these horrific statistics, millions of Americans will ignore their unfortunate financial realities and will instead run out to the nearest shopping center or log into a computer where we will make unwise Christmas purchases because we have been duped, hoodwinked, bamboozled, led-astray and conditioned to believe that in order to prove that we really love someone we must validate it by purchasing Christmas gifts. If you don't believe that we have been duped by commercialism, simply turn on your television. Lexus tells us each and every year that if we want December to be a time worth remembering, we have to go out and purchase a shiny new Lexus. Then there are the good folks at Jared Jewelers who have taken the liberty to inform us that if we really love a woman and we want her to be convinced of our love, we must go to Jared and buy her some expensive jewelry.
In the case of parents and children, we get bamboozled by commercialism too. Consequently, the average parent will generally spend around $700 purchasing Christmas gifts - gifts that in all probability will likely be tossed aside by our children in a month or less. Seven-hundred dollars' worth of gifts that will be enjoyed for less than a month seem to be equivalent to sticking 700 one-dollar bills in a shredder. We would be so much better served by placing the $700 we spend annually in a place where we could save for retirement or for that inevitable rainy day. For the finance and math majors among you, $700 per year for 18 years @ 8% interest is more than $31,000.
Somehow, I have the feeling that your children would be better served knowing that you had an account with $31,000 to use for a rainy day or to help them with the cost of a college education.
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