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Recently I interviewed Melissa J. Ellis, a certified financial planner from Kansas City, for an article about medical debt. One potential tactic I’d asked her about involved holiday and birthday gift-giving. Suppose when relatives and friends ask for gift ideas we were to say, “Help paying my bills”?

Ellis thought this might work for some people. But some people are embarrassed to ask for money outright. It seems gauche or greedy. The CFP suggested framing it this way:

I really appreciate that you want to give me a gift, and here is something that I could really use. It will help relieve my stress and help me feel better than a new sweater ever would.

Is that gauche? Greedy? Personally, I’m torn.

Part of me thinks it’s not polite to dictate a gift and that it’s particularly squicky to ask for money. But the rest of me thinks some people wouldn’t mind being misdirected. If your parents want to spend $100 on a sweater and some frou-frou bath bombs on your b-day, they might find it more meaningful to send that money toward your co-pay.

After all, they’d be helping their beloved child pay less interest total on the obligation. If other relatives/friends did the same, you could see some real progress on the debt. Besides, how many sweaters does one person need?

Then again, some people fret over not having “something under the tree” for you vs. an invisible budget booster. It might cause them to spend more than they’d planned because they want you to have something to unwrap.

Which, in turn, could cause them to feel even more guilt that they spent $125 on Abby and only $100 on Alison – and run out to buy $25 worth of something-or-other for Alison to be “fair.” If you give a mouse a cookie…

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Another potential Christmas dilemma

Here’s another sticky issue: Not everyone wants to disclose how much they spend on gifts.

Some people do most/all of their shopping after Christmas and other holidays, or at yard sales and thrift stores. Maybe it’s because they’re frugal. Maybe it’s because they’re nearly broke but aren’t ready to give up on giving. #beenthere

Suppose you spent only $2.99 on that hat-and-gloves set, or picked up a hardback best-seller for a buck at the library book sale – only to hear a relative or close friend announce, “What I really need this Christmas is cash so I can pay down my bills.” Suddenly you’re in the position of:

• Having to say, “I can’t afford to do that.”
• Having to measure disrupting your money goals (retirement, building an emergency fund, keeping the youngest child in parochial school) against the embarrassment of otherwise being able to put only $5 or $10 toward your loved one’s bills.

Talk about a lose-lose situation.

Crowdsourcing Christmas?

These days it’s increasingly common to ask for cash rather than gifts for weddings, graduations, bar or bat mitzvahs, the birth of a child. You can crowdsource your fertility treatment or a feral cat spay-neuter program.

Old notions like “You can’t dictate a gift” or “It’s the thought that counts” seem to be morphing as fast as Internet startups. (Which you can also crowdsource.) However, we shouldn’t forget the underlying notion of etiquette: Courteous behavior, aka “manners,” exists to keep people from being put on the spot, or having their feelings hurt.

Here’s what I think: You can ask for whatever you want. What you can’t do is act cranky if you don’t get it, because you have no idea what’s going on in other people’s lives.

If Grandma is giving everyone hand-written recipe cards, it might not be because she’s out of touch with what people really want. There might be a darned good reason your parents are suggesting a Secret Santa at this year’s family gathering.

So if anyone asks what you want, feel free to float the idea of “cash against my debt.” But make it clear that this is just one option.

And if your divorced mom gives you two or three small ceramic cats for your collection, one of which still has the thrift-store-sticker on it? The decent response is, “This will look great on the shelf with the other kittehs! You know me so well.”

Readers: Have you ever asked for cash for Christmas, or any other occasion?