Christmas Gifts I’m Not Buying

The Christmas season has arrived! It’s all around us with decorations everywhere we go, music while we drive, parties on our calendars, and gift lists for our loved ones. Turning on our TVs highlights the season with beloved Christmas movies, and even the commercials market the holiday spirit.

My favorite holiday commercials are the ones with the new car surprise. You know the scene: A family is opening gifts around their Christmas tree. There’s music, lights, laughter, and cozy snuggles by the fire. Oh, and everyone looks terrific. A husband hands his wife the last gift, a small box. She seems puzzled and surprised, filled with anticipation.

Inside the box there’s a car key. No way! Everyone races to the front door, throws it open, and there, surrounded by the freshly fallen snow, is a brand new car with a huge bow on it in the driveway. The apparent pinnacle of Christmas has arrived. This new car is the thing that has made Christmas.

Now, I love a big surprise. I pulled out all the stops for my surprise marriage proposal to Kaimey. We surprised our kids with a Disney World trip when they thought we were going to dinner and instead we drove to the airport. It’s so fun! 

But for a marriage, it’s actually a pretty horrible idea to surprise your partner with such a big purchase. A car is likely the most expensive thing you own, the second if you own your home. Although there’s romance and zeal to the surprise, spending tens of thousands of dollars without including your spouse can lead to a lot of conflict and stress later. This is especially true if you are buying the car on a loan and tying your family into years of high car payments.

The key to successful large purchases within a marriage is communication. And the surprise element makes that key component very difficult. 

Before Kaimey and I got married we did a premarital counseling course, and one of the sections was on finances. The course suggested setting a dollar amount as the limit to what one spouse could spend without discussion with the other. We set $100. And then quickly realized we needed to raise it, unless we wanted to evaluate every weekly grocery store trip. But this is actually a really great idea if you have difficulty in your marriage with careless overspending. You’ve got to talk about it.

So if you’re in the market for a new car, don’t get caught up in the marketing pressures on TV to create some magical moment. At least talk about it first to make sure everyone is on the same page and is OK with everything about this expensive purchase. And to that point, I don’t know too many women who wouldn’t want to pick out all the features, colors, bells and whistles on their new car anyway! 

Let me know if I can help with any big purchases or planning great surprises this season!