How do we plan financially for Christmas this year?

Hello, my name is Ron Blue. And, as we're in the gift-giving season, be it Christmas gifts -- or maybe even this is an idea that you might adopt for a birthday or a special occasion – I’d like to share a tradition of gift-giving that I had with my children.

Many, many years ago when my children were younger (they were in their teens and earlier), I developed a habit of giving each of my children--and there were five of them-- a list, a drawn-up list, and it was individualized per child. On that list that was put on the Christmas tree on Christmas day, were five, six, seven things that they could do with me.

Now maybe it was go ice skating, maybe it was go to the mall and spend $25, maybe it was to take a trip with me, maybe it was to go to a ball game with me, maybe it was to shoot free throws with me, maybe it was to go play golf with me--every one of the activities was doing something with their dad. In other words, the gift was TIME.

And I was telling them, “I am willing to spend time doing something that you would really like to do that would be special--just the two of us.” And, you know, with five children, it's really important that they consider themselves to be loved individually and uniquely. They're not a group. They are individuals.

And so every year at Christmas time I would give them a list, five different lists individualized for each of them, and they had to check one of those items off by dinnertime Christmas night. It was really fascinating, because it always came down to the end, but they had a deadline and they had difficulty in making the decision.

What a joy it was for me to watch them say, "Should I do this with Dad?"; "Should I do that with Dad?" "What is it that I would really like to do?"

It's been really interesting. My oldest daughter not many years ago said to my wife, "You know, I wish Daddy would go back to giving us the Christmas lists." She remembered it. She's an adult now -- she's beyond 40 years old-- and she still remembers that. And I would suspect that most of our children could remember at least one of those times that we spent together as a result of that Christmas list.

That, of course, could be done at birthdays also, or anniversaries or something, but it was an idea that it was all about spending time doing something you wanted to do with your dad. The best gift I think that I ever gave was those lists at Christmastime.


Click here for the December 18, 2008 Blog Entry