Extraordinary and Unconventional Christmas Gifts Part 1

Extraordinary and Unconventional Christmas Gifts

I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or whatever winter holiday you celebrate.

One common aspect of holidays is the tradition of gift giving.

As I get older, I find it harder and harder to come up with gifts for people. There are many reasons for this. First of all, my siblings and parents (all grown adults) have the means to buy whatever they need.

Second, it’s hard to know what people actually want. Outside of work, 95% of the time I’m spending time with my wife and daughter so it’s really difficult to figure out the wants and needs of other people.

Another reason is that my wife doesn’t really like shopping. She tries to avoid malls as much as possible, especially during holidays. The crowds and overall ambience is hectic and overstimulating. It can be a recipe for stress and anxiety for someone like my wife who would rather enjoy peace and quiet. Because I’m a tad bit more extroverted, I don’t mind the short bursts of chaos. But whenever we have to go to the mall to buy something, we are like a special-ops team– we focus on the mission, then proceed to get in and get out.

And finally, one big reason is my gravitation toward minimalism and my natural frugality. It makes me question the need to give gifts in the first place. How do I justify buying something for someone else when that person may not cherish or even use it?

Am I Against Giving Gifts?

Short answer: no.

By refusing to give and receive gifts, I would probably be even more of a frugal, minimal, zero waste environmentalist than I already am. But I’m definitely not that hardcore. I think that if I went to that extreme, it would suck the joy out of life. Living that way wouldn’t be as fun. I’m fine with just being relatively frugal and sensibly minimal. So for the record, I’m totally cool with gift giving.

Anyway, the reality is that most people are neither frugal nor minimalist. Plus giving gifts is one of the ways that people express their love. It’s one of the 5 love languages. I whole heartedly respect that.

If you recall, gift giving is allowed in our buy nothing for 1 year challenge, especially if it is an “experience” gift.

While gift giving can be a challenge for me, I try to see it as a great opportunity to express my love and creativity.

I intentionally waited until after Christmas to post this in the off chance that the intended recipients of these gifts could be reading this. After all, I wouldn’t want to spoil any surprises.

So, without further ado, here are some of the extraordinary and unconventional Christmas gifts that my wife and I have given to people…

 

Points and Miles: The Gift of Luxury Experiences

My parents are financially independent and are fortunate enough to have the ability to buy whatever they need. And for the most part, they can buy whatever they want. (Luckily, they are also frugal so they don’t really want a whole lot.)

Recently, we have been trying to gift them experiences over material goods. It makes it easy because they enjoy traveling, seeing shows, and going to sporting events.

With respect to travel, they are definitely on the more frugal side of the spectrum. They’d be totally fine with budget accommodations likes Super 8, La Quinta, and Travel Lodge. In fact, frugal travel has allowed them to take me and my sisters on a lot of trips throughout the years while saving a good deal of money. Credit card rewards and travel hacking really wasn’t much of a thing back then.

I wanted to gift my parents a taste of luxury. So why not gift them a luxury experience by redeeming points and miles for them?

My Unique Situation

I’m definitely in a unique situation.

For the past several years, my wife and I have enjoyed a lot of luxury traveling with the help of credit card points and miles. Flying on Singapore Airlines suites class is just one example. I wish I could write up more luxury trip reports, but I find it hard to include them in blog posts without sounding too braggadocio.

Anyway, our luxury traveling days are mostly in the past. Now that we have a baby, it’s a lot harder. The logistics of traveling with a baby is much more challenging than traveling as a couple. Not only is it tough to travel to a desired destination, once you get there it may not be as enjoyable. Babies have to take naps which can limit sight-seeing enjoyment. Needless to say, we haven’t traveled much lately.

So therein lies the following predicament: I have a ton of credit card points and miles yet no immediate use for them.

Of course, I do have the option of saving all of my points for when my wife and I are ready to travel with the baby. But those points will be collecting dust and are worth nothing until you redeem them. Plus there is a real risk of points and miles being devalued if not used. Airline and hotel loyalty programs can increase the number of points and miles required to redeem rewards on a whim without notice. A 5 star stay at a luxury hotel may require 20,000 points today, but 35,000 points several weeks from now. That’s an extreme example, but it is possible.

Free Night in Sydney

This Christmas, I gifted my parents a free night stay at the Intercontinental Sydney using my Chase IHG free night certificate. I received the certificate simply by having the Chase IHG credit card.

Because the certificate was set to expire soon, it made complete sense to redeem a free night for my parents. I wasn’t going anywhere any time soon. Meanwhile, my parents had already planned a trip to Australia and hadn’t booked their hotels yet. It was a perfect high value redemption for a certificate that was going to expire anyway.

I mean, who wouldn’t want to stay at a hotel with a gorgeous view of Sydney harbor and the famous opera house?

One More Thing…

I need to mention one important thing.

Officially, free night certificates are often not transferrable from one person to another. The person who earns the free night certificate (in this case me) is supposed to make the reservation and be present for the stay.

But there’s a workaround. Here’s what you do. Make the reservation under your own name. Then, add the name of the person who will be staying to the reservation as an additional guest. If there is no option to do this online, you can call the hotel directly to add your guest. Additional guests on the reservation will have the ability to check-in to the hotel without you being physically present.

In my case, I added my mom’s name to the reservation as an additional guest. I was also able to submit a special request when filling out the reservation online. My request was: “Suite upgrade if available. Early check-in for listed additional guest.” I also called the hotel directly to ensure that my additional guest (mom) can check-in early without me and they confirmed yes.

Redeeming free nights for my parents has worked well for me in the past. Last year, I gifted my parents a free night stay at a luxury hotel in San Francisco. At that time, they needed to go up to the Bay Area on short notice. Hotels in the San Francisco area are expensive, especially when you have to find a last minute stay. In this case, redeeming for a free night was by far the best option.

The Future

One day, I’d like to gift my parents business class or first class airline tickets to wherever they want to go.

They have never flown premium class before and I think it’d be a real treat for them.

In general, premium class award travel is easiest to redeem as far in advance as possible (for example 11 months in advance when awards first become available) or last minute within two weeks. Premium class awards often become available last minute because some times airlines have trouble selling business class seats for cash prices. Therefore, they may open these unfilled seats to members of their loyalty program for a reduced number of points and miles (saver level awards).

Anecdotally based on travel blogs and forums on Flyer Talk, it appears that premium class saver awards are most available last minute. My parents are the perfect candidates to snag these types of awards because they are fully retired. They are both location independent and time independent. Since they don’t have any particular place to be at any particular time, they can pretty much jet set and go if they really wanted to.

I think it’d be a fantastic experience for them.

Final Thoughts

Gift giving has been a challenge recently, especially for adults like my parents. Therefore, I’ve been trying to find creative ways to gift them aspirational luxury experiences. I definitely don’t want to buy them material things that they may not want or use. They don’t need more stuff. And if they want something, they can easily buy it themselves.

Gifting free luxury hotel stays and free flights in premium class would make an incredible experience gift for them. Redeeming free night certificates, points, and miles earned from credit cards makes it easy to do.

This post was longer than I expected so I decided to divide it into two parts.

Part 2 will be my next post and I’ll highlight some other extraordinary and unconventional Christmas gifts that my wife and I have given to people.

Stay tuned.

 

What’s your perspective on giving gifts? Have you given any gifts that may be considered unconventional?