Christmas Spending

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I have two children (7&5) we spend about £50 on them from us and about £20-30 from father Christmas. Nieces and nephews get around £20. We don't do siblings as there's so many.
 
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I usually go out for the afternoon walking in the countryside or on my bike. We do have a meal at lunch time, but it the veggie/vegan version and just the main meal, not the whole thing.So a nut roast/butternut squash roast with vegetables. I think the whole thing is ridiculous to be honest.
I love Christmas it's my fave time of year. Each to their own though.

Usually around £150 per child but we're spending more this year as we've not been away on holiday and they haven't been out on a single fun daytrip since March. So we have the money there to do it and I would like to treat them. We aren't going over the top and I wouldn't give them a massive pile.
I spend around £15-25 on nieces, nephews and friends children.
Family secret santa for all the adults with a £25 budget.
I love buying gifts for people and really enjoy wrapping them all too. Christmas is one of my favourite times of year🎅🏻🤶🏻
We always buy the kids an activity to do in the year so 2021 we will have all of this years to do as well! Covid permitting of course 🥰 I love Christmas too. Even the stress of it
 
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Every year we always say " Let's cut back at Xmas" and we never do.
I have 3 kids and we spend around £150 each, same with hubby. Nieces and nephew get £30 each, parents we spend £50 each and friends around £20 each. Siblings and partners partake in secret Santa and always have a £10 budget.
I work in retail and do get big discounts, plus I start xmas shopping in August (yes I have started).

Hubby can't think about Xmas until Xmas Eve, yes he has gone out the day before xmas to buy my presents then moans when he can't get what I want as its out of stock. 🤦‍♀️ Hence why I buy all the presents and wrap them too.
 
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We don't have kids but we do have nieces and nephews to buy for. I collect things from the sales throughout the year, I don't have a budget as such but some years it may look like I've spent £50+ per child but in reality its likely about half if that.

For example I got some really cute pj's from M&S for my niece for £2.50 today as they sent me a free £5 voucher with no minimum spend.
 
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I am genuinely shocked by these comments 😳 and think I may need to re evaluate what I do 🙈
I don't set a budget 😬 I just buy presents until I think it looks like they have enough. I have 3 children and must spend up to at least £600 each?! They get one main present each, last year was playstation and bike along those lines. Then smaller presents and then stockings
 
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I am genuinely shocked by these comments 😳 and think I may need to re evaluate what I do 🙈
I don't set a budget 😬 I just buy presents until I think it looks like they have enough. I have 3 children and must spend up to at least £600 each?! They get one main present each, last year was playstation and bike along those lines. Then smaller presents and then stockings
You don’t need to re-evaluate! It’s each to their own! I don’t budget either, my son gets on average about £600 at Christmas from us sometimes less, sometimes more! It’s irrelevant what other people choose to spend or not spend. The only thing that really winds me up is posting to Facebook a huge pile for showing off purposes and also when people say ‘I’d much rather have days out/experiences with my kids rather than spend loads of money on presents (or things along those lines) as if those of us who do choose to to spend more at Christmas don’t bother!
 
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My children are both quite young which I think has an impact on how much we spend, I don’t doubt it’ll be more once they become teenagers. My eldest is 4 and we seem to spend around £150 ish. My youngest is 9 months so was a newborn last Christmas and we didn’t spend much, I expect it’ll be more this year though.
 
I am genuinely shocked by these comments 😳 and think I may need to re evaluate what I do 🙈
I don't set a budget 😬 I just buy presents until I think it looks like they have enough. I have 3 children and must spend up to at least £600 each?! They get one main present each, last year was playstation and bike along those lines. Then smaller presents and then stockings
I was curious how people get past the playstations etc my boys aren’t at that stage yet but they will be soon I’m sure
 
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I like the sentiment of Christmas but I hate the consumerism of it and how it becomes a competition. I’m going to be cutting down this year due to learning to drive/saving for a car/don’t really want to be in a busy city centre shopping. Can’t say how much I’ll spend because I’d rather buy people things they want than spending for the sake of it. Food wise - I just treat it as a normal weekly shop with the obvious Christmas dinner bits added and some treats/alcohol.
 
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I am genuinely shocked by these comments 😳 and think I may need to re evaluate what I do 🙈
I don't set a budget 😬 I just buy presents until I think it looks like they have enough. I have 3 children and must spend up to at least £600 each?! They get one main present each, last year was playstation and bike along those lines. Then smaller presents and then stockings
To be honest my family is similar! We try to budget somewhat for holidays and birthdays because it seems like the normal thing to do, but realistically, we often end up giving each other random gifts throughout the year for no good reason and there is no budget there (i.e.: saw a good deal on something and I knew you wanted this for a while!) and even the holiday budget is often not adhered to. There's never a right or wrong way to do this, though I have to say giving your family large gifts and putting that up on social media incites a mixture of "wow that looks great," snarky comments as @judsmum mentioned, and silent jealousy, so it's good to be cautious about what you share if you spend a lot.
 
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To be honest my family is similar! We try to budget somewhat for holidays and birthdays because it seems like the normal thing to do, but realistically, we often end up giving each other random gifts throughout the year for no good reason and there is no budget there (i.e.: saw a good deal on something and I knew you wanted this for a while!) and even the holiday budget is often not adhered to. There's never a right or wrong way to do this, though I have to say giving your family large gifts and putting that up on social media incites a mixture of "wow that looks great," snarky comments as @judsmum mentioned, and silent jealousy, so it's good to be cautious about what you share if you spend a lot.
Yeah totally. I can't stand the show off "he's been" pictures of mountains of presents. Makes me cringe when people share those on fb, or the million pictures opening every single thing 😅
 
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I am genuinely shocked by these comments 😳 and think I may need to re evaluate what I do 🙈
I don't set a budget 😬 I just buy presents until I think it looks like they have enough. I have 3 children and must spend up to at least £600 each?! They get one main present each, last year was playstation and bike along those lines. Then smaller presents and then stockings
Nah just do what makes you happy! X
 
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I was curious how people get past the playstations etc my boys aren’t at that stage yet but they will be soon I’m sure
We don't buy consoles because my husband is a gamer, we have every console going, some we have more then one of (he gets broken ones and fixes them up). If they want laptops, tablets etc that's a birthday gift. They have our old phones so we don't buy those. The older two are very much into quirky gifts so they prefer more of those then one big thing.
 
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We spend between 150-200 on each child (2) up to 100 for main presents and then we put 'proper' but small presents in their stockings so it does add up. About the same amount on my husband. We don't buy for the adults in our families except our parents, and nieces and nephews get a £10 gift card and a selection box each x
 
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As I have a large family, the adults do a secret Santa as it was getting ridiculously expensive.
Budget of £50, and we use an online secret Santa generator and each person can enter a wish list. My mum often ends up buying us a little something separately as she can’t yet cope with not buying gifts for everyone😂

I don’t have children of my own yet, but my siblings’ children aren’t included in the secret Santa, we buy for them separately- I spend £15- £20 per child. There are now 7 children to buy for so will be £15 this year.

Husband and I spend £50 on each other, although the year we got married we decided not to buy each other anything as there was nothing either of us wanted and we had an expensive year.
 
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I am genuinely shocked by these comments 😳 and think I may need to re evaluate what I do 🙈
I don't set a budget 😬 I just buy presents until I think it looks like they have enough. I have 3 children and must spend up to at least £600 each?! They get one main present each, last year was playstation and bike along those lines. Then smaller presents and then stockings
No honestly don’t re-evaluate! Everyone has a different approach to Xmas so do what you makes you happy, as long as you can afford it then it’s no one else’s business!
We are very similar to you - 3 kids, and although every year we say we’ll set a budget . . . it never happens! I just buy what I know they will like and make sure they have an even amount each, that the extent of my plans 😊
 
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No honestly don’t re-evaluate! Everyone has a different approach to Xmas so do what you makes you happy, as long as you can afford it then it’s no one else’s business!
We are very similar to you - 3 kids, and although every year we say we’ll set a budget . . . it never happens! I just buy what I know they will like and make sure they have an even amount each, that the extent of my plans 😊
We're exactly the same, have 2 children and I bought the eldest 4 bits of make up yesterday with 15% it still came to £84, but I could spend half that amount on the youngest and would get loads for her :)
 
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As I have a large family, the adults do a secret Santa as it was getting ridiculously expensive.
Budget of £50, and we use an online secret Santa generator and each person can enter a wish list. My mum often ends up buying us a little something separately as she can’t yet cope with not buying gifts for everyone😂

I don’t have children of my own yet, but my siblings’ children aren’t included in the secret Santa, we buy for them separately- I spend £15- £20 per child. There are now 7 children to buy for so will be £15 this year.

Husband and I spend £50 on each other, although the year we got married we decided not to buy each other anything as there was nothing either of us wanted and we had an expensive year.
Oh I like the idea of a secret santa generator.
 
Oh I like the idea of a secret santa generator.
We use a site called Drawnames , I also use it for our work secret Santa. Put in the names and email addresses, once everyone has accepted the invite it will send out an email to each person with a link to the name :) you can set exclusions too, so for example on our family one as partners are involved too, we set exclusions to make sure couples don’t get each other. Makes Christmas so much easier!
 
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