Do You Use A Strategy For Wedding Gift-Giving? Most People Do Bankrate.com Caret RightMain Menu Mortgage Mortgages Financing a home purchase Refinancing your existing loan Finding the right lender Additional Resources Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Bank Banking Compare Accounts Use calculators Get advice Bank reviews Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Credit Card Credit cards Compare by category Compare by credit needed Compare by issuer Get advice Looking for the perfect credit card? Narrow your search with CardMatch Caret RightMain Menu Loan Loans Personal Loans Student Loans Auto Loans Loan calculators Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Invest Investing Best of Brokerages and robo-advisors Learn the basics Additional resources Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Home Equity Home equity Get the best rates Lender reviews Use calculators Knowledge base Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Loan Home Improvement Real estate Selling a home Buying a home Finding the right agent Additional resources Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Insurance Insurance Car insurance Homeowners insurance Other insurance Company reviews Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Caret RightMain Menu Retirement Retirement Retirement plans & accounts Learn the basics Retirement calculators Additional resources Elevate your Bankrate experience Get insider access to our best financial tools and content Advertiser Disclosure
Advertiser Disclosure
We are an independent, advertising-supported comparison service. Our goal is to help you make smarter financial decisions by providing you with interactive tools and financial calculators, publishing original and objective content, by enabling you to conduct research and compare information for free - so that you can make financial decisions with confidence.
Bankrate has partnerships with issuers including, but not limited to, American Express, Bank of America, Capital One, Chase, Citi and Discover. How We Make Money
The offers that appear on this site are from companies that compensate us. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site, including, for example, the order in which they may appear within the listing categories. But this compensation does not influence the information we publish, or the reviews that you see on this site. We do not include the universe of companies or financial offers that may be available to you. SHARE: April 19, 2017 Claes Bell Bankrate logo The Bankrate promise
At Bankrate we strive to help you make smarter financial decisions. While we adhere to strict editorial integrity, this post may contain references to products from our partners. Here's an explanation for how we make money. Bankrate logo The Bankrate promise
Founded in 1976, Bankrate has a long track record of helping people make smart financial choices. We’ve maintained this reputation for over four decades by demystifying the financial decision-making process and giving people confidence in which actions to take next. Bankrate follows a strict , so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. All of our content is authored by and edited by , who ensure everything we publish is objective, accurate and trustworthy. It's why over 100 million people — not to mention top publications such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and CNBC — depend on Bankrate as a trusted source of financial information every year. Bankrate logo Editorial integrity
Bankrate follows a strict , so you can trust that we’re putting your interests first. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. Key Principles
We value your trust. Our mission is to provide readers with accurate and unbiased information, and we have editorial standards in place to ensure that happens. Our editors and reporters thoroughly fact-check editorial content to ensure the information you’re reading is accurate. We maintain a firewall between our advertisers and our editorial team. Our editorial team does not receive direct compensation from our advertisers. Editorial Independence
Bankrate’s editorial team writes on behalf of YOU – the reader. Our goal is to give you the best advice to help you make smart personal finance decisions. We follow strict guidelines to ensure that our editorial content is not influenced by advertisers. Our editorial team receives no direct compensation from advertisers, and our content is thoroughly fact-checked to ensure accuracy. So, whether you’re reading an article or a review, you can trust that you’re getting credible and dependable information. Bankrate logo How we make money
You have money questions. Bankrate has answers. Our experts have been helping you master your money for over four decades. We continually strive to provide consumers with the expert advice and tools needed to succeed throughout life’s financial journey. Bankrate follows a strict , so you can trust that our content is honest and accurate. Our award-winning editors and reporters create honest and accurate content to help you make the right financial decisions. The content created by our editorial staff is objective, factual, and not influenced by our advertisers. We’re transparent about how we are able to bring quality content, competitive rates, and useful tools to you by explaining how we make money. Bankrate.com is an independent, advertising-supported publisher and comparison service. We are compensated in exchange for placement of sponsored products and, services, or by you clicking on certain links posted on our site. Therefore, this compensation may impact how, where and in what order products appear within listing categories. Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service. You’re saving the date: Your friends are throwing the wedding of the century in eight months, and you’re invited! It’s gonna be epic, on an island you’ve never heard of, and everyone will be there. But there are those little matters you have to think about: making your travel arrangements, finding something great to wear, and — most important of all — buying the perfect gift at the appropriate price point. You won’t want to seem cheap. It’s no wonder Leigh Mosby, an interior designer in Raleigh, North Carolina, estimates an upcoming wedding will cost her up to $2,000. “I love (the bride), I’m happy to support her, but financially speaking, it is a big commitment,” she says. Many Americans use strategies so they’re not kissing too much of their money goodbye in the wedding receiving line. Most base their wedding gift spending on how well they know the couple, a Bankrate survey finds. Some even turn down invitations because of the costs. Wedding season is a great reason to have some handy – or a , in case of destination weddings. How much to spend on a gift It depends
Overall, nearly half of Americans — 47 percent — say they typically spend $100 or more on wedding gifts for close friends and family. For distant relatives, acquaintances and colleagues, they tend to spend less: — only 28 percent say they typically spend $100 or more. Delia Sequeira, a behavior analyst in Edison, New Jersey, says she’s more likely to feel obligated to lay out serious cash for closer friends and family. “If you’re bridesmaid or a really good friend, you can’t really get away with giving a gift that is not that great,” she says. Cash or checks are the most popular type of gift to give, particularly among people in the Northeast. There, 45 percent choose to give cash or checks, compared to 29 percent nationwide. Gifts off the registry were the overall No. 2 choice in the survey, followed by gift cards that must be used at a specific store or chain. Some give only regrets
About 1 in 5 Americans has declined a wedding invitation because they couldn’t afford to go. Parents, older millennials and Generation Xers are among the groups most likely to say no. Sequeira says she’s more focused on reining in those expenses now that she’s gone back to school. “Before when I was younger making the same amount of money, going to these weddings and to all these events didn’t feel like it was a strain on my budget. I was also a little more reckless with the way I budgeted and not as well-versed in what I should be doing financially,” she says. Mosby, the designer, estimates she has spent more than $10,000 attending weddings over the last 10 years, including one summer where she went to six weddings in three months. While spending a few hundred dollars to attend a typical wedding close to home isn’t usually an issue for her, she says destination weddings can easily multiply the cost by a factor of 10. At times, Mosby says, she has had to take on side work, in addition to her full-time job, to meet wedding expenses. How to cope
High wedding costs are very familiar to Liz Landau, a financial planner in White Plains, New York, who tries to advise clients on how to handle a busy wedding season. “I try to alert them to the cost, and that as they get into their late 20s and early 30s, there’s going to be a slew of weddings and we talk about the different components of the cost,” she says. It’s important to decide ahead of time how the expenses will be covered. “We go through the math,” she says. “Where are you coming up with the extra $5,000? Are you OK not going on a vacation for two years, or putting off buying a new car?” If you have a few wedding invitations or save-the-dates on your calendar, before you start shopping for a gift or your outfit. If you have to put some of your expenses on plastic, use a credit card that will or . Methodology: Bankrate’s poll was conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, which obtained the data via telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults living in the continental U.S. Telephone interviews were conducted by landline (500) and cellphone (500, including 308 without a landline phone) in English and Spanish from April 6-9, 2017. Statistical results are weighted to correct known demographic discrepancies. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points. SHARE: Claes Bell Related Articles