Gift exchanges aren’t supposed to come with audits or guilt trips.

But when one woman’s carefully chosen gifts sparked complaints from a sibling who never gives back, it exposed a long-standing imbalance that became impossible to ignore.

Keep reading for the full story!

AITA for not buying more expensive gifts for my sister

I have a complicated relationship with my family, particularly my siblings. I was made to be everybody’s caretaker and was parentified from a very young age.

For a while, they were estranged, but lately they’ve kept more contact.

I was no contact for two years starting in 2020. I’ve been low contact with them for a few years and have tried to make amends with my siblings.

The hardest relationships are with my sister and father, who treat me like I’m disposable.

This has complicated gift-giving traditions.

My family doesn’t celebrate Christmas, not even the commercial kind. Because of that, I usually only buy Christmas presents for my friends.

This isn’t unusual: my family doesn’t buy me gifts for holidays or my birthday, and I don’t usually buy gifts for them anymore.

So in the spirit of the holidays, she offered to buy her family something, but she was very upfront about her financial constraints.

However, since this season coincides with my siblings’ birthdays, I offered to buy them something each. I knew very well that my siblings wouldn’t be able to afford to buy anything for me.

I asked them to please pick modest things so I could be conservative about price. I tried to keep the prices for all of my gifts relatively low because I don’t have a lot of money this season.

She took a slightly different approach with her friends.

I recently found out that a few close friends are buying more expensive things for me, and I agreed with a mutual friend to go 50/50 on some more expensive presents for them.

These presents were delivered to my family’s house because I was concerned about porch pirates.

But her sister didn’t like this one bit.

My mother pulled me aside to tell me that my sister was complaining that I bought her something cheap while I had all this money to buy other people more expensive presents.

Then my mother immediately told me to hush and not tell anybody that she said that, and that she shouldn’t have told me.

It started to make her question whether she was doing the right thing.

In the moment, I felt like the AH and resolved to find my sister a more expensive present.

That was a week ago, but since then I’ve felt like I have no reason to buy anything more expensive for her because she wouldn’t do that for me.

AITA?

The holidays can be a tough time, especially when money is tight.

What did Reddit think?

Gratitude has left the chat.

What this sister really deserves is no presents.

Next year, gifts need to be handled very differently.

This commenter shares their advice.

Generosity shouldn’t be measured by price tags alone.

Turns out, it was the most entitled time of the year.

If you liked that story, read this one about grandparents who set up a college fund for their grandkid because his parents won’t, but then his parents want to use the money to cover sibling’s medical expenses.