Total Christmas spends?

[stopitandtidyupp]

How much do you spend at Christmas with everything included?

Presents, food, parties, Christmas drinks, decorations, kids parties, cards, visiting, meals out.

I have looked at my account for last Christmas. I spent of the order of £1000. This seems excessive. We don't even do adult gifts anymore. Well except me and oh but no extended family.

My friends say it's not uncommon but even with the cut down this seems excessive. I think I need to cut down more.

What proportion would you have spent on food anyway

Can you break it down? How many gifts how many parties do you buy a new dress or Christmas jumper etc

Including presents, decor, our Christmas party and all Christmas socialising, easily a couple of thousand. We can afford it and to me it’s worth it because I love the season, but I can absolutely understand the benefit in paring back if it’s a source of stress, guilt or unhappiness.

I think people go OTT with present buying. Our children have £50 each, they are over the moon! This will be harder as they get bigger and want specific, expensive items but I don’t think children need a huge pile each.

Children's gifts (x3) £200 each teens
Work party £40 plus drinks
Mums night out £20 plus drinks
Husbands work party free plus drinks
Family gifts £100
Food £100
Plus cards wrapping paper etc
No new decorations needed
No new clothes needed
No longer do Santa visits etc
All adds up but depends on the family

£1000 presents (£250 x 4 dc)
£200 presents for other family members
£200 partner and I spend £100 on each other
£500 visiting family, requires a hotel, meal out
£150 food/drink for Christmas Day

Then I suppose something on decorations (tree, wreath), cards and wrapping, at least one new outfit, food for other days (xmas eve, Boxing Day, NYE), tickets to at least one work party.

It adds up doesn't it.

£700 on the kids (2)
£2-300 on gifts for my husband and I
£100 on gifts for rest of family
£100 or so on extra xmas food treats and mulled wine etc

This year I’m hosting Yule for 13 people so probably £100-150 on things needed for that.

Add extras like days out etc and I recon xmas costs us around 1.5k

I'm going to keep the whole shebang under £1k this Christmas. It's really creeped up over the last few years and I'm trying to recalibrate expectations.

Wow this makes me look sooo cheap. 😂 we spend about £400. We don't do Xmas dinner we go to parents for it so just £200 on kids and £100 for me and OH. And £100 for friends

We did up a draft budget last night and it came to 3000e. I am in Ireland and we seem to spend more here. Neither of us drink so that's without any alcohol.

I don't normerly keep score so this might be a massive underestimate but here goes:

Kids presents: £100
Presents for family:£150 ish
Throwing a Xmas party (booze and food) £100
Some kind of outing (pantomime etc) £50
If it's a year we visit my family, travel can cost around £250
Attending Work do and buying secret santa £30
Decorations, wrapping paper, celletape etc £30
Special Christmas food: £100

It all adds up!

Easily a couple thousand now that we have children. Before we'd buy each other one gift and order in a takeaway on Christmas day, no tree up or anything! But we obviously do the full shebang these days and it really adds up.

It certainly does add up. I forgot panto tickets!
I would probably spend £100 on food normally so can take that off.

It's all relative though isn't it?

We have a budget that we're happy with and can afford without going into debt. We save an amount each month to go towards Christmas and I use Nectar points to get a lot of the basic food. I love a bargain but don't buy for the sake of buying.

I think some people are excessive with they spend and others are very thrifty. I'd put us somewhere in the middle.

Oh god I'd rather not know

Oh good question! Um... I don’t really know.

I’ve spent £150 on presents for dd, but her birthday is coming up too, so half is for that. So I guess it’s £75 on her. I’ve managed to spend £60 on the baby and even I don’t know how . A couple of toys, (but I do try to buy the eco charity and eco friendly toys), and some clothes and cloth nappy stuff, so it’s all pretty practical.

I spend about £30 per child in our wider family, so that’s another £60 on my side, but £90 on dh’s (he does their presents though). Dh and I don’t buy for each other. I spend about £20 (average) on adults in my family, so that’s another £120. We do a £200 secret Santa with adults in dh’s family.

We are flying to my home country for Christmas, so that’s another £800 for all of us. I’m not going to any ‘work’ / mum parties this year and I don’t think Dh is either.

We’ll have to contribute to the food and wine at my dad’s house, so I guess another £150 there.

Jesus it’s a lot isn’t it?

£75 - dd
£60 - baby
£60 - dns
£90 - other dns
£120 - adults in my family
£200 - adults in dh’s family
£800 - flights
£150 - food

Total = £1,555

But a lot of that is flights. We may also duck out of the adults secret Santa for dh’s family, as we all have dcs now. That would reduce it. Although, I would definitely still want to buy something for PILs as they don’t have children. Maybe I shouldn’t be buying for my adults either... but then I have a childless, single sibling who would hate that. I have bought stuff this year, but maybe not next year.

If I took away the flights and adult pressies it would reduce it to £555...

Thanks for starting this thread though. What an eye opener! But we don’t spend more than we can currently afford tbf.

Presents £450 all in (DS, DN x2, Dsis, DB, DBIL, DF, DM, DSF & DGP)
Food £90
Work meal £30
This was me doing it on the cheap as well