I’m a single working adult. I started to give my parents and grandparents money when I started to working full time, to show I have an intent of supporting them. Technical traditions were not taught they were kind of a “You should know” and if you do it wrong they get mad you for not knowing. When I was younger I gave each pair $100, because that’s what I could afford. This year I want to give each pair $200 because that’s what I can give, I just bought a car, so budget is tight.
But my mom isn’t happy that I told her I was giving the grand parents $200s as a unit and not $200 EACH. She told me I’m suppose to give an envelope to each person not to a unit and now that I’m older I should be giving more money. This isn’t the first time my mom has played the “higher amount for gifts” shes done this for birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas presents. She is not ever satisfied with what I decided to give and eggs for more. She told me “400 isn’t a good number, if you want a good number you should go with 500. Dont pick an unlucky number” which I dont know why she is going that high considering she knows I have very high money anxiety and that would mean forking over 3k total if I were gift 500 to each grandparent and each of my parents, which is 4 months of savings, I CANNOT do that, my family christmas gifts set me back 2 months already because no one knew how to be subtle on their wishlist. And I didn’t want to do deal with “losing face” harassment.
I asked if 100 or 200 were bad numbers she told me “No.” so I told her “I’ll give them each 100” She said “You should give them each 200”. Am I low balling my relatives? Am I suppose to give an envelope individually?
Edit: Chinese. Younger bro is married but rarely visits. So i feel like the whole “children take care of parents” lands on me even though I’m single? Embarrassed I don’t make more but it’s already more than most of my fam.
Edit 2:
So it seems what my family expects and practices is not the traditional custom. Thanks for everyone’s input. I do feel much better now that I know what is the typical expectation and feel less pressured to make the monetary change. After all the Red Envelope is just a gesture and symbol of luck, not necessarily an allowance.
