You Get What You Give
My girlfriend and I got into an argument over our kids’ Christmas spending budget. We both have a kid from a previous relationship, her daughter and my son. We have an agreed budget of $1,000 for each kid, and we met that budget for both kids last week. Today, she tells me she wants to get her daughter a phone and wants to buy her an iPhone XS Max, easily putting her daughter close to $1,200 over our agreed Christmas budget.
We have a shared bank account, so it’s not quite the “it’s her daughter and her money so what’s the deal?” kind of thing. We argued for three days over the issue. We couldn’t afford to spend another $1,200 on my son to even out the budgets again at a ludicrous $2,200 each. My son would have never known if we spent extra money on her, but that’s not the point.
It’s unfair and in my opinion it’s favoritism. After another very heated argument over the issue, I walked over to the tree and grabbed her present, a MacBook Air that I purchased on my own credit card. I opened it in front of her, and then re-wrapped it and addressed it to my son. Now the budgets are mostly equal again, give or take $100…Merry Christmas, witch.