Happy Father's Day

Happy Father's Day to all the fellow Dads out there.

And if you want to take advantage of "our day" and act or even genuinely feel sorry for yourself or even neglected, here's your chance to do so. The facts about Father's Day gifting presented below can be used for some self pity, although I doubt if they will be enough to get any sympathy from our children or spouses.

But what the heck, it's our day, so here goes with the self pity routine. It's worth a shot.

And let's each resolve to do "whatever it takes" next year to break the negative four year losing streak we're on with respect to gifts received. Mom shouldn't win all the time. Or come to think of it, maybe she should.

Americans Spend 41% More on Mom Than Dad presents the totally unsurprising details:

"41%: How much more on average Americans planned to spend on Mother’s Day compared to Father’s Day.

It must have been a bad year for Dads. For the first time in four years, the gap between what Americans plan to spend on Father’s Day and what they plan to spend on Mother’s Day widened.

People always spend more on Mom than they do on Dad. This year on average Americans said they planned to spend about $169 on Mother’s Day compared to about $120 for Father’s Day, according to the National Retail Federation. But this year the disparity is the biggest it has been since the depths of the recession in 2008. While people boosted spending plans for Mom by 11%, the money expected to be shelled out for Dad rose a measly 2.3%.

Granted more people celebrate Mother’s Day than Father’s Day. Some 92% of survey respondents planned to buy for a special lady, compared to about 87% who were spending money for a father. But those averages for planned spending are only among those expecting to take part in the holiday.

Of course, Mom probably does deserve some premium. There is the whole pregnancy and childbirth thing, after all. Mothers also spend much more time on child-care. Even when both parents work full time, 81% of mothers are taking care of kids on an average weekday compared to 59% of fathers.

For their part, fathers do spend more time at work, but they also spend more time in leisure activities (such as watching TV, playing games, socializing and exercising) than mothers — 28 hours compared to 25.

But leisure is all relative. Fathers get three more leisure hours a week than mothers, but they get nine fewer hours than childless men. So Dad may not care that you’re spending less money on him, as long as you leave him alone for a couple of hours."

Summing Up

Just kidding about the sympathy stuff.

Happy Father's Day.

Thanks. Bob.