Today I was thinking about how to buy Christmas gifts without breaking the bank, and out of curiosity I decided to look up the average annual expenditure on holiday gifts by U.S. adults. According to polling by the American Research Group, the average U.S. adult planned to spend $882 on holiday gifts in 2015. Good God… that’s ridiculous.
Given that there are 254,321,000 civilian, noninstitutionalized adults in the U.S. (St. Louis Federal Reserve). A reasonable estimate of U.S. holiday gift spending is $224.3 Billion.
What else could we do with that money?
- Buy every homeless person in the United States a $397k house
- Provide clean water to everyone who doesn’t have it in the world for the next 10 years, twice
- Increase spending on public schools in the whole country by 36%
- If each adult invested it annually for their retirement between ages 20 and 60 they would have another $112k, assuming a 5% real return. This could reduce our unfunded liabilities for Social Security and Medicare by $28.5 trillion.
All that being said, I’m as self-interested as anyone else. I’m not spending $882 on anyone, underprivileged or not. This year I’m just going to be slightly less ridiculous than the average person. Instead of giving gifts to family and friends I’m giving small care packages to 50 homeless people and writing each family member and friend a note that says something to the effect of “Happy Holidays! Hope you’re doing well. This year I gave a small gift to a local homeless San Antonian in your name. [insert miscellaneous New Year’s well wishes]”
I haven’t given them out yet, but I bought and organized all the packages today (see attached pictures). In total I spent $150 and each person will get these things:
- Toothbrush & baking soda (toothpaste would’ve added >$50 to the total)
- A pair of socks
- An Advil
- Cheese crackers
- Ramen
- Five Band-Aids
- Instant coffee
- A handful of q-tips
- Two cigarettes and a small box of matches
If I would’ve planned ahead, I probably could have done better, but $3/person isn’t too bad. The remaining $700+ is going into stocks.