Man 'Downgrades' Sister-in-Law's Christmas Gift After Seeing What She Got for Him

Mar. 15, 2025

People opening gifts in a stock photo.Photo:FG Trade / Getty Images

FG Trade / Getty Images

A man says he opted to “downgrade” his sister-in-law’s Christmas gift after realizing that what she bought him was not on the same level.

In a post shared toRedditthat has since been deleted, the man explains that he recently got his first “career job” and is using his new source of income to get “good presents” for his family members for the first time.

Recently, the family celebrated Christmas early with his sister-in-law. The man’s brother got her an Apple Watch, and the man planned to buy her a nice Apple Watch band “because she doesn’t like the silicone bands that come with them typically.”

Christmas gift in a stock photo.Getty

Getty

“We set a limit for $50-$100,” he adds in the post. “Apple put out this new sleek gold metal band that costs $100 so it was in limit but at the very top.” As the band is sized, the man ordered a wrist-sizer and a photo of the band itself, putting it inside “a comically big box” so she would have something to open.

“She loved the style and color I chose and was excited,” the man writes.

Then it was his turn to open the gift his sister-in-law got for him: “I got these hiking socks which I have been slowly swapping my sock drawer out to but cost 26 dollars a pair. They are useful and I do love the socks, but it’s half of the range we decided on.”

“I handed it to her and while she did accept it and enjoy it, I could almost see a shock when it wasn’t in the Apple band packaging and just the insignia brand packaging,” he writes. “I mentioned that when I went to order the watch band. I saw this one next to it at 45 and they were identical and it had good reviews.”

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Later, the man’s brother called to ask him if he had planned to do “the bait and switch.”

“I told him I didn’t but after she went half of the range we agreed on, I decided to get her a band that [was] in the range she ended up getting me,” he writes. “I told him if the socks were like 35-50 dollars I could brush it off as a good gift that barely missed the quota of the range we agreed on, or if she got me 2 pairs for 52 bucks I would have still gotten the Apple Brand Watch Band, but she decided to half what agreed on.”

The man adds that, while Christmas “isn’t about the price of the gifts but the thought,” he writes that he “put money I could have put for savings into everyone’s gifts, and for it not to be respected back kinda hurt.”

source: people.com