AIBU or is £6- £8 enough for birthday presents for nursery friends?

[Londonmamabychance]

How muh do you normally spend on birthday presents when you get invited to parties for your children's nursery friends? I have normally spend around £6-£10 per present, but with wrapping paper or gift bag + card I think it often end up being quite expensive, expecially when people have combined parties. On the other hand, I understand how much parents normally spend on throwing the parties (especially in London where few people have space enough to host at home and end up hiring expensive spaces), and don't want to come across as stingy. What do you consider a fair amount?

£5 per gift in our house and 10 cards for £1 from cheap card shop! We have a boys roll of wrapping paper and a girls roll!

I have always spent in the region of £5. I often try to pick things up through the year in sales etc so I get a 'better' present for the £5.

Even the 11th party at the weekend I sent a £5 note.

With cards I buy the 7 for £1 from Card Factory.

Card with £5 note in, never buy gifts as they probably have it or someone else has got it for them

Yes. That's fine. No one expects the crown Jewels
I just used to go the pound shop and make up a goody bag of books, toys, stationary abs sweets. Just a load of old tat, really.
Kids like all that though, don't they

Good to know! I'm struggling to find cheap cards in London, wonder if they have Card factory here...? any ideas?

That sounds fine, I have 6 year old twins who said far have been invites to all the same parties and I always go for the Argos 2 for £15.
A pp suggestion is a good one, mine love a gift bag full of stuff (esp if it's drawing / craft related) from the pound shop, they've received similar a few times at their own parties and loved them!

£6-£8 sounds fine to me.

We normally pick up cheap cards in the supermarket.

Now my DD is older (10) and gets invited to less parties I usually spend £8-£10 as they are usually good friends. My ds at 5 still gets invited to a fare few parties so £5 is my normal budget.
Card factory is great for cards stock up on their 10 for a £1.

Londonmaybe... you can get multipacks of birthday cards, they are a saviour!

I tend to spend £5-7 on a prezzie but it can add up so I'll probably put some aside from DC's parties this year for recycling

That's plenty! Card Factory for seriously cheapo cards and wrapping paper.

See if there's a Card Factory near you. They're very handy when you have a steady stream of kids parties.

www.cardfactory.co.uk/storefinder

There's a million card factory shops in London

You may want to start a Present Box too. I have a shelf I chuck all sorts of cheap finds onto. I got a lovely set from Wilkos of a family of soft toy mice in a gift box. Reduced from 10 to 2. That sort of thing.

You can buy cards in asda, tesco etc too for 50p each or packs of 4 for £1poundland 2 for £1, also rolls of wrapping paper for £1 (or save gift bags that you've recieved gifts in!) home bargains is really good shop often has toys etc for half the rrp so it looks like you spent more!
Also if you child has a party and gets gifts they don't like or gets duplicates - save them and give as gifts! (Obviously not to the person that gave it 😉)

Sounds fine. Spend more however where I know the kid/mum well.

Mybeardeddragon Thank god for people like you and gendered wrapping paper, otherwise we might be in danger of losing sexism from our culture for good...

I spend about that but try to get a better gift that's reduced. I wouldn't give a bag of random pound shop stuff because to me it looks like no effort has gone in to choosing what that particularly child might want.

Ice I know! What would I do if I only had blue paper with dinosaurs and the party was a girl's!? Or worse....if I had pink with butterflies and needed to wrap a boy's gift!!

I only spend £5!!

IceBeing people definitely still do this! And party bags.

But yes a fiver max. We've had some expensive looking presents given to our dc though.

Book people. You can get collections of books very cheap and have a gift box for all the spare books.

oh yes...gendered party bags...

DD ended up with a mixture of frozen and pirate themed party bags for her party (last minute Sainsburys fail) and spent a good half an hour ranking all her friends on a scale of who most preferred pirates and who most preferred frozen. It ended up not very gender segregated at all, although her male cousin being the worlds biggest frozen fan, and her two best female friend dressing as a pirates for parties 9 times out of 10 helped quite a lot.

I am reasonably impressed with her little friendship group at the moment. The last pirates and fairies party they all went to had the girls at a 50:50 split and the boys manages 2/3rds to 1/3rd as well...I am sure they will soon have it beaten out of them though...

Oooooh ice, harsh on Bearded!

I hate the gender divides as much as the next person, but if you rock up at a boy's party with fairy paper or a girl's party with pirate paper, the kids will give you a weird look and will ask questions - usually of your child. Now that's fine, but when your child expressly states that they want the 'gender specific' paper, so as not to stand out or make a point ( they are 6 after all), it's harsh in my opinion to make your point at your child's expense.

We get some gender neutral stuff too, and knowing a particular child's proclivities will buy pirate paper for some girls (including my own) but usually ask my kids what paper the friend would like. Aurely that is more important than a political score for mum?

My dad once told me not to inflict my politics on my kids - good advice.

A couple of quid. I buy multipacks of things in the sale. Kids make a card or draw a picture.

I would only spend £10 on the child of a best friend.

£5 for the present I don't factor in card or wrapping paper as we always have loads in. If I see something thr child will lobe I spend a bit more maybe up to £8 but if I see.something they would like under £5 I make up the difference with a bag of sweets etc. Nowadays I seem to be mostly putting a £5 in a card as the kids see older now and nothing they like would be fiver.