£40 on one child Vs £10 on four children

[Courtney555]

I'm interested on people's opinions on buying Christmas gifts for children.

If, we could skip the "I don't give to receive, spirit of Christmas" and the "well I make the most amazing gifts for 50p a go" stuff and just go with the direct example, and your reasons behind your answer, that would be fab...

So. If family A has one child, and family B has four children, does:

Family A buy £10 gifts for each of the four children in Family B, and Family B reciprocate the £40, but as there is only one DC, it gets a much nicer £40 present?

Family A buy £10 gifts for each of the children in Family B and Family B reciprocate with £10 for the child in Family A. So Family A receive £30 less of gifts.

I see it both ways. What if Family A chose only to have one DC as that's all they could afford, but have to spend £40 on Family B (on the basis that a gift much under £10 per child, is barely worth the bother). But then why should Child A have a far superior gift than the 4 Child B's, shouldn't they all be treated fairly in that respect?

If we could also avoid the silly "well if Family A are that put out, they just need to have 3 more DC! Ahhh ha ha ha ha" that'd be grand

Yeah @feelingsinister it’s a kind of SS, I should have said that instead of explaining the whole saga

All the kids get 10 pound gifts

You give a present to the person

Each person is allocated money for a present

One family has more kids but they should all get gifts in the same price range. Or Johnny is crying because he got uno cards & mike got a new PlayStation
It wouldn’t work equally in the kids’ eyes

I’m not sure why you’re worrying about what other people spend.

Just say ‘now we’ve got the twins don’t feel obliged to spend a fortune on presents for them’ and leave it at that.

There’s loads of gifts at a lower spend £15-ish that they can give, and you can continue to spend a bit more on their DC if you like.

You can’t be worrying that your kids will get tat but dress it up as concern for other people’s wallets.

Either you’re happy for them to spend less on your DC or you’re not!

I had this exact scenario with my sister in law who wanted to decree that we should buy her only son three £5 gifts from the list she provided while each of my three children would receive one £5 gift from them. My kids got plenty from us and grandparents so I didn't really care what she spent on them, but I did object to being told what to spend on her son. And I object to the idea that my kids should get less due to there being three of them. They didn't choose to have siblings.

Each individual person deserves a present. How much that costs is absolutely up to the giver. If everyone has to give the exact same monetary value to each other you may as well not bother and buy your own presents.

I have five nieces and nephews in total and we spent roughly the same on each of them at Christmas. Their families reciprocate in the same way to our two children. But we don't fixate on whether auntie A have gifts worth £10 each and auntie B gave gifts worth £20 each. The kids write a Christmas list (or their parents if the kids are too little) and generally speaking there's enough choice to ensure the kids are all treated broadly equally in terms of the value of the gifts. Sometimes I supplement with a small off list gift to even things up. But I certainly don't compare against the value of the gifts my kids receive.

My auntie and uncle (mum's brother and sister) don't have kids so for as long as I remember they have split the gift-giving. One year my auntie buys for me and mum, then next year she swaps with my uncle and gets dad and DBro.

That way they always get a gift from us but they're not each spending x4.

I have 4DC, no other children in the family, but I have godchildren and their mum is like a sister to me. She has several nieces, nephews, cousins to buy for. She usually gets my children token gifts, never more than about £20 each which must be a stretch when she’s got others to buy for. I go completely overboard with her 2 DCs, spend way more on them than she does on mine. I always say that I’ve got no one else to spoil and don’t expect her to match the value.

I’m wishing I could formulate a set of equations for this post . My head is hurting with just thinking about it .

Same amount on each child, but the amount spent by different families is likely to vary.

So say you have three families, an easier example.

Family A are well off and have two children.

Family B medium and have three.

Family C tight budget, one child.

Family A might spend £15 per child, £60 altogether.

Family B £10 per child, £30 altogether.

Family C just go with a token tube of sweets, £2 per child, £10 altogether.

All is fair and nobody needs to worry that it's unequal.

I agree berttie

@CareOfPunts

That's a good idea. Currently, each family's only child gets a £25 gift. I think there's 7 of us in total, so that would be..... £175? Each child gets 7 (small/med) presents worth £25.

I think it would be a very workable idea to each put in £130 odd per family to a kitty, (circa £900?) then divide it by the (future) 9 children, so they get whatever they want to the value of £100, one big thing, loads of smaller things, a couple of £50 things ...all these things are not options at the moment because the amount is set at £25(ish). Plus it reduces the total spend per family from £175 to £130.

I might put that forward....

In my example, Family A receive £24 worth of presents, Family B receive £51 worth of presents and Family C receive £25 worth of presents.

But I don't see why people would want to tally it up like this.

I don't really think about it. I think about my own budget and make sure I get children a present they would like, even if it is cheap.

If I had 3 kids and my sis had 1, for example, I might spend 30 quid on her child but wouldn't expect either a tenner or 30quid to be spent on each of mine. I'd expect something in between that. If I thought about it at all. But then I would expect it to vary depending on how rich everyone was feeling that year too!

All the kids in our families do Amazon wish lists (remember things don’t have to be from Amazon) and then we select depending on our budgets.

I just spend what I can afford.
I buy for a family members dc’s, she has 3 dc, I spend around £10 each on them, she spends about £5 each on my 2 so I’m spending £30 on hers and she’s spending £10. It doesn’t really bother me as I know she struggles more with money than I do. I have other children in the family I buy for and their parents buy nothing for mine.

My DB has 4 DCs, I normally get them a cinema voucher for £50, I have 2 DCs which he spends about 20ish pounds each on. Not sure if this is right or wrong but it's what we do.

My Dsis has three children and I currently have one. She has previously suggested I get her children something much smaller than she gets for my DS so it is fair £££ wise. I disagreed. I have strong bonds with each of my nieces and I want to be able to choose something lovely for each of them. I think they would notice, certainly the eldest would. My Dsis has passed on huge amounts of toys and baby equipment/furniture, so I reject the 'it's not fair' argument.

This thought has never crossed my mind. You buy for the child as an individual child. Not as a family unit.
One SIL has 4, the other 3, we had 2 last year. Never thought about the fact that we were spending more on them.
On the other side my sister has none and I have 3, she buys my kids presents because she WANTS to. Should I be compensating her cos she has no kids??
Very weird logic.

We have a similar situation as we have three grandchildren and DH's brother has one. DBIL buys gifts for our three and we reciprocate with one larger gift for his grandson. Perhaps not three times more expensive than he spends on each one of ours, but certainly at least double. I try not to worry too much about what they spend, I just set my own budget and stick to that.

The same amount per child. So I would probably spend up to 10 per child regardless of how many there are. I would not expect the same back though, whatever other people spend on my children is fine and their own choice. Whether that be a bar of chocolate or a Lego set.

Putting money in a family kitty to be divided up equally sounds absolutely bonkers, not to mention boring.

I enjoy Christmas shopping and choosing presents, even token things. Don't take that away from me.

I think token gifts are the way forward. No worrying about matching the presents values. When my sister had an only child she was annoyed that she only got £20 as she spent twice that on both of mine. It got to a point where she was checking the value of each present. I ended up putting cash in a card. A few years ago my brother and husband said it was ridiculous as we were literally exchanging £40 cash!! It made no sense!!! So we stopped. Just token gift e.g. lindt santa.

Definitively x amount PER FAMILY

it's ridiculously unfair when someone has to spend more because a family decided to have more children. Same for grand-parents, they should spend x amount per their own child , so the amount is roughly the same regardless of the amount of grand-children.

I have 4 of my own btw, so wouldn't expect others to have to spend more because I have more kids, it's unfair.

so the "pot" is the amount you can afford per family and you divide accordingly. Simple.

Do you have to set limits?

I have no idea how much my sister spends on me at Christmas. I have no idea how much I'm going to spend on her this year, I just know what presents I'm thinking of getting her.

If she spends less on me, so what? She's having a baby in February, and I'll buy for the baby too, but we won't set financial limits. Can you not just buy each other presents and some will cost more than others, but if the people themselves appreciate them, then it doesn't matter?

ie. One family might get their presents in the Christmas sales for the next year, so they've spent less than buying the item the following November, but it doesn't matter?

I have 2 children

My sister has 5 children

My sister has no money, I send £20 to each of the children so they can buy something they like, or save it for something bigger, and £50 before Christmas to her so she can buy a Christmas dinner. She sends me and the girls a lovely card. Families count their blessings not the present pot.

That is just fine and how it should be.