OK, I’ll admit it. I can be cheap. Emphasis on “can”. I’m not always. I was thinking about some of the Christmas presents I still need to buy this year and quickly became overwhelmed with the number of cousins, aunts, uncles and friends in my life. My list of cousins alone is pretty long. To be honest, most of my family doesn’t even deserve presents. What they need is time and personal-financial management skills. Unfortunately, buying them a book that will teach them this will end up in their pile of other useless crap items and I don’t have the time to go around to each of them to teach them about this subject matter. Maybe I should host a “Payazaro Financial Seminar” with a bucket of Coronas and ceviche, maybe then they will come. I’m not the best financial administrator, but I make my hard earned pesitos last me long enough to where I never worry about the essentials: bills, food, rent, transportation, and miscellaneous.
I know I can be a punk when it comes to making fun of my extended family, but on the real, it saddens me to see how many of them will get into more debt just because it’s Christmas. I know what it’s like to go through Christmas without presents because there was simply no money. It served me well and I learned a lot from those experiences. As much as I would have liked to receive presents during those times, it would have meant more debt for my parents. That didn’t mean our Christmas was lame. I just made sure to play with the toys some of my cousins got for Christmas but bored them as soon as they were out of their wrapper.
Man, that ceviche and Corona seminar sounds good right now…
My boss gave his 2 year old daughter a stick of gum for Christmas last year… she thought she was the luckiest girl on the planet! What a great idea 🙂
Yeah I’ve seen a lot of people cut back on presents this year… From the rich to the poor to myself, its been a humbling experience with it all. I totally hear you about just trying to make ends meet, a few months ago I was struggling myself, I can only imagine how families do it. How do they make those paychecks stretch so far? I don’t even know.