Every holiday season, we shop for our kids, our family and our friends, but let’s admit it, we’re pretty frigging interested in what we might get. There are so many rad things! Gotta look out for number one, even if we’re not supposed to say that. Hmmmm… Ah ha!

What if there were a way to magnify the effect of your gift giving, maximize your money, and ensure you got amazingly rad gifts yourself?

Imagine if you bought your family the things YOU wanted! Two birds, one stone! But YOU’RE one of the birds and the stone might be something like, let’s sayyyy oh I don’t knowwww an XBOX! Go with me on this…

Give the Gifts that GIVE BACK

It’s probably best if you give presents that the recipient probably won’t want at all, but you’d cross a landfill of dirty diapers to get for yourself. Heck! You may even luck out and get it immediately given back to you if they see you staring at it with your mouth open, drooling in adoration.

Get Grandma an iPod Touch that she can’t even see let alone operate and maybe she’ll even say something sweet as she hands it back to you like, “It’s the thought that counts, sweetie.” You’ll already be on level 5 of Angry Birds as you thank her. Win/win, right?

Keep it in the Family

Get these incompatible gifts for your darling, your kids or anyone who lives with you. This last part is really important. It’s super hard to properly appreciate a gift that you gave to someone (that you actually wanted for yourself) when it’s in another home entirely. At least try to limit it to your own zip code. Gas is pricey these days.

Convincing & Explaining

You may encounter stern looks of disapproval from your spouse while holiday shopping using this devilishly clever self-Santa-Clausing. You’ll need to prepare your strategy when they pull the formidable “No Way José” roadblock tactic.

Be prepared to explain yourself. Gaming consoles have great educational games for the kids, and enhance a vital life skill: hand-eye coordination. Without which we’d all jab ourselves in the eye with our toothbrush every morning, probably. Try to finish with something dramatic like, “We’re practically being terrible parents if we DON’T get her a gaming station” or “What if he wants to become an astronaut?”

The Little Ones

Be ready for confused looks on Christmas morning. If you get little Johnny that sweet red mixer, that can turn concrete into whipped cream, instead of the remote control car he’s been constantly begging for, be ready to confront a healthy dose of quivering lips or wailing.

If they’re little enough, maybe you’ll hit the jackpot and they’ll wind up tumbling around in the box and wrapping paper! Like they always do anyway, right? Then you won’t even have to deal with teary eyes and looks of betrayal.

If When things do go bad or if when it becomes a worst-case scenario, explain to them how entitled and bratty they’re being with a long tedious story about how when you were a kid, you didn’t have things like fitness tracking wristbands and they should just be grateful…

Alright.

I admit it.

This is an awful idea and would make you a terrible, terrible person on a day you’re supposed to be your most wonderful. So, go gift the ones you love with the rad stuff they want! Maybe the Christmas karma will result in the GoPro or kareoke machine you’ve been dying for.

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Disclosure: This post was brought to you by the festive folks at Best Buy and was also brought to you by Charlie’s and my love for the majority of these rad gift ideas. Thanks for reading and happy holidays!