Spending very little on your kids at Xmas

[quirrelquarrel]

I don't have kids but I know aroundabouts what my parents spend on me and it's usually between £40-100. Some people spend more some less.
So I was wondering, would you ever only spend £10 on your kids each at Xmas, and what would you get them if so, and how would they react? Would you feel guilty or like you'd let Christmas go by that year.....?

absolutely not trying to offend or be all self righteous or whatever, just curious.

Why are you asking?

No I could not spend that on my kids

I spend about £300 each
My oldest gets £150 but he is 18 now

I once only got a jumper for Christmas when i was about 13. My parents were absolutely skint, and we were all fine with it.
We were living in a different country where Christmas wasn't such a big thing anyway.

I've only spent about £25 on DD. She is 8 months old and has no idea what Christmas is so I don't see why I'd bother wasting my money on tat she can live without. I'm sure I'll have years of that to come.

I think people who spend money they don't have buying presents their children don't need are stupid, frankly. But then again I've spent more than £10 so I'll just get my coat..

If that's the money I could afford, that's what I'd do. Needs must and all that. If dh had lost his job, that's what we'd have been doing. You could still get a couple of decent DVDs or paperbacks for that. I would not let Christmas become a miserable occasion solely on that account.

If I only had a maximum of £10 per child to spend, I would get them something from us (probably second hand) to share for as cheap as possible - maybe a board game or DVD or similar, and spend all the remainder on stuff for their stockings from Father Christmas. I would be raiding the charity shops for books and toys, then getting cheap crayons and colouring books for the stocking as well.

I doubt the DC would notice, and I wouldn't feel guilty if we literally had no more money unless it was somehow my fault we had no money - if I'd spent all our savings on lottery tickets or something mad like that. I have bought them second hand presents in the past anyway.

Unless you're in dire financial straits £10 does seem being miserly for the sake of making a point. The leap in what you can buy for £10 and what you can get for £40 is huge.

I'm baffled by people buying ipads for 6 year olds though.

It would depend on my circumstances. Ds1 was 9 months old on his first christmas. He got a second hand fisher price roll arounds dinosaur thing that year for about that sort of money. No point in spending anything more. If £10 was all I had available to spend then yes I would and I wouldn't feel guilty. If I had more to spend then I would and I still wouldn't feel guilty.

You spend whatever you can afford. It's ridiculous that you should measure up to what the next person spends. Anyway it's about the value of the gift not the price, it's about the family and festivities not a competitive occasion.

we have a christmas gift budget of 20quid per person in our house (1 kid and mum and dad). it's all we can afford. we have a nice time and i'm not convinced we'd have a better time if we spent more on presents.

If £10 was all I had though I'd be hitting the charity shops and freecycle and getting creative.

I woukdn't go into debt, so if that's all we could afford then that would be the budget. I would cut back everywhere else to be able to try and get the to £40 mark though, as squoosh says there's a big jump in what you get for the money.

I am a high earner and I'm sure lots of people would think I was tight knowing I "only" spend £100 each on the kids. And they only get bought toys and gifts at birthdays and Christmas, not through the year. We know the value of a pound in this house!

We're not spending much on our dcs this year (1yo and 4yo) but they get so much from gps, aunts, uncles etc that we don't need to. .. the amount ds got last year was almost obscene - took him 3 days to open it all! But we are pretty broke this year anyway. ..spending the bare minimum on everyone (22 family members!) and filing in gaps by writing stories etc for people.

Yes I would (and have done) - particularly for babies/toddlers - they really don't know the 'cost' of a present and personally I think it is madness to spend a lot of money on a baby.

I find it quite shocking the amount some people spend on Christmas presents, particularly when you know they are getting into debt just to 'see the childrens' faces light up' .

Certainly for adults a £10 gift is just about right and more than acceptable.

I keep repeating this on all the Christmas threads but the true meaning of Christmas to me is much more important than the pile of presents - whether that means the religious side/spending time with family and friends/helping at a local homeless shelter or whatever .

My son will be 2.5 this Christmas, and I can't imagine spending more than forty pounds on him. When he's older and more aware, we will increase the amount, but I'd rather he got three or four toys to cherish rather than scores that quickly get cast aside.

Ten seems stingy, unless you're cash-strapped, and in that case I would try to be as creative as possible, and come up with some kind of fun experience for the day in addition to offering a toy.

Cooler like I said, I was curious to see what people would think. obviously from recent threads we know that people spend very different amounts of money on their kids so I spose I was wondering why. I'm not a journo or anything, I have a decently long MN post log

I'm not sure I would be spending only £10 to prove a point, just because it's nice to unwrap stuff at Christmas, though maybe I'm kidding myself. You can get quite a bit on that. In my old charity shop we had 5 kids books for £1, bags of toy cars for 50p, stuff like that.

I'm more talking about only £10 even if you could afford a substantial lot more than that. As in token presents to add the day but not be the purpose of it.

I can't afford to spend much on my DC,

Probably £20-£30 each, I don't feel guilty about it, I don't have any money to spare, and even finding that will be a struggle.

My DC are 22 and 20 now though, but it's been this way for quite a few years now, and they understand, and have never asked for anything.

Well apart from one year, when DD1 asked for a McFly annual

Last year DS1 (26 months at the time) got a 'My first computer' that plugs into the tv, it had a Thomas the Tank Engine game with it. It cost me £10 from a Facebook selling page. DS2 was 4 months old and I got him a bounce and spin zebra from the charity shop for £10. Both mint items and (although the zebra was a bit old for DS2) perfect for them. I don't see the problem with spending very little on them, especially if they don't understand. For their stockings they get about 5 items each for £1-£2 per item. This year will be much the same.

My friend's great niece though, is getting an iPad this Christmas,

She's 5, none of my business, but I did wonder what happened to dollies and teddy bears for little girls!

Aaar don't feel bad tombakerscarf, your children sound very lucky.. Loving the cushion idea, great for watching Christmas movies together.

If that was all I could afford, then that is what I would spend. I would definitely look for second-hand stuff though.

It shouldn't be a competition (either to spend the most or to spend the least), each family does what works for them and that might not be the same thing every year, I know our spending and our choice have varied from year to year depending on our situation at the time.