Organising Christmas gifting budgets

[lochmaree]

How do you organise or split budgets for your parents and inlaws? Do you spend the same on each family regardless of numbers, or a set amount per person, or children only? Curious.

We agreed a set amount (give or take) per person.
Fortunately, we both come from families that would spend similar amounts on presents, so it was never an issue of one side handing over £10 presents and the other handing over £100 presents. That would be more tricky, I can see.

On one side, we agreed between adults, not to get each other anything many years ago. Oddly, at first because we were broke, but then we revived it for a couple of years and then all agreed to stop again because life had moved on to such a place that we could never think of things we wanted, because we had all moved to a place that if we wanted a particular book or DVD or whatever, we just were able to buy it and didn't need to wait until Christmas.

When the eldest of the next generation got to about 19 or 20, I suggested that we stop buying for nieces and nephews after their 21st birthday. It is fab. much more relaxed in the lead up to Christmas now.

@UsingChangeofName that sounds really nice and yes relaxed. DH family always spend and expect lots, but we don't actually have that close a relationship with many of them. and it costs us an absolute fortune. my family spend much less and its less stressful.

Managing Christmas traditions between different families is quite difficult.

My family is much larger and we use to spent more on each other than my DH family. Also the type of gifts - DH’s family expected more practical gifts, whereas my family were luxury(ish) items.

Fortunately that has stopped. COL and environmental concerns means that we have all now cut down - which is a relief!

We buy gifts for our generation and upwards separately (siblings, parents, grandparents) and nieces and nephews joint.

His family go in for lengthy expensive gift lists (and they reciprocate - which can be hard work because we don't really want most of the things they like to buy), my family prefer a charity goat and a dvd of something we think they'd like (they give a big cash lump sum and a few silly or cute things to unwrap).

He probably spends about £500, I probably spend about £100. Then niblings get equal spends from both of us (our names go jointly on everything).

Never discussed or considered budgets. Just buy things we hope PIL will like. SIL provides a list. Sometimes we spend more on her than PIl, sometimes less. Just depends on item.

My side only do charity presents. I use spend about the same per couple on chooselove.com or similar for parents and brother & SIL. Not really sure if that compares to whatever DH spends on in-laws. It's probably about equal, might not be. Never occurred to me to care or compare