How to win at Stealing Santa

To me a "win" is giving a great present to someone who'll enjoy it, and not being wasteful. That can be tricky with these games.

What is Stealing Santa?

It's a version of secret santa played at workplaces or in extended families. Each person contributes a gift, and draws a number to determine the order of play.

Player one selects a gift and opens it. Each following player opens a gift and can keep it or (forcibly) swap it with any already-opened gift. The last player has the choice of all the gifts.

Why I hate this game

Clearly it runs totally against the idea of buying a present for a specific person who you have thought about and brought something that would suit that person. Also, giving gifts for an unknown recipient often results in unwanted and wasteful purchases, sometimes thrown away.

Why I love this game

If played well, the worst outcome is neutral and the best outcome can be someone getting a gift they love. What? Let me explain.

My wife didn't want to go in this game at her office, for very good reasons about waste and consumerism. But there's office social pressure to join in, so we devised a winning strategy so that she can take part in the social aspect but without the negative consequences.

What to contribute

I heard some people take along a gift they want themself. When their turn comes, they either pick it from the pile, or swap for it.

Our variation is that my wife took a re-gift - it's a really great gift but something she already had one of. (That's win number one - no extra consumerism required).

When her turn came, she picked it from the pile and explained what it was. It turned out to be the perfect present for someone else. When their turn came, they quickly swapped to get it.

Success. The gift ended up in the hands of someone who really wanted it, will put it to good use and get great value from it.

A double win

Apart from finding a good home for the re-gift, my wife also ended up with a present that she likes and will use.

That was an extra bonus, not in our plan. We think the solar light will work well for our balcony. If not, it can always go back into the game next year ;)

A word about re-gifting

Sometimes a gift is a good idea, but you already have the exact same thing. Or it doesn't suit you for a particular reason, that the giver wouldn't know. Sometimes we sell these items (get our tips for that) but re-gifting is another option.

Comments

Ethical Investing for Australians

I write about investing, because it's a key part of life. Spending less and investing means an automatic income. An automatic income means we can work less (if we choose) and definitely stress less. But where to invest? What to invest in? Many people expect their money to be invested responsibly and ethically - rather than making money through things like cigarettes, weapons, casinos, adult entertainment, environmental destruction, and pollution from fossil fuels. Those are all things we could probably do with less of. So how do we invest to get good returns - and to have a positive effect on the world? Here are some sources I've seen: Ethical Investing in Australia At Frugality and Freedom , Michelle has done a fair bit of research into Ethical Investing in Australia . For herself, she's chosen Bank Australia for banking, Australian Ethical for superannuation, and two exchange-traded funds ( FAIR and ETHI ) for her share investing outside of super. She also gives detail...

How to waste a year's wages

A friend recently asked me why it is that so many people (on good incomes) are struggling to save. Often the big three money areas are housing, transport and food. In one sense these are necessary items. But what we spend on them is often way more than necessary. I crunched some numbers on how much extra my wife and I could spend on these things - if for some reason we wanted to burn our money. 1. Housing Our apartment is fairly nice, but also cost-effective. I've mentioned how choosing it saves us $1,800 per year , compared to a similar one we saw. The high end of 2-bedroom apartments in our suburb is $305 per week more than our apartment. Not $305 per week. $305 per week more than ours is. I cannot get over that. Sure it's new and modern-looking, but that's a lot of money. It's an extra $15,860 per year above what we pay. 2. Transport The Australian Automobile Association lists the costs of owning and running a car. It includes many often-overlooked c...

Don't dump on charities

Netflix causes mass dumping. Here's an alternative. January is usually a big month for physical donations to charity. In 2019 it's been over-the-top (literally) as charity donation bins have been overflowing with items. The Netflix series "Tidying Up" by famous declutterer Marie Kondo (see her book ) has inspired many to declutter their homes. But in the process they've cluttered the streets. What's so bad about donating? When the bins overflow the extra items are thrown away. Having been in the weather, the rain and on the ground, they are classified as contaminated and cannot be sold. To make it worse, much of what fills the bins is not good enough to sell, and is also dumped. Bad donations hurt charities 13 million dollars. That's how much it costs charities to deal with all the junk we dump on them - 60,000 tonnes a year. Lifeline says half its stores have stopped accepting donations. We might think we're helping, but that's a lot ...

But wait... there's less!

Search This Blog