To turn off scheduled dinners and gifts in 1in8b, open Spend & invest → Ways of living → On its own, then deselect Dinner out & gifts with family and friends. Wedding and funeral contributions have a separate setting: look for Weddings & funerals in the same panel.
Those two controls are easy to confuse. Changing one leaves the other to check, and neither removes every expense your character can face.
Checked on October 27, 2026, in the English version of the original game at 1in8b.life, v0.8.51 beta, using desktop Chrome. This is an independent player guide from 1in8b.blog.
Turn off automatic dinners and gifts
- Pause your life. This gives you time to read your finances before another year passes.
- Open Spend & invest, available beside your money information or below your yearly focus choices.
- Expand Ways of living and scroll to On its own.
- Find Dinner out & gifts with family and friends · every year.
- If the option is selected, press it again to turn it off. Leave it unselected if it is already off.
In the tested interface, selected options have a dark background. After switching this one off, it lost that highlight. The game also displayed a message confirming the change to the dinner-and-gift habit.
The setting stops that scheduled purchase. It does not remove every gift, celebration or family expense from the life story. You can still choose to spend on people when you want to.
Check Auto mode as well
When Auto mode was enabled during this check, the game said it would handle spending habits as well as decisions and yearly focus. For a budget you manage yourself, turn Auto mode off before reviewing your habits.
Then inspect the switches under On its own individually. The Auto mode button and the recurring-purchase options are separate controls; use the selected state of each habit to check what is enabled.
Reduce wedding and funeral spending separately
In Spend & invest → Ways of living, find Weddings & funerals. The tested adult character had three options:
| Setting | When to consider it |
|---|---|
| Give generously | You want to keep a generous gift policy and have room in the budget. |
| Half, within means | You want to reduce the contribution while continuing to give. |
| Just show up | You want the least generous gift setting while you reassess your finances. |
Select the option that fits your current life. In our check, choosing Just show up changed the panel’s summary to show that policy and moved the selection highlight to it.
That relationship trade-off is part of the decision. Reducing gifts can help your budget, but the game explicitly warns that ties may become less close. You can revisit the policy when your circumstances change.
If these controls are missing, check your character’s life stage. The menu changed as our test character grew older: at age eight it showed the recurring dinner-and-gift option, while the wedding and funeral policy was visible when we checked at age 21.
Still losing money? Find the expense before changing more settings
Close the spending panel and read Net worth, past year and the recent Life record. Look for the named expense rather than assuming every loss came from gifts.
In our test life, Sana’s record showed a funeral contribution of A$48 at age 20 and a separate heat-related cost of A$204 at age 21. The second expense had nothing to do with the recurring dinner-and-gift switch. These are examples from one fictional life, shown in Australian display terms, rather than a universal price list.
Use the entries you actually see to decide what to review:
| What you find | What to check next |
|---|---|
| Repeated dinners, gifts, trips or lessons | Selected habits under On its own. |
| Wedding or funeral contributions | The Weddings & funerals policy. |
| Investment losses | Your investment choice and the year’s results. A gift setting cannot reverse a market loss. |
| Living costs, care costs or a major life event | The relevant record entry, your income and the choices available in that life. |
Also compare Money saved in the spending panel with the main net-worth figure. The panel can show debt, and a headline wealth figure does not by itself tell you what is available to spend.
Review the rest of your recurring purchases
Gifts may be only one part of the problem. At age 21, our test character’s On its own section also listed courses, help for parents, dating, domestic and overseas trips, donations and hobby lessons.
Each option showed its schedule. Review the selected ones and keep the spending that serves your current priorities. Supporting family, maintaining relationships and learning a skill can all matter to the life you are trying to live; the useful question is what you can sustain.
The panel also explains that paid automatic actions have savings checks. It says savings must exceed three times the cost, with an additional income-buffer condition for several kinds of spending. Treat those checks as limits on when purchases happen. Several enabled habits can still leave you saving less than you intended.
After making changes, continue at a manageable speed and inspect the next completed year. Compare the spending categories again. This helps you see whether you reduced a recurring cost or simply encountered a different event.
Frequently asked questions
Does turning off Auto mode stop automatic gifts?
Check the dinner-and-gift option under On its own directly. Auto mode concerns automatic play, while that option controls the scheduled yearly purchase. For a budget you manage yourself, review both.
Why am I still paying for weddings after turning gifts off?
The yearly dinner-and-gift habit and wedding or funeral contributions have different controls. Review Weddings & funerals in Ways of living too.
Can I guarantee that my money will stop falling?
No. These settings let you manage particular spending habits. Income, other purchases, investment results and life events can still change the balance. The game’s official explanation describes choices as changing the odds of a life, rather than guaranteeing its outcome.
When does generosity become more than you can afford?
There is an interesting tension behind this small setting. A gift can be a way of keeping a relationship alive. It can also be another obligation for someone who has almost nothing left.
Once you have found the controls, you get to decide what kind of compromise this person makes. Do they give less for a few years? Keep supporting their parents and postpone a trip? Accept slower saving to stay close to the people around them?
What happened in your life? Share your character’s country, the expense that surprised you and the setting you changed. Did it help—and did you notice a trade-off in their relationships?