Opting Out

It seems that we are on way to many special mailing lists Today we received a wedding announcement in the mail telling us that the young couple had recently been married and it requested that no gifts be sent but prepaid MasterCard and Visa gift cards would be acceptable. A reasonable request I imagine. We received an invitation to an anniversary party of some friends of ours and this would be their fourth anniversary party that we have been invited to. We received an invitation to the Baptism of our ex-son-in-law's new baby. Normally not an event you attend but it is our grandson's half sister and he was really proud. He asked us to go. We went, brought a gift, and had a good time. Enough is enough. In response I drafted the following letter to explain our new policy on gifting.

Dear Madam or Sir,

Thank you for your kind thoughts in selecting us, for your invitation, but we are no longer participating in any requests for gifts at Weddings, Graduations, Anniversaries, Birthdays, Baptisms, Communions, etc., etc. We have met our financial/social obligations and are no longer obliged to contribute. In return we will not be expecting any gifts, of any type, for our future Anniversaries, Birthdays and Retirement parties. In totaling up the amounts of money that we have donated to the above mentioned events we find that we are way over the half way point of a fair and honest trade of gifts and any future contributions just keep putting us further on the negative side of the balance sheet. In order to tip the balance sheet in our direction would require an endless array of Birthdays, Anniversaries and Retirement events just for us and we chose not to do that to you. Our retirement years are now upon us and we find that we are unable to retire unless we both continue to work. A bit of an oxymoron but that is the ways things worked out. It boils down to your request for a gift is another Medicare part B payment for us. Health care wins out so that all we have left is “Good Wishes for you from us”.Thank you for thinking of us and rest assured we are returning the favor and thinking of you.

Your friends,

Ted and Dale