Wedding Gift Giving… An Eye for an Eye?

I would say give $40 or $50 and don't attend the shower (if you were invited). Just so at the end of the day you can say that you were being a bigger person (if for some reason they gave that $10 gift as a jab at you in their mind) but you still aren't spending a couple hundred.

Thanks ladies - lots of solid advice (per usual)

Sometimes the people who don't want for anything are the most in debt. You can't judge how well someone is doing based on the amount of money they spend lol.

Janeen - That is true. FH's older step brother gave us $100 for last Christmas even though we only got him like $40 worth of stuff since we see him about twice a year. I said that was way too much but later on FH made the comment "If he doesn't give it away, he'd just spend it on alcohol." FH is kind of a more hard a$$ than I am and can be viewed as rude sometimes. But I thought that was an interesting statement. FH's step brother has an alcoholism problem and was sober for almost 10 years but before this past Christmas he fell off and got drunk and crashed his car. We didn't even see him on Christmas, he left the cards for us. So I can understand what FH meant. I know that my mom can sometimes struggle with money. But I also know that any money she has, she gives to one of my older sisters. And that sister has had my mom get a third job to help get her out of debt, while that sister would go on vacations and buy new Coach purses and $100 perfume. My twin takes money from my mother often because she maxes out credit cards and doesn't have enough money for gas. Last year they went to Disney World for a week, to Myrtle Beach for a week, this year they are going to Arizona for a week, both bought brand new cars even though there was nothing wrong with their other cars, and they are planning to buy a new house all while he still has $15k in credit card debt, not including hers. So I know any money I give to my mother (which she never even says thank you) will just go to my two sisters to take a vacation. So that is why I have a harder viewpoint on giving someone a lot of money just for them to go on fancier vacations than most people while they complain they are poor. I grew up in a family that never went further than 45 minutes from the house. We paid bills before any of the splurging things. So that's why I don't like to give money to people who splurge before paying bills.

@Pancakes - Thank you for sharing. It's hard when you want to do nice for your mom but that she'll "pay it forward" to your irresponsible sisters.

My parents never made much while I was growing up. My mom stayed home with us kids and had the hard job of budgeting and making sure we had what we needed. The whole time I grew up, my parents never made more than $35,000 in a year, and yet they raised three children comfortably.

We had a house (same house my whole childhood), two vehicles (although never new and usually 10+ years old), we went camping (but never actual vacations by societal standards). We always had a few new articles of clothing when school started and hot meals each night.

My mom budgeted and scrimped in other areas to make our lives better.

I'll never forget a cousin talking with my mom about how hard it was to make ends meet. He worked at the local paper mill (making about $30/hr) and his wife was a teacher. They were making decent money but they always had new cars and the newest toys. He was talking to my mom like she didn't know how hard it was. Somehow it came up that my parents made less than $50,000/yr. My cousin was shocked that my parents were able to live on less than $50,000.

Some people just don't know how to budget and cut out the non-necessities. Some people live paycheck to pay check and that just barely covers their credit card payments. I cannot image the stress that must cause.

Things are never quite as they seem as an outsider.

95% of the time it will be an eye for an eye, and I consider myself a very generous person

I think it was a jab. Even if I was broke, I wouldnt even bother with putting $10 in the card if I was in their spot. I would feel like a cheapskate! (Lol pun) I would have purchased a boxed gift, on sale, for $10 that was worth more. And who goes to a wedding shower without a gift?? Just crazy!

There are people (even on this board) who think that car payments are a way of life and don't realize that no, it doesn't have to be that way. I have coworkers who spend wayyyyyy more than I do (and I'm not exactly a tightwad) and they don't have the benefit of two salaries. I raise my eyebrows at some of their choices, but....it's not my business. My husband's brother spends money like it's going out of style and I would never lend or give him money since I know that he makes a lot of poor choices. But I wouldn't hold that against him when it came time to give him a wedding/baby/whatever gift. A gift is a gift. You don't hold on to expectations of how it should be spent once it leaves your hands.

You could always give a donation to a charity in their name of the amount you would typically gift...

Sarahdell - Exactly. My parents make a combined $60k now and have 5 kids (I'm the youngest at 25). So I can't imagine how they made it work while we were younger and they made less. Like you, we never complained about being broke and still had food. Ironically my mom works in the meat department, but we couldn't afford meat so we only ate it like once a week. It kills FH to not have meat in a meal and he jokes about it with me. My family is used to taking out home equity loans to pay for bills. The lady next to me at work kills me. She complains all day about how she is so poor. She has a horse, a timeshare, goes on at least 4 vacations a year with one usually Disney World, they have 3 Mac desktops and 3 Mac laptops, each have iPhones (128 gb) along with iPods and iPads, their 8 year old has a cell phone, Nintendo DS3D, Wii, his own mac Laptop, an iPod Touch, an iPad Mini, an XBox One and more. The kids take private swimming, karate, piano, and soccer lessons each week throughout the year. They go to private schools where the tuition is $9,000 and she said that wasn't bad. They have 3 cars. She gets her hair cut and dyed every 6 weeks for over $100. They cater every birthday party (and give gift bags containing over $20 worth of stuff) and holiday and give Tiffany jewelry as gifts. There is so much more. But hearing her complain about how poor she is physically hurts me. Her kids get $80 shoes a couple times a year.

Janeen - I know we can't control how other people spend their money. That makes sense. But I don't want Sarahdell to spend $100 (I don't know if that is what you usually spend.) on a person who was not being very nice to her. If it was $25, that would be a different story. But $10 and then nothing... I would have written a note explaining that I couldn't afford a gift but offered to clean their house, babysit, make them dinner, etc, to make up for it.

My mom kept an intricate filing system of "what we got/what we gave." Seems like a lot of work

We give what we feel appropriate for us and leave it at that.

I know you two will think of the right gift!

Tina - my mom kind of does the same thing. She is very stingy with gifts, but during this she told me not to include relatives because "they have five kids and will want to bring their girlfriends and boyfriends and will not even give you what you paid for their dinner" and I'm thinking... YOU had five kids and got upset when people didn't invite you to weddings!!! I don't care if this person didn't give enough to your guidelines. I talk to them and want them there. It kills me. But I think this situation is different.

I agree P'cakes!

In my opinion, etiquette is there for a reason. Someone not following etiquette shouldn't be a reason for you not to follow it. If this friendship with this person is so tenuous, why rsvp yes?

Assuming that I like the people (if I didn't I probably would RSVP no), I would give the way that I would normally do so without any regards to how they gifted me.

ETA: I read some of the comments. I guess if they gave offensively low but I knew they were ridiculously rich then I might do an eye for an eye. Honestly this didn't really happen to us. Everyone gave if they wanted to and generously, and the people who didn't I know struggle to pay rent some months so I'm glad that they didn't spend money on a gift for us.

SOmeone on here put it perfectly "give as you are moved and are able". Sounds like you're not moved to give much, so don't. Keep in mind, you could be losing a good friendship over something as trivial as remembering to buy a decent gift, and that you really don't know what their financial situation is, you only think you do.

An eye for an eye?? Nah, give them a nice gift and show them how it's done. That's what I would do.

Go nice but not expensive.

Like, skip the shower (if you're invited) and gift something from the registry around the $50 mark.

I don't understand the point of bothering with a gift if you select gifts based on what others have spent on you. Choose a gift that you can afford and are comfortable paying for that you think they will like. And what point is there to prove? It's a gift, no matter how small. People have different financial obligations and income levels.

*Edited to correct typo.

To clarify, i flew out to NC for a shower, when some people couldn't take an hour of their day to drive 5 minutes and I'm paying for their housing at the venue for them and their date- I will not be attending their shower, nor sending a normal gift in my absence. I'm not judging my college friends who attended my shower and didn't give a gift (which was 95% of them) because I'm SO glad I got to see them, and I know there time is how they show love, not their money. Moreso, I'll remember if someone gives a large gift, and gift back- and if someone doesn't gift at my wedding, I'll make a mental note, and remember it- but they're at a much different stage of their life than I am now so I wouldn't be my normal, overly generous self, but would do the lower end.