What’s your Gift-Giver Personality? Take the Gift-Giver Personality Quiz
Each year, the average Australian adult spends the following on gifts:
- $437 for our spouse or partner,
- $361 for each of our children,
- $201 per parent, and
- $115 for our pet!
According to research by the Financial Planning Association of Australia, Australia is a generous nation, with 85% of us saying that we get more joy giving gifts to others that in receiving them ourselves.
Sounds great, right? But it can also be a problem when most of our generosity is unplanned. The same research revealed that 73% of us do not have a budget allocation for gifts. With $19.8 billion being spent on gifts every year, that’s a huge amount of unplanned spending!
How do we decide how much to spend?
If we don’t budget or plan for gifts, how do we decide how much to spend?
The top three decision-drivers that inform how much we choose to spend on a gift are:
- How close we are to the recipient (59% selected this)
- How special the occasion is (58%); and
- Our budget at the time (55%).
A lack of budgeting, combined with an impulsive decision-making process, our rushed lifestyles and little preparation time, can lead to overspending and potentially poor gifting choices.
The research revealed 4 distinct Gift-Giving Personalities. The FPA created a Gift-Giver Personality Quiz to help you identify your own gift-giving preferences, and those of others within your social networks. Click here to take the quiz and find out what drives your gift giving habits.
The good news is that financially savvy gifting trends are on the rise, with cash and gift cards being our preferred go-to gifts, and two-thirds of us reporting that we like to receive useful, practical gifts above unique, personal ones. Time is considered the most precious gift, with 61% of us rating quality time spent celebrating over a meal with others as the way we would most like to celebrate our birthday. Other intangible gifts, such as experiences, or doing an activity together, are also popular.
Conscientious legacy gifting is a powerful trend, with 81% of Australians thinking about how long a gift will last when they choose it, and reporting that they would like to give gifts that last longer than the ones they’ve given in the past.
Gift for the Future: a Financial Plan
Three in five Australians (57%) would like to receive the gift of time with a financial planner who could create a plan for achieving their money and life goals and provide peace of mind that their finances are in order.
A financial plan is a gift that leaves a legacy. It’s a gift that keeps on giving well beyond the occasion, allowing recipients to sleep well at night, knowing their finances are in order, debts are being managed, and they have a path forward to achieving their money and life goals. If you would like to give a loved one the gift of time with an experienced Financial Adviser, call Soundbridge today on 07 4922 2624, or email us on admin@soundbridge.com.au to arrange a gift voucher.
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Any advice in this site is of a general nature only and has not been tailored to your personal circumstances. Please seek personal advice prior to acting on this information
Posted on August 21st, 2019