The pitfalls of re-gifting

I recently received an email from one of our users asking for suggestions on what she should do with the gifts her daughter got on her birthday; gifts the mum thought were not needed and were still in their original boxes.

I started to write my answer by suggesting the obvious options: give it a child-related charity, sell the items or re-gift them. After some consideration, I reduced my answer to one suggestion: give it to charity.

My response was not only driven by the fact that – yes, giving to a child in need is by far the best thing you can do – but also because I see a number of pitfalls with re-gifting or re-selling items.

First, I want o make clear that ‘re-gifting’ in this blog refers solely to giving to another child you know or your child knows. Example. Re-gifting something to your son’s school friend on his birthday.

In reality, you can also re-gift something to a child in need or charity. That’s the best scenario for re-gifting and a fantastic thing to do. But for this article, we are only focused on re-gifting to other kids in your own circle of friends and people you know.

We did a survey among mums last year and over 80% said that they re-gifted some of their children’s gifts. That’s not surprising. In reality, re-gifting is much better solution than just letting your child open the present and play once before putting the item permanently under their bed.

I have re-gifted myself in the past. But here is the main reason why I stopped doing it:

My child is worse off.

What? Yes.

When you re-gift something your child got, do you also go and buy another gift for your child? Or do you put the money you would have spent on a gift for the other child towards your own child? If not, your child is worse off.

Let me explain. When a friend or relative gives your kid a present, they hope that it will be useful and wanted. They allocate their time, effort and money towards your child.

Now, if you take that gift and give it to another child, it means that the ‘good’ that your friend wanted to provide via the gift has been transferred to someone else.

So unless you replace that item re-gifted with something else for your child or put the estimated cost of the gift on their bank account for a future gift, experience or milestone, your kid is missing out.

By simply re-gifting a present to a cousin or school friend (on birthdays or Xmas), you did nothing for your own child who is supposed to be the beneficiary of that gift.

One may argue that, ‘hey, I’m the parent and I pay everything for my kid anyway so the money I saved on not having to buy a present for our cousin will go back to my kid.”

Is that true? Only if you are wealthy enough so your kids won’t need to worry about paying for travelling, education etc. Only if you have a solid savings plan or investment plan in place for your kid or kids.

The truth is that, in general, parents do a great job meeting their kids short term needs but do a ‘not so great’ job saving for future milestones. Take a few hundred bucks of re-gifting every year and add some compounding interest – that could easily fund a nice trip or reduce their student loan when they are older.

So if you like to re-gift, try to make sure that your child receives the benefit that the original giver hoped to provide from that gift.

The same applies to selling gifts. If you re-sell something your child got, make sure that money goes towards your children. By the time the kids are older, your financial status may have changed and that could make a difference.

Ideally, you want to minimise the risk of your child getting items that are not needed or useful in the first place.

Since launching Purposit last year, we no longer deal with the ‘what to do with this item’ at our house. By sharing gift ideas with friends and family on our kids’ birthdays, Xmas, etc, we have given them a backup plan. If they were unsure what to get or could not find what they were looking for, they could simply contribute towards the gift ideas. A win win situation for everyone. It worked very well.

What about you? What do you usually do with gifts your kids receive that are duplicated on unlikely to be used? Share with us. We would love to hear your story.

To your child’s future,

x Johanna