Many Americans Don’t Like What They Get for Christmas

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 4:30PM EST · Published Dec 22, 9:10AM EST

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Many Americans Don’t Like What They Get for Christmas — © Thinkstock

Often people say they have a friend or relative who is “hard to buy for” as the holidays approach. A subset of that is “people who already have everything they need.” It turns out a lot of people are hard to buy for, to the extent that they do not like many of the gifts they do get.

According to Finder, $9.5 billion is spent on “wasted gifts.” The site found some people keep them, but a lot of people also throw them away. Some probably get used for regifting.

Some of the findings:

Finder estimates Americans waste over $9.5 billion on unwanted gifts every year.
More than half of Americans, 54%, don’t like at least one gift they receive for Christmas every year. Men are fussiest, with 55% admitting this, compared to 54% of women.
These people receive 2.3 unwanted gifts on average each year; 2.2 for women and 2.6 for men.
These presents are worth $31 each ($30 for women and $33 for men) — that’s $71 wasted on each of these people every year.

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Some 39% of people keep these gifts anyway, while a quarter (26%) exchange them, one in five give them to someone else, 3% donate their unwanted gifts to charity and 1% even throw them away.
Most unwanted presents are clothing and accessories (46%), followed by household items (13%), cosmetics and fragrances (12%), literature (6%), technology (5%), food and drink (4%) and music (3%).
Other unwanted gifts (11%) include sex toys, gift cards, jewelry, wall calendars, scented candles and gag gifts.
Friends give the worst presents, followed by parents, then in-laws and then partners. Some 8% of Americans said their partners give the worst gifts.
More than one in 10 Americans (12%) admitted that they have deliberately bought a present they knew the recipient wouldn’t like. Men are the biggest culprits of this, with 21% admitting they have done this, while 8% of women have.
Just 1% of people said getting drunk was their favorite part about the holidays, while 4% said there’s nothing they like about Christmas.
Others said they love everything about the holidays, decorating and Christmas lights, celebrating the birth of Jesus, and some said their favorite part is when it’s over.
Bosses are who Americans most don’t want to buy presents for, followed by their mothers-in-law.
Almost one in five (18%) Americans said their partners are hopeless at buying presents for them.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.