I renounce Satan and all his empty promises, and I thank my godmother for the kickass present!!!

March 6, 2009 7:11 PM

What's a cool gift for a baptism?

Asking for a friend. Soon she'll be a godmother to a baby. Catholic. The baby's name is Madeline. Budget is approx $500. We don't want the parents to be able to spend the money. We want it to be exclusively for the kid when she gets older. What would be a cool gift? Godmother is EU citizen residing in US, baby is in Europe. How would we actually go about buying stocks? What stocks? Other ideas besides stocks?

posted by metastability to shopping (9 comments total)

Why not just hold onto it and give it to the kid when she is older? Get her a nice little crucifix or something and keep the cash until Graduation.
posted by Rock Steady at 8:01 PM on March 6

Savings bond
posted by asuprenant at 8:30 PM on March 6

Teeny tiny snorkel?
Seriously though, I agree with Rock Steady, is there a reason you can't wait till the kid is older to give him or her money?
posted by Mizu at 9:58 PM on March 6

This is not exactly the time to be investing in the stock market, or even in savings bonds. I'd say. a silver baby cup engraved with her name and birthdate would do for now. This is a traditional American gift for infants. You can always give her financial gifts when she's older.
posted by ragtimepiano at 10:51 PM on March 6

Where is the child in the EU? That might change your options a bit. I'm assuming you're thinking about putting your money into an interest or other sort of account that will let the money grow?

Is this a one-off gift, or do you have a regular sort of contribution scheme in mind? ($50 each birthday or something similar)

It might be easiest to keep the account in the US, as you and the godmother are in the US (and have SSNs) Any chance you could set up a Roth IRA for the kid, with the godmother as trustee?
posted by Grrlscout at 1:43 AM on March 7

String of pearls
posted by pearlybob at 3:45 AM on March 7

Something to do with the name saint or patron saint is always nice. My daughter Margaret got a beautiful painting showing St. Margaret stepping out of the heart of a dragon that had eaten her.

Saint Madeleine seems to have been the daughter of a vintner/cooper in Burgundy, so maybe a selection of nice burgundies that will age well for her to open on her 21st birthday? Or some artwork from that area of France
posted by jfwlucy at 5:22 AM on March 7

I think that savings bonds are a fantastic gift for a godparent to give to a godchild, but maybe for birthdays or saint's days or something- on an ongoing basis maybe. I'd have been weirded out by a substantial financial gift for baptism. Our kids have received various commemorative crosses and crucifixes, which I quite like- they look nice above a crib and/ or bed.

There's likely to be a Catholic bookstore handy pretty near anywhere, and they'll probably have a good selection of appropriate gifts- and can probably order lots more.
posted by Shohn at 5:28 AM on March 7

I think now is a terrific time to buy in the stock market for this baby. The market can do two things: Get better, or get worse. Looking down the road 20+ years, it will probably get better. Sure, it could get worse and stay bad for 20 years, but then we've all got much bigger problems and so it really doesn't matter what you do now.

"Common wisdom" is to buy low and sell high. Today is a serious low. It may get lower, but it will almost definitely get higher over 20 years. My thinking is: Right now, everything is on sale!

If I were the godmother, I'd hedge the risk a bit by buying in an index fund. because they allow her to by small pieces of lots of companies, and you don't have to pay a lot for someone to manage the fund. These can be based on the US markets, or EU markets. If I were her, I'd look at the 10-year (or longer) track records of index funds (available in the prospectus for the funds), pick one (or more), and put the money there.

This is a tremendous gift for the child. There are quite a few online calculators on the Internet to help with the math. But, to look at just one, this calculator shows the best, average, and worst case scenarios for a span of time that you enter, for the S&P 500. I entered 20 years, and what it shows is: Best case scenario, a return of 19.2%. Average, a return of 9.4%. Worst case, a return of 1.6%. So, as this child approaches the age of adulthood or college, you look at the market and move the money while it is at a higher mark into a low-risk account.
posted by Houstonian at 8:19 AM on March 7