To spend less than £50 per child at Christmas?

[hibbledobble]

I read the thread where people were talking about spending as much as £1000 per child, and the average was in the 100s.

I can afford to spend a lot, but I don't see the need or the benefit in buying a lot. I plan on getting one large and one small present per child and maybe some chocolate. Things they will play with and cherish.

I don't buy into the consumerist culture surrounding Christmas, and I don't want to raise spoilt children.

Aibu?

My children also get a lot spent on them in terms of activities through the year. Around £40 per week for the eldest.

YANBU to parent the way you see fit.

My DC have been raised with a low key, present wise, Christmas and they get to ask for a Birthday gift. Partially through principal but in earlier years through financial necessity.

Doing anything thats different to your DC's peers can raise eyebrows and require your DC to have a confident response to questioning. My DS2 is quite a sensitive soul and has questioned how some people get loads at Christmas.

We've always said if you want anything enough you can find a way to get it and Christmas is one day, we have things we'd like year round and get them when needed. The DC save and do jobs towards bigger ticket items and the effort in ensuring they want something by saving etc appears to mean they enjoy and appreciate its ownership more.

Why do you care what other people spend at Christmas? Do what you want, it doesn’t make you better/worse than anyone else though.

By all means spend whatever you choose to and don't give in to pressure to spend more than you want to, but I am a bit about what you can actually get for £50. A games console or even a bike is likely to break that budget even as a sole present.

You can buy your children whatever you like and spend however much you like. For whatever reason. So yanbu. And I don't think anyone else will care at all, except perhaps your children.

I think the feathers were a touch extravagant, they will grow up and be horribly spoiled

I dont buy gifts for the sake of it 'just for something to open', but I have bought gifts I know dd will appreciate and use daily. Not a phone (she is only 9), but she is into art, so I have bought her a decent graphics tablet as I do believe in buy cheap, but twice when it comes to stuff like that.

You say I'm not judging people who spend a lot, but I do think it's unnecessary.

So bloody what? Why are you arsed?

You are totally judging because for some reason, you have got it into your head, that you are doing it the 'correct' way and anyone who splurges is doing something 'wrong'

YANBU to spend £50 on your children if that’s what you can afford or that’s what you think is appropriate for them.
YABU to judge anyone who wants to spend what they want to spend. What business is it of yours if Joe Bloggs buys his DD £400 of presents?

OMG you are so right! And i just love that poem something to wear/you need/you want/you read. I think it's a quote from Ebenezer somebody.

My 6yo is getting a bike for his December birthday - actually he already has it, so he can benefit from better weather now plus his old bike is broken to buggery. €50 second hand, current model still in Decathlon, his bike doesn't have a scratch on it! Plus he'll get some small bits. Plus gifts from family. Christmas has cost about €120 all in, including AWESOME trainset, Playmobil caravan and various bits and bobs. No tat. Two books, some creative stuff, Spongebob board game, dominoes. All bargains and we waited for sales etc.

But we are living on one pissy wage and paying through the nose for shockingly bad financial decisions the in-laws have made (bar leaving the country, we're all being fucked over).

I do not think it is any of your business what people spend at Christmas and i hate sneery threads like this.

It's up to you what you spend, just as it's up to others what they spend.

I don't believe spending a lot on Christmas presents spoils a child and you need to spend a fair amount if you want to buy them a new games console.

Yabu to think that anyone gives a flying fuck what you spend on your own children. But buying 100s of presents at Christmas doesn't make children spoiled. Here we go with the competitive spending at Christmas threads all with the smug superior attitudes like you see.

The cost isn't really what matters is it? We are over run with toys that don't get used that often so the kids will be getting 3/4 items each but the cost will be around £100-120 on each child.
Some people will buy many more - I don't care! They don't live in my house which I am struggling to keep tidy due to the sheer amount of crap it it!

Do what you want, nobody cares.
If I buy my child an I-Pad it costs a lot but isn't tat, I don't get this 'pile of gifts = tat thing.

I did get a big sack full of stuff when I was a child though and loved it, probably was what many would class as tat but I thought it was magical.

Oh Laguna, thank God you have turned up.

I actually like to spoil my children at Christmas, it doesn’t mean my children are spoiled. I just hate that poem, something you want/need/ etc, it’s sanctimonious piffle and gets dragged out on this site like clockwork every year.

yanbu at all. I have spent around this on two decent presents for each of my DC (DD - a cry baby doll and a puzzleball jigsaw, a box of crafts and DS a remote control Thomas and a toy Dyson hoover). This came to 30 pounds for each child. I'll then fill their stockings with fillers that they will love which will come to about a tenner each.
They will then get plenty from grandmas etc.

I don't get why anyone would care what I spend on my kids, if I end up spending £500 each on all 3 of them I can guarantee you that some of it might be what some adults call "tat" but my 9 year old wouldn't! And that's all that matters to me, not what everyone else thinks! They're only children for a short period of time, I would love to be back at the unwrapping loads of presents stage for my eldest, but since he's 25 that Christmas was a long time ago.

Think it also depends on how you frame other items.Play Doh, painting materials and bedding sets can be gifts for Christmas, also pants and socks in the stocking. I don't tend to keep anything other than a vague tally of them as they're just things I'd get anyway.
However, I see bikes as an essential and they are bought, handed down and swapped as needed therefore I don't include them in any Christmas or birthday totals. We have just booked Disneyland and will be telling DC over the Christmas break but I'm not counting it as a present. If we added on panto tickets, new party dresses, trips to Santa etc we could say we'd spent £1000s.

It's a bit like the "weekly shop" questions - some folks count alcohol / toiletries /nappies as groceries, so their total looks high. Some folks only spend £40 pw at the supermarket but eat out for lunch and dinner most days. Similarly the "only have £500 after bills" until you discover bills include Direct Debits for the gym / National Trust membership and food and all travel expenses. It's hard to get a real picture imo.

We can afford what we spend at Christmas but tbh I couldn't put a number on it. Does that make it sound like a fortune? They'll each have 2 or 3 new "toys" and around 6 gifts in total.

I live abroad. How much is appropriate to send my 11 yr old grandchild in England for christmas? I don’t want to be cheap, but at the same time I don’t want to spoil.

Btw, I brought back a pile of British money from my last visit to the U.K. - all 20’s.

No new games consoles here. The kids don't want them.

I agree it shouldn't matter what others spend, but obviously kids compare, and when you have a thread full of people saying how they spend 100s it makes it sound like I'm the odd one out.

Lots of people talk about getting into debt/going without to give a pile of presents. That is wrong in my opinion.

Also why gets piles of presents, does it really make anyone happier to have so much stuff?

I guess getting them everything they demand/want/think they want and putting your self under pressure and in debt is a problem

Right, so you're spending £40 a week on your oldest and £50 at Christmas. So £2150 a year.

But if someone doesn't have £2150 disposable income over the year to play with - maybe they have £400 a year? And £6 a week doesn't go that far in activity terms, but they can at least spend £200 on that on a really AMAZING stonking Christmas present and the other £200 on trips in the year. But if they do it that way, it's clearly THEIR kids who are spoiled and having unnecessary extras.

Mumsnet snobbery is amazing.

Ds has asked for very little but I know there are things he will enjoy, I don't need to get in debt to buy them, if I did then I wouldn't do it

It's a lot easier to talk about how it's wrong to get into debt or go without for Christmas when you have £2150 disposable income for one child to play with..

I'm very thankful that I don't NEED to go without to give my kids a decent Christmas. However, my mum was not so lucky. Do I judge the woman who, on her knees from a bad divorce, cut every corner so she could at least give her kids a good Christmas rather than writing off the year as shit? Do I hell. She bought a Christmas tree so big she had to use my Grandad's pushbike to get it home as we had no car and I love her for it :D