Mom who makes $1 million a year brilliantly explains why she gives her girls only one Christmas gift
In today’s world, those with power and wealth should embrace their responsibility to improve the planet. Shirine Khoury-Haq, who is a millionaire, is a notable example, not only cutting back on personal luxuries and rejecting consumerism but also actively working to educate the next generation about the true state of the world.
While she makes it a point to give her children gifts on Christmas, she refrains from indulging in a lot of spending to make a great holiday. Khoury-Haq says that she can't be showering her kids with many gifts, "in good conscience," adding that the living crisis has led to inflation as well as an uncontrollable increase in energy bills, via Sunday Times.
In November 2022, she revealed that the girls would only receive one gift in their stockings each Christmas to ensure that her kids understood the value of a dollar.
The businesswoman, who serves as the Chief Executive Officer for a consumer co-operative operating in the UK, takes home a salary of almost $1 million. The mother of six-year-old twin girls is determined to make them learn the value of money. She along with her husband have decided to use their holiday budget to help parents who are struggling to provide for their children amid the ongoing economic crisis.
"The rest of our budget will be given to Santa to provide presents for children whose parents can’t contribute to the elves. We’re going to go out shopping for those other presents and [we will] send them to Santa," she told the Sunday Times.
She said it's unnecessary to buy so many gifts that will ultimately lead to “too many toys that you then just play with one or two times and then give away or break."
Currently, in the UK, more than 4.3 million households are struggling to pay for the necessities. This is why she says that she simply doesn't feel good about giving her children so many gifts when people in the country are struggling so much.
Khoury-Haq said that she wants to use her wealth to help these families, and therefore will give her daughters only one gift each, adding that she had already given her daughters an “embarrassing” number of gifts in the past. “It just feels like excess, given what’s happening in the world. I can’t do that in my own home," Khoury-Haq said.
She has also convinced her company to promote Your Local Pantry, a subsidized supermarket. These pantries with the help of food banks allow struggling families to get up to 10 items at an affordable cost of £3.50 (about $4.45) a week. "People can go in for between £4 and £5 and get groceries that are many more times that amount," she said on ITV’s Good Morning Britain.
"People need help accessing food for the first time ever, and they don’t want a handout; they want to hand up and they want to be able to choose the foods they want," she added.
