Gifts

At what age do you need to start giving a gift in response to an invitation sent to you?

I ask you because we seem to be getting invites to kiddushim from people that we do not really associate with but they feel the need to invite us, for whatever reason. I am not complaining. We try to make the trek to the appropriate simcha hall and wish them Mazel Tov. Sometimes it will be with the kids, others one of us will go, depending on why we were invited.

We have not been so ontop of the gift giving. We do give, don't get me wrong, but there are times when I realize that we simply neglected the invite and pushed it aside for a long time that it just got lost in the shuffle, if you know what I mean. How late can one give a gift? I know they will always accept one but what is the time frame? And what do you do when you are unsure if you gave one or not? I have a few of that, where I am not sure if I gave a gift or not and it was not a check, so I can't look that one up!

My neighbors send out kiddush cards. We do not attempt to go to every one of them nor do I send off a gift. But now I want to. Now I want to be ontop of this gift giving and figure out how many invites we receive a year and budget for it. Some I can tell by looking at the family calendar and figure out how many Bar/Bat mitzvahs there will be for the year. But weddings are unpredictable as well as community affairs. Call me a scrooge, but there is only so much that I want to cut into my "savings for x" account to give to people especially those whom I don't have much to do with.

I need to keep a spread sheet that tells me what I gave who. I don't need siblings of the recipient or the parents comparing gifts. Nor do I want cousins to do the same. Not that I really care we are usually equal, but you never know what will happen on day.

But what do you do with the invites you get from old acquaintances? The ones where you had nothing to do with for the past five years and then all of a sudden you get a wedding invite. You don't go to the wedding for whatever reason, but do you need to give a gift or what? And if you give a check, how much is it for? I like actual gifts to give to those who you can (i.e when you go to the wedding) vs a check, but as the saying goes "everyone can use money".

So please respond with what you do and what you think your friends do, I am always so curious what "my age" people do and what "not my age" people do.

Thanks