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Oh no, it’s time to start thinking about gift-giving … There’s always been a saying, an expression of exaggerated exasperation, that’s irked me: “What do you get for the person who has everything?”  The fundamental flaw of that question is that it ignores a very important fact: The person who has everything is probably rich, and you should never feel all that burdened about what to get them. If you told me that you’re agonizing over what to get a rich person, I would ask you to reevaluate your priorities. Rich people have enough money that they can buy whatever they want. But since the rich are people, and people celebrate birthdays, holidays, and milestones with presents, there will sometimes be a rare occasion when someone needs to get them a gift. And the exasperation goes from imaginary frustration to real annoyance.  That’s when people, mostly rich ones, call The Gifterie, a bespoke gifting concierge that helps clients choose the perfect gift for the most affluent, famous, and picky people in the world.  The Gifterie is the creation of Elise Nach and Min Polley. They came to me highly recommended by a few celebrity personal assistants. Whether the recipient is an avid golfer or a newborn nepo baby, Nach and Polley will find just the thing. I spoke with Nach about the difference between good and bad gifts, what they’ve learned from gifting the hardest people to buy for, how we — normies — can translate that to the presents we give this holiday season, and, of course, the most absurd celebrity request they’ve ever taken.  Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Alex Abad-Santos: I asked one of my friends who works as a celebrity’s personal assistant to ask his colleagues and they all recommended The Gifterie. And now I’m here to ask you, the experts, what to get people — like celebrities — who have everything. Elise Nach: As a company we’re used to working with a variety of requests, whether it is very specific, like, “Blake Lively is having another baby. We need to send something she doesn’t have,” to [working with] Amazon, when they’re launching a new series and they want to send something fun to all their press and talent.  When it comes to either the celebrity gifting or higher-end clientele that really have everything, we always say it’s more about making something feel special — [showing] that you put thought into it. Because they have a thousand scarves or they have a thousand different baby toys. Whether it’s etching a baby’s name on a gift or stitching someone’s initials on something, things like that seem to make a bigger impact with the recipient than just another Hermès scarf.  Which again, lovely. Who doesn’t want to get that?  If anyone is reading this, I would not turn down a Hermès scarf.  Of course, I wouldn’t either. But the key to successful gift-giving is really personalizing it. That doesn’t necessarily mean it has to have their name on it, but just knowing the recipient well enough to say, “Okay, this person really loves X.” That could be golf, or travel, or something like, “We know they’re going on a huge press tour,” so we want to get them something to carry their stuff. It’s something you can home in on — think about the conversations you’ve had with this person and what they’re about. It’s just so much more thoughtful.  How much do you need to know about the recipient to feel like you have the confidence that you can give a good gift? You’re getting great gifts for people you might never even meet. There’s a couple of our clients that we work with on a continuous basis, and they just email us and they’ll say, so and so — typically, an actor or a director or somebody that works on one of their shows — is having a birthday or having a baby, and we want to send something. Whether the budget is $150 or $5,000, our team will dig in and do a little deep dive on the internet on these people, and see if we can figure out something that they like or are interested in. We’ll do a little sleuthing and figure out, like, “Okay, this person seems to really love backpacking.” And we would recommend outdoorsy things.  View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Gifterie (@thegifterie.co) We’re really trying to stay on the pulse of what’s cool, what brands are trendy, quality brands in all different kinds of categories.  It isn’t necessarily that we have to know a certain amount of information about the people that we’re gifting, it’s just the more we know, the better, right? If you receive a thoughtful gift, it’s because somebody really thought of you and took the time to think, “What would this person like?”  I think what you’re getting at — and maybe this is the key to all gift-giving — is that it just comes down to thoughtfulness. Showing someone that you’ve thought about them.  We have this quote on our website: “Happiness doesn’t result from what you get, but from what you give.” That’s basically our motto. Whether they’re going through something rough or they’re celebrating an amazing milestone, giving people something that has thought behind it and brings them joy is always the best direction.  When it comes from someone else, it’s that extra level of excitement that somebody else got it for you. You didn’t buy it for yourself; someone took the time to think of you. It’s just a lovely feeling.  If you receive a thoughtful gift, it’s because somebody really thought of you and took the time to think, “What would this person like?”  I know we’re talking about high-end clientele and very rich people, but do you need a big budget to get people thoughtful presents? It’s not so much how much something costs, but how much you put the thought into it and made it feel special.  Presentation is also a big component. How we gift wrap things — adding dried flowers, the kind of ribbon you use, the paper, etc. — we really think about taking it to another level of not just sticking it in a box. We get a lot of feedback from recipients that the gift was just so beautifully gift-wrapped that they didn’t even want to open it. And then to open it and find something so pretty inside is also a really nice touch.  So for people that are gifting who don’t have a big celebrity budget, you can still wrap it in a really beautiful way and make it feel elevated and special. You can get stuff at Michael’s. It doesn’t have to be from fancy places online. And when you receive a gift like that, it feels like somebody put extra thought into it.  Are there any gift ideas people should avoid?  Ice cream. But that’s a wonderful gift! Have you tried shipping it?  We’ve done it, but it’s a nightmare and very stressful. I would also avoid anything super perishable. That would definitely be number one. If you know you’re not going to overnight it, if it’s something that isn’t going to be locally given, then I would probably avoid food. Are there polarizing foods that are a no-go? Raisins? I hate raisins.  No, we don’t usually include raisins. I mean, how do I say this? Probably avoid cheese that is … you know… more potent. But really, avoid things that are perishable.   With gifts that are very breakable, make sure they’re padded and packaged correctly. One of the worst things is sending someone a gift and something shows up broken. Just save your money. People would prefer a card or gift card, if you’re not going to put thought into it.  Is there such a thing as a bad gift? I just think being generic just shows that you didn’t put any thought into it. You know what I mean?  Just save your money. People would prefer a card or gift card, if you’re not going to put thought into it.  Do you have a go-to gift for someone that’s just notoriously hard to buy for? Sometimes when it’s something celebratory, like someone just won an Emmy — that can be a tough gift. For those kinds of gifts, we’ll do a beautiful bottle of champagne and we will etch on the bottle, “Congratulations on your Emmy win” with their name or the date. It’s something that they could drink, but they could also put it on a shelf and always see it as another trophy. It’s a thoughtful way of enhancing a bottle of champagne or their favorite liquor.  If you know that they love a certain whiskey, or a beautiful bottle of champagne, or a really expensive bottle of wine, and it’s for someone who has everything — those seem to always go over well because you’re getting them something they love, they’ll definitely drink it at some point. What’s the most difficult request you’ve ever gotten? Okay, so not naming names.  I totally want you to name names but I understand.  We got a request from an assistant at a record label: “So and so is coming in. They’re really big. We really need a welcome or a thank you gift basket for them. Can you spend X amount and put all this stuff together?”  We said sure, and that we could do something beautiful — a basket of wine, cheeses,  and all these fresh goods. And the assistant was like, “Can you get it here by 2 pm?” And this was like 10:30 in the morning.  From the valley to Santa Monica is not easy. It’s about a 45-minute drive at 2 pm, and longer with traffic. We went to all of our favorite shops, curated this gorgeous present, but were running out of time to get it to the place.  View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Gifterie (@thegifterie.co) The assistant kept texting and emailing us, asking when we were going to get there. And he wound up meeting Min on the side of the 405, not like the actual freeway — they exited and drove off the freeway — but they met halfway, and she handed off the gift.  The time constraint made it one of the craziest requests. We were just like chickens with our heads cut off trying to make it happen. We don’t ever want to say no to anything — we do once in a while — but sometimes we’re like,  “Oh, this would be so fun.” Getting something special every time seems incredibly stressful. I only have five friends and I’m already fretting about Christmas. But you’ve turned that stress into a business.  It’s exciting because every single day we’re working on different things. We love answering weird requests and hard calls. We really love anything random and unique. We love figuring it all out.  We’re coming up with unique ideas, whether it’s for one person or for 100 people. Because if it was just the same thing, then we would just have an automated website, and people would pick from it, and that would be that.  A website full of generic nonperishable cheese boards.  Exactly.

The holidays are ostensibly a time to gather with loved ones and celebrate cherished traditions, whether that be over turkey (or a turkey trot!) for Thanksgiving or Chinese food or murderous lullabies on Christmas. Unfortunately for many of us, the season has also become a time of high financial stress. One survey found that 2 out of 3 Americans have concerns about managing their finances over the holidays this year. The money pressures are legion — travel costs, hosting duties, gift buying — not to mention the emotional and logistical labor of making sure everyone is able to make beautiful holiday memories.  It doesn’t have to be this way. Even Better has just the guide to get you through the season with both your credit score and sanity intact. We hope these stories help you navigate the season with a little less stress so you can focus on what’s really important: enjoying time with friends and family (and of course, eating a lot of pie).  Why we obsess over giving “the perfect gift” — and how to stop Are you a bad gift-giver? Here’s how to tell, according to a pro How to host holiday gatherings without losing your mind

It was last fall, in the midst of preparing to host Thanksgiving for the first time in my Brooklyn apartment, that I became obsessed with a woman on TikTok who was, in all respects, doing it much, much better than me.  For days, my feed filled up with Cecilia Tolone’s adventures in preparing a Friendsgiving for 18 people in her apartment, which involved a detailed spreadsheet, a week-long schedule, the polishing of candlesticks, and like, actually silver silverware. Not only that, but she was making and purchasing all of the food, compared to my rather wimpy request for all 16 guests to bring either a side dish or drinks.  It helped that Tolone is a professional pastry chef and I am merely someone who loves to throw parties. But there’s something about hosting an actual holiday as opposed to a regular dinner party that’s especially intimidating: Suddenly you’re judging your normal-person home next to the holiday movies of your youth, in which Christmases and Thanksgivings and Hanukkahs take place in sprawling suburban colonials where every corner of the space is covered in poinsettias or flickering candles.  Fortunately, none of your guests are expecting that — and if they are, well, they can host next year. What they are likely expecting is a clean space, a good time, and hopefully a serviceable plate of food. You don’t have to spend thousands of dollars or follow every famous chef’s advice to throw a successful gathering that your guests will enjoy (Anthony Bourdain famously advised making two turkeys, one for showing off and one for serving, which seems excessive).  To find out how, I called up Tolone herself and other pro hosts to chat about how to hold such a gathering, without going broke, losing your grip, or swearing off the holidays forever.  Consider the Maslow’s hierarchy of hosting Megan Fitzgerald, who has worked in event planning for 15 years, went viral over the spring for her adaptation of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, but for party hosting. At the bottom, a.k.a. the fundamental requirements for a party, hosts should be thinking about the basic comfort necessities for guests: a clean space, a bathroom stocked with enough toilet paper, and enough water (with enough cups) to go around.  The other tiers — “communication,” “belonging,” “fun,” and “surprise” are the cherries on top, covering things like how to inform your guests of crucial information, making sure each guest has at least two or three people they’ve already met at least once, and creating a theme or an activity to break the ice. (You’ll notice that none of these require a ton of spending!) @aroundeight After the age of 23, you should no longer have to go to a party with no toilet paper. #hostingtips #hosting101 #eventplanner #eventhost #greenscreen ♬ original sound – aroundeight Fitzgerald explains that parties often run on a spectrum, where, say, a frat party might have the top elements (surprise and delight), but not nearly enough of the bottom (like, say, a clean couch to sit on). Similarly, “your family friend Gloria” probably has a lovely serving tray and thoughtfully cooked food, but is missing the elements of a party that make it actually fun.  “The people who can host to that level of detail where their cocktail garnishes are stunning, I think that is so impressive,” Fitzgerald says. “But hosting is also so much more than that. It’s the energy of the party, your mental state, and meeting people where they’re at.” “Hosting is a lifestyle. You will collect things — and thrift, thrift, thrift!” She also advises finding the “why” of your party: Maybe your “why” is that you’re hoping to establish new traditions within your circle, or that you want to reconnect with your religion. Maybe you want your home to feel like a safe haven for folks who don’t have anywhere else to go during the holidays, or you just want to see as many people as you possibly can on your favorite day of the year. “If you know your ‘why,’ a lot of those [hosting decisions] will fall into place,” Fitzgerald says.  Skip the single-use decor “This, I have very strong feelings about,” says Tolone, after I mention what feels to be the standard these days of purchasing cheap Amazon banners, photo backdrops, or themed paper plates and napkins for every event. “There is no, ‘What’s the theme?’ The theme is Thanksgiving, and I’m going to use the same table runners I did throughout my whole 20s.”  Instead, Tolone’s approach is to slowly build a hosting toolkit over time, not on Amazon but at thrift stores. “If you’re hosting Thanksgiving, you don’t have to have everything this year. This year can be for candlesticks, and next year can be for the tablecloth. Hosting is a lifestyle. You will collect things — and thrift, thrift, thrift!” Your space isn’t small — it’s cozy If you decide to have a theme, the best ones work with the physical space they’re in rather than fighting them (much like with weddings). Therefore, your mood board, whether it’s in your head or living on Pinterest, shouldn’t come from holiday romcoms.  “Hosting in an apartment is so much sexier than hosting in suburbia,” Fitzgerald says. “It can look like tapered candles and everybody crowded together around the kitchen and yes, you’re close together, but you should celebrate that you’re in this part of your life where you’re living in a city and celebrating the holidays. That’s magical.” Not enough table and chair settings? Try a makeshift indoor picnic. “Just move the furniture, put down a blanket, and sit on the floor,” Tolone says. “If you think it’s fun and you make it cute and put effort in, people are also gonna think it’s fun and funny and cute. It’s only gonna be awkward if you’re awkward about it.” Daniel Post Senning of the Emily Post Institute also suggests finding small ways to make the party special, like making a toast: “Maybe it’s a signature drink, or a moment where the family gets up and shares what they’ve done in the last year. But think about some things that you could do that would make a holiday gathering where people have made a little extra effort to get there. As a host, you can have fun with that. Reward it, honor it, match it.” Calculate how much to cook  A holiday gathering — particularly Thanksgiving — is one of those times where if you don’t think your pants are about to burst by the end of the night, you feel like you’ve wasted the day. Therefore, making or ordering enough food for everyone to have, at the very least, a heaping first place (and ideally a second) is a must.  Southern Living recommends calculating about a pound of food per person, and half a pound per child. When buying a turkey, make sure you’ve got a pound and a half per person (because the bones and the water cooking off means you’ll be left with about 8 ounces per person). Another way to think about it: Each person should have around 5 bites for an appetizer, 8 ounces of protein, and another 8 ounces of sides total.  If you’re still worried you might not have enough food, it might help knowing that Ina Garten thinks that’s chic, actually. It’s also important to remember that just because you have 15 people eating stuffing, doesn’t mean you need 15 enormous servings of stuffing. “You need a spoonful of stuffing for 15 people,” Tolone says. “When you break down the food, it’s a lot of carbs and frozen vegetables, which are actually pretty affordable.” If you’re still worried you might not have enough food, it might help knowing that Ina Garten thinks that’s chic, actually. “People have more fun if they don’t eat so much they have to be taken home in an ambulance,” she said in her 2004 book on entertaining. “And no hors d’oeuvres; I learned this from the French.” For wine, stock at least one bottle per wine-drinking person. “I know that sounds crazy,” Fitzgerald says, “but if you’re there for four hours, that’s a glass of wine an hour!”  Embrace potlucks and takeout There’s of course nothing wrong with delegating all of that out by asking guests to bring their own dishes if you can’t shoulder the entire expense. This still requires some advance planning and perhaps a shared spreadsheet. Last year, my biggest stressor was whether the person who agreed to bring the mashed potatoes would flake at the last minute. I could only send so many reminders: How, I wondered, can I be a good potluck host without sounding like a drill sergeant?  As Senning says, “This is the art of good etiquette. It’s about being consistent and persistent without being demanding or disappointed.” He advises regulating your emotional tone as you’re dealing with people. “No matter what the responses are, be prepared and hold yourself accountable that you’re the host, and your mood will set the tone for the whole event.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by Cecilia Tolone (@cecilia.tolone) Fitzgerald recommends leaning on your VIP guests, which is to say, your most type-A, reliable friends. Send a group text to your VIPs with a list of everything you need, and have them volunteer for their dishes. “Then the people you can’t rely on, just tell them to bring wine,” she says. It’s a good idea for the host to at least supply the main dish, however.  What happens if you’re a terrible cook? “I actually think some forms of takeout are secretly less expensive than cooking,” Fitzgerald says. “If you go to a restaurant that does, like, a vat of pasta, sometimes it can be 70 bucks and you can feed 15 people.” Don’t be afraid to ask for help When Tolone cooks Thanksgiving dinner for her 18 guests, she asks each of them to bring a bottle of wine or other beverage, as well as $10 for the cost of the turkey. “This is definitely a cultural thing. I live in Sweden, and they don’t ever want you to feel burdened by them, so most of the time, people will give me more money because they know how much food I buy,” she says. Though this can be somewhat controversial advice (she says she once got “eviscerated” in her TikTok comments section for it), “you just have to know your audience.” This also goes for the invites. “In Swedish, we would say hosting is ‘hunting after people,’” she says. “I have different lists of people who I know what time to say, ‘Hey, are you coming or not?’ Certain friends, you have to lie to them and say the party is an hour earlier. If you care about these people, you have to meet them where they’re at. It’s a party, it’s not a moral lesson on timeliness.” Encourage fun guests by being a fun host Earlier this year, the New York Times published a piece where they asked dozens of professionally fun and stylish people to give their best party advice. Almost all of them emphasized the same point: Stop stressing out.  “If you operate with the mindset of ‘everything is going to be fine,’ then everything is going to be fine. But if you stress out, then everything is going to stress you out,” one investment executive said. Another said, “When you invite people into your home, you need to let go.” Other old etiquette standbys can still be useful: “There are certain roles a host plays at a gathering, and you can think of them as marks to hit,” Senning says. “Make sure you greet every person as they arrive, make introductions appropriately, check in with them, and thank them for coming and for any contributions that they made.”  In my own case, the most fun part of Thanksgiving was after dinner, when I was sitting with my girlfriends on the floor around the coffee table, playing silly drinking games and singing to the music we listened to in high school. When all is said and done, “People will forget whether the roast was a little overdone, or whether someone brought this salad or that salad,” he adds. “But they will remember how they felt in your company.”

There’s a beloved tale you might be familiar with about selflessness, and how it embodies the spirit of the holiday season: from the 1999 Disney direct-to-video film Mickey’s Once Upon a Christmas, a vignette titled “Mickey and Minnie’s Gift of the Magi.” (Reportedly, there are other versions too.) In the film, Mickey and Minnie are broke, but still want to get each other a special gift. So Mickey sells his prized possession, a harmonica, to get Minnie a chain for her prized possession, a pocket watch. Unbeknownst to him, Minnie has sold her watch to get him a harmonica case. They both come away with the heartwarming knowledge that each sacrificed something so meaningful for the other. Pare back the sentiment of it all though, and a truth remains — both parties are left with truly useless gifts. All that toil of wooing the gift recipient added up to wasted time and money, and the giver still got the wrong thing. In that way, “Mickey and Minnie’s Gift of the Magi” is, to me, a horror story. If you’ve ever found yourself frozen with indecision come Black Friday, racking your brain over what to get all the people in your life, you’re not alone. If you get a bit of a high from logistics or find yourself devoting way too much time to your online shopping cart, I am with you. If you subscribe to the sadly false idea that you can actually win the holidays with the exact correct present, you may be yet another victim of gifting perfectionism. In a highly consumerist culture that begs us to buy more and more during the holiday season, overwhelm is to be expected — but it doesn’t have to be this way. There are some ground rules that can help you break free of your own gift perfectionism. Rule 1: Lower other people’s expectations Kelly Williams Brown, the author of Gracious: A Practical Primer on Charm, Tact, and Unsinkable Strength and Easy Crafts for the Insane, finds it helpful to get out ahead of gifting anxiety before the holiday barrage even begins. “I tell people that I’m not a huge gift-giver. From there, they’re welcome to think whatever they want,” she said. You might be anticipating gifts from acquaintances, coworkers, or distant relatives, but it’s not necessarily a requirement that you have to give them one back. Cross a few people off your nice list, and focus on who you really want to shop for. Rule 2: Modulate your own expectations, too Setting personal boundaries about budget and how many people to buy for can help gift-givers avoid stretching themselves too thin. It can be easy to dive headfirst into online shopping in the name of making your loved ones happy — but you’re also getting a hit of dopamine that may lead you to fill your checkout cart beyond necessity. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and other holiday shopping deals rely on scarcity marketing and other psychological triggers to motivate consumers to overspend. Don’t get sucked in by deals, and instead go into holiday shopping with a strict cap on how much you’ll spend on each person. Rule 3: Get to the root of your gifting anxiety — then remember what’s really important Gift perfectionists can get caught up in the opulence of their presents, but one study showed that recipients often don’t correlate the price of a gift with it being “better.” Givers are biased by their own experience of shopping and shelling out for a present. Basically, there’s a somewhat self-involved element to the behaviors of a lot of gift perfectionists.  Tamar Chansky, a licensed psychologist, author, and anxiety expert, says this is at the core of much of our collective overthinking about gift-giving. “We can easily fall into the trance of ‘more equals more,’ but as with any anxiety, challenge that feeling! Ask yourself why you feel the need to spend a lot of money. Is that insecurity about the relationship?” It’s nearly impossible for one single item to wrap up all of our feelings about someone, let alone on a yearly basis.  She also says these insecurities tend to make us feel like there’s something wrong with us if we don’t come up with the perfect gift. Release yourself from an “all or nothing” mindset, and find something that works in the middle. “With gift perfectionism, we have a belief that if we don’t hit it perfectly, we aren’t a good friend, or that it’s somehow a personal failure,” Chansky said. If a certain exchange feels like an obligation or a major point of stress, it’s worth taking a step back and examining why. “Wait a minute. Is this about us and our ego, or about a gift for the other person?” she said. Rule 4: When in doubt, just ask The perfect gift is the one the recipient really wants, so try to create a culture of openness about holiday wish lists among friends and family — which is to say, just ask. Over the last few years, my sisters and I have started to send each other detailed Christmas and birthday lists with direct website links. The first few times we did this, it felt odd, but now it’s become routine in a way that is a welcome reprieve in the midst of other holiday stressors. Brown says this has been a helpful strategy in her life as well. “I make a wishlist for my boyfriend. I can’t expect him to know my specific taste in vintage brooches!” she said. Sharing wishlists is also a good way to get inspiration for other people in your life. Brown says her sister has impeccable taste. Looking through her wishlist helps her discover items that she didn’t know were out there. Instead of worrying about finding the perfect gift for every individual, one solution would be to consider one really good batch gift that can work for all of your holiday needs. Brown says some of her favorite gifts to receive are batch gifts. “My friend gave everyone little bottles of limoncello and I loved it,” she said. “You can buy your supplies and do it all in bulk.” This can be an opportunity to get creative or play to your natural strengths: homemade crafts, seasonal ornaments, or all the dry ingredients of a baking recipe can be a hit across the board for all kinds of recipients.  Rule 5: It’s cliché, but it really is the thought that counts While many studies show that giving makes us happy, there are other ways to fulfill that desire without getting hung up on what specific material object to get someone. Chanksy says making a charitable donation is a nice option that could reach further than just the giftee. “Be brave to suggest — this year, can we do something different? Ask for ideas or offer your own — [it could just be] ‘let’s donate what we would spend to a charitable organization — and have a nice meal together to celebrate!’” she says. You can also suggest to your loved ones that you cap out gift exchanges within a certain range, so nobody spends exorbitantly. It’s a valiant endeavor to try and measure up to the best gift-givers in your life. To be gifted well is to be seen, and of course, we all want our loved ones to feel special. But it’s nearly impossible for one single item to wrap up all of our feelings about someone, let alone on a yearly basis.  “Gift perfectionism is a sign that we care about the people in our lives,” Brown said. “I do love giving people gifts, but if that’s not your most comfortable way of expressing yourself, just let yourself off the hook.” As for me, time after time, I find myself chasing the high of my best past presents — the really big scores that left a friend or a family member surprised or even overcome with emotion. But as Chansky points out, if anxiety is consuming our holiday shopping, we’re likely forgetting about the attempt at connection behind our actions. “If we are in fight or flight feeling like everything is on the line with this one thing, we won’t be able to tap into what matters most,” she said. “Coming from a place of love and caring — how badly can we really fail? We’ll either strike a resonant chord with the recipient, or we’ll have a funny story to tell.” A special note letting someone know you’re grateful for their presence in your life is always better than no gift at all. “We are all looking to be seen and understood — to feel someone’s personal caring for us,” Chanksy says. “Sometimes that comes through more in a card than in the gift. Try to tune in to the purer emotions, untainted by capitalism.” 

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Your Mileage May Vary is an advice column offering you a new framework for thinking through your ethical dilemmas and philosophical questions. This unconventional column is based on value pluralism — the idea that each of us has multiple values that are equally valid but that often conflict with each other. Here is a Vox reader’s question, condensed and edited for clarity. As a low-income person, I’m on government assistance and I have government health insurance. My situation makes it so that I cannot donate to others, eat organic, buy slow fashion, etc. I try to thrift and eat organic when I can, but I can’t always ensure that the food I am consuming is being grown or raised in an ethical way — it’s too expensive. And I can’t donate to people. I feel guilt about genocides and wars in other countries, but I cannot afford to donate money to others, not in other countries, and not even in my own country. I am barely above water, but I feel guilt for not being able to do things to better my community, society, and world. Is it okay that I don’t donate because I can’t? Dear Barely Above Water, We live in a consumer society, where there’s a lot of focus on how we spend our money. That can trick us into thinking that our spending is the number one reflection of our moral character — as if buying cheap food or clothes automatically means we’re bad, and donating to charity is the only way to do good. The reality is more complex. For starters, if you really can’t afford to buy things that are ethically sourced, that says more about our society than it does about you. It’s an indictment of our factory farm system, which produces cheap meat at a horrific cost to animal welfare, and of our global supply chains, which are still tainted with forced labor. It’s not an indictment of you as an individual.  Have a question you want me to answer in the next Your Mileage May Vary column? Feel free to email me at sigal.samuel@vox.com or fill out this anonymous form! Newsletter subscribers will get my column before anyone else does and their questions will be prioritized for future editions. Sign up here! The 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant famously said “ought” implies “can.” That means that if you’ve taken a hard look at your finances and concluded that you genuinely can’t afford to buy this or that, then you aren’t morally obliged to.  But there’s a bigger point to be made here, which is that spending is just one aspect of moral behavior — it’s not the only aspect or even the primary one. You write that you can’t afford to donate money, which makes you feel guilty for not being able to improve the world. To which I would say: Donating money to charity isn’t the only way to improve the world!  A handy way to remind yourself of this is to think of the slogan “solidarity, not charity.” The concept of solidarity became very popular against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, when modern capitalism was emerging and political theorists like Karl Marx began pushing back. In 1902, the Russian anarcho-communist philosopher Peter Kropotkin published an essay collection titled Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. Pointing to examples of cooperation between and among different species, he argued that’s what really enables a species to survive through evolutionary history, and developed the idea of mutual aid as distinct from traditional charity. Whereas charity involves a giver and a receiver, and implicitly sets up a hierarchical relationship between them, mutual aid is a voluntary exchange among equals. There isn’t a giver and a receiver, because the assumption is that every single person has something to give others — whether it’s money, a meal, a word of wisdom, or a warm smile. The ways people help each other might be different, but that’s okay, because we all contribute in different ways. Kropotkin made such a compelling case for solidarity — or, as he put it, “the close dependency of everyone’s happiness upon the happiness of all” — that it became a mainstay in communities neglected by the state in Europe and the US. The Black political organization known as the Black Panthers, for example, had a robust mutual aid program that included free breakfasts for Black children.  But it would be a mistake to assume that a focus on solidarity just popped into existence ex nihilo in the modern era. The core insight here — that monetary charity is only one small part of solidarity — has been around for ages. You can find a great example of this in the Islamic tradition, which goes back to the seventh century. The religion places a very high premium on charity — it’s one of the five pillars of Islam. Every year, Muslims are supposed to donate a fixed portion of their wealth to charity; it’s a monetary form of giving known as zakat. But there’s another form of giving, called sadaqah, which isn’t necessarily monetary.    The Hadith, a collection of the sayings and traditions of the prophet Muhammad, contains a beautiful explanation of sadaqah:  A sadaqah is due for every joint in each person on every day the sun comes up: to act justly between two people is a sadaqah; to help a man with his mount, lifting him onto it or hoisting up his belongings onto it, is a sadaqah; a good word is a sadaqah; and removing a harmful thing from the road is a sadaqah.  In other words, sadaqah comes in many shapes and sizes; what seems to unite them is a desire to help others. This is broader than mere charity. It’s what I would call solidarity. And notice how it’s arguably even more morally demanding than monetary charity. All charity requires is writing a check — an action that can be done dispassionately, and even effortlessly for someone lucky enough to have money. It doesn’t require commitment to a broader project of solidarity or justice. In fact, a common critique of charity is it can serve as a distraction from the unjust ways that wealth is created. But sadaqah requires you to be engaged, emotionally and often physically, too. The Vox guide to giving The holiday season is giving season. This year, Vox is exploring every element of charitable giving — from making the case for donating 10 percent of your income, to recommending specific charities for specific causes, to explaining what you can do to make a difference beyond donations. You can find all of our giving guide stories here. There are probably lots of ways you’re already expressing solidarity with others, maybe without even realizing it. As my colleague Rachel M. Cohen reported, acts of service for family, friends, and neighbors are typically not counted as volunteering, and opening your home to relatives or sending remittances to them is not counted as charitable giving. But they arguably should be. Informal caregiving and aid are expressions of solidarity, too.  So, for starters, I’d encourage you to make a list of all the ways you’re already bettering your community. Do you occasionally keep an eye on your neighbor’s kid, or help care for an aunt, or bring over a meal to a friend? Those things count!  Doing more formal volunteer work or organizing requires a currency that may be hard to come by: time. But to the extent that this is feasible for you, consider ways you can make an impact both locally and globally.  Can you volunteer one hour a week to help low-income kids in your community develop their literacy skills? Can you join a labor union? Can you spearhead a petition to get your school or workplace to offer more meat-free alternatives in the cafeteria?  Since you mentioned that war and genocide in other countries weigh heavily on you, can you organize on behalf of, and vote for, politicians with a good stance on foreign policy? Given what an outsized role the US plays in the world, that’s one of the biggest levers you can pull if you’re in America. You’ll notice that none of these options requires monetary giving. They’re all forms of sadaqah. That said, I wouldn’t entirely ignore the zakat part of giving unless you clearly have to.  Some people do have to. There isn’t much sense in donating money if you can’t afford to cover your own basic needs, because then you yourself will be in need of donations. When people give and give until they’ve got nothing left, it becomes unsustainable and doesn’t end well, sometimes leading to burnout or collapse. Even Islam, with its heavy emphasis on charity, recognizes this: that’s why only those who have money over and above a certain minimum amount of wealth are obligated to pay zakat. But if you’ve got even just a few extra dollars here and there, don’t underestimate the good they can do. For instance, Miriam’s Kitchen, a DC-based nonprofit with a mission to end chronic homelessness, can serve a full meal to a person experiencing homelessness for just $1.25. And in poorer countries, your money can go even further. If you donate to GiveDirectly, they will straight-up give your cash to people living in extreme poverty in Africa — where a dollar can buy much more than it can in the US — with no strings attached. I like donating this way because it’s highly cost-effective and it avoids the paternalism of more traditional charities, since it trusts people to make their own decisions about what to buy and how to improve their lives.  Donating doesn’t just help others — it also helps you. Research shows that giving money away actually makes us happier and enhances our well-being. I suspect it’s because it transforms our own consciousness, reminding us that we are connected to others in a vast web of interdependency.  In fact, I’ve seen this firsthand. I grew up in a family on welfare. We always had housing and enough to eat, but we couldn’t afford frills. Yet whenever my dad and I went downtown, he always made sure to carry a few bucks in his pockets, just so he could hand them out to people experiencing homelessness.  To be honest, my child-brain whined with anxiety when he did that: What if we need that money? But I saw how happy it made my dad. He knew it wasn’t enough to transform life for the people we encountered. But by giving them what he could, he was living out his values — caring for people, respecting their autonomy to spend money however they think best — while reminding himself that he’s connected to others. As an adult, I was lucky to get jobs that paid decently, but I kept grappling with money dysmorphia — feeling nervous about money even after becoming financially stable. Donating felt scary to me, so I started small: $10 here, $50 there, and eventually much more. My initial fear soon gave way to a wild, leaping joy. As weird as it may sound, Giving Tuesday actually became one of my favorite days of the year. Just like my dad, I had discovered the psychological benefits of standing in solidarity with others with whatever resources one has.  I don’t want you to miss out on those benefits. I hope you reap them at every turn: by counting all the ways you already stand in solidarity with others, by contributing emotionally and physically, and — to whatever extent possible — by giving financially, too. Bonus: What I’m reading I recently picked up Parfit, a biography of British philosopher Derek Parfit, who once beautifully described his own shift from the pain of disconnection to the joy of connection with others: “I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. Other people are closer. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.” I’m really enjoying The Islamic Moses, journalist Mustafa Akyol’s new book about the similarities between Islam and Judaism. Fun fact: The Arabic term sadaqah is related to the Hebrew term tzedakah, which is often translated as charity but really has a much broader meaning. Author-activists Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix published a book this year called Solidarity. I’m a sucker for the history of ideas, so I liked the book’s explanation of how the concept of solidarity actually goes all the way back to ancient Rome! 

Spirit Airlines said Monday that it has filed for bankruptcy protection and will attempt to reboot as it struggles to recover from the pandemic-caused swoon in travel and failed mergers.

The low-cost airline filed for bankruptcy protection Monday. It will continue to operate as it seeks to restructure its debt.

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