Marion Editor's Corner: Christmas Shopping as an Adult, For the First Time, Part Two

Yesterday I received two huge boxes full of Christmas presents.

Despite my previous lack of confidence in my gift buying ability, I now smile with pride when I look at the stack of unwrapped gifts on the floor of my home office.

They are going to love their gifts

So, in this second part of my three-part series on my first Christmas as an adult with an adult job, I’m going to let you in on how I was able to successfully buy awesome presents for an entire family, without breaking the bank.

See my , where I describe the family members I later bought gifts for.

What I have learned

1. Double/Triple/Quadrupole up on gifts.

Instead of buying $20 gifts for each person in my uncle Robert's family of four, I decided to buy a more expensive gift that they all can enjoy. What did I buy? I found an enormous box of Lindor white chocolate truffles on Amazon for $35, 120 in the box. That way each family member can take one whenever they want and start the slow march towards a full dental breakdown. Better yet, their upcoming dental bills will cost a fraction of the cost of the gift, which amounted to $9 per person.

2. Collections.

Know a family member really likes a show, series of books, or a band? Well, if your family has big expectations for the present, you can’t just buy them one CD or one book you found used on amazon for 99 cents. Television box sets go from $20-$30 and you can find sets of book series’ for the same price. When I was shopping on Amazon, I found a box set of Dr. Seuss books for my two nephews for $25 and a box set of Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Shadow series for $35, for my sci-fi loving brother.

3. Never shop anywhere but online.

Since many online retailers are offering great shipping deals, there is no excuse to walk into a store to buy something, unless, of course, it is a specialty item that can’t be found anywhere else. Still, online retailers like Amazon, Buy.com and Newegg have such an enormous collection of stuff that make Walmart look like the small shops Walmart puts out of business. I was able to find bulk chocolate, obscure, out of print books and a wilderness survival kit endorsed by the Discovery Channel’s star outdoors-man, Bear Grylles. This carries the stipulation, however, that whomever receives the survival kit will owe me their life should the kit save theirs.

In my previous post I was planning on speaking to the relative likeliness that each gift will fail, but this experience greatly boosted my gift giving confidence, so that’s why I decided to instead give you my lessons learned from the experience. 

Stay tuned for the final entry in the three part column, a tell-all expose of the reception my gifts will recieve on Christmas Eve.