Graduation Gifts
I apologize for not given you any helpful advice over the past couple of weeks, as I was dealing with my son’s graduation from high school and the expenses that come with it.
I know that most of you that had children who graduated from high school had asked yourself what would be that perfect gift for them, and this is the question I am asking right now. I have searched from computer store to computer store, from phone store and to a long internet search for that one perfect gift. I know that for the past 18 years I have been the one to choose what the experience my son was to have: I bought the computer that was best for him, the phone I wanted him to have, and even advised him on the apps he could use and he has a car that is sitting in my driveway.
So this time I thought about doing something I have not ever done before; I figured it was time that he started to make his own choices. Starting about 3 weeks ago, I started waking him up to gather information on what he he might want, to allow for me some options. I now know that, up until this point, it was a good thing that I made some of the choices for my son, but now maybe I should leave it up to him. The problem is that I got the well-known ‘I don’t know what I want’ I asked my son what he wanted for graduation.
To make it a bit easier on him, I suggested a few options. Since I am the ‘computer guy,’ I immediately thought that the right computer would do as a good gift. At first he went along with it, thinking that it was a good idea, so he started looking for computers. After 2 days I asked him what he had found and he showed several high-end gaming computers. I began to point out the flaws with the 3 choices that he showed me; the computer he really wanted would not actually do what he wanted.
I suggested a car but on my limited budget my wife shot that down pretty quick as he does have a perfectly good one in the driveway. Next I suggested a phone, but he decided that the one he had was going to do him fine, he was only using it as a phone and already had all the applications he desired. So after one week I was no closer to finding the “one perfect” graduation gift for my son. I saw that this was going nowhere fast so I sought some advice from my father-in-law who informed me that money was the solution as a matter of fact that is what my son was going to get from them. Now I should let you know that my father-in-law has money and he is retired this is not a problem for him. I sought advice from my wife and in the end we decided that truly our best gift would be to provide him with some money to apply towards his education as we both went through school after high school and know how hard it is to survive without money in college.
