Is 400 enough for two dc?

[Lipperfromchipper]

Just a Christmas question, dc are 6 and 4,
I have spent about 320 so far and was thinking if I spent another 80 between them on stocking fillers that would be plenty?? But I’m getting cold feet about that!!? How much have you spent on two dc of similar ages??

If you can afford it why not? The key is not to get in to any debt over it.

My 2 year old has had about £200 spent on him, my 16 year old dd has had £350, and my 18 year old, we’ve bought him a car for £2k which as he has a December birthday is his birthday and Christmas present in one, he will have a couple of token gifts to unwrap Christmas Day, but they’ll only be small items.

@Ragwort to answer your question yes! My dc are very lucky as they have trust funds set up for them. And I save for them also. We are also very lucky to have our mortgage paid off.

So many bitter and jealous posters on here. Fair enough, you spent £30 in a charity shop for your DC at children, doesn’t mean everyone else has to do the same. If you don’t have a lot of money, £30 is fine, but if you can afford it you can not going to go rummaging through a charity shop are you

At Christmas sorry, not children *

How the hell do people spend £30. What can you even get for that? Do you buy stuff through out the year too?
I aim for around £350 each but usually go over.

Nobody spends £30 they are talking absolute rubbish. Mine wouldn’t say anything if that’s all they got but I wouldn’t ever do that to them. There’s always a way to earn extra

My mum gives £100 to each adult child to share between them and their partner. Grandchildren she spends £30-£50 roughly.
We will spend roughly £200 on DS who is 6 but only have one and think this would be less if we had more kids.
This sum includes anything going into stockings etc

I'm by no means slating the OP as her gifts don't seem overly extravagant and the fact she's talking Euros not £ should be taken into consideration however I am really glad I read this thread before hitting the shops as it's made me realize I was about to spend money which I don't have on crap which my DC don't need. I've just halved my shopping list. One of mine is a January baby also so there will be even more toys to come in Jan.
They're still only young and I need to be conscious of setting precedence.
Loved a PP's post about the 4 gifts; something they want, something they need, something to wear and something to read. I think we'll be going with that as our Xmas gift tradition in this house. Sensible with a bit of variety. Instead of the pile of plastic crap I was going to buy!!

Inliverpool1 and Imustbemad the £30 is probably on babies or toddlers especially if they have older siblings. I know by dc3 we had more toys than he'd ever have been able to play with at age 1, and presents were just so he'd have things to open and his siblings wouldn't think he'd been left out... What does a 1 year old, with 100 toys and books and more clothes than he can wear already, want or need? It would be pretty easy and sensible to spend £30 on maybe two toys or one toy which has a lot of play potential in that case.

how the hell do people spend £30 apparently a 2nd hand gift and some pencils (someone upthread said).

£30 wouldn’t get much in my house, a pair of pj’s and some underwear. Mr dc’s would likely be very disappointed because they are kids after all.

Yes, some people do seems a bit tight. I was just telling dd what I used to get for Christmas, we didn’t have stockings, we had a sack, it always looked like loads Christmas morning but my parents used to put gifts from family in the sack which was mainly clothes and chocolate. We would have one main gift which cost around £30, though one year we had new bikes, and then we would get pj’s, slippers and a colouring book. We were lucky that we got gifts from family and friends. My dc’s don’t really get gifts from family (only grandparents but that’s usually cash) so everything that’s under the tree is from me. So I get a bit carried away but most things are things they would have needed as well as their main gift which is something they have asked for.

You keep coming back to defend yourself @Lipperfromchipper don't you?
This is not about money. That's what is so wrong with your thinking. You seem unable to understand that.

It's about how you have made Christmas into a commercial and materialistic competition. You have said your child aged 6 is being influenced by friends at school. So what?

Why do you have to keep up with the Jones?

Why are you bringing up your children to believe they only have to ask and they will get?

I expect your home is stuffed to the rafters with toys/ tat and your children only play with a handful of what they have in their toy boxes or rooms.

Why are you adding to all of that?

The issue is you are not teaching your children the value of anything.

I am in a position where I could buy my DCs anything within reason. If they wanted a posh car each, I could buy it. Would I? No. Because it won't teach them to save and value something by working for it.

When they were younger they might have got a phone and it would be for Christmas and a birthday. When they were younger it might have been some books, an educational toy, some sweets or an outing somewhere. Or maybe a bike when the time came for that, or to upgrade it.

The point you are missing is that giving so much rubbish to your kids actually devalues them, it doesn't make it more special.

FGS get over this idea you have to spend a certain amount to show you love them, or to make them feel they have as much as their friends.

@Bluelightdistrict what’s not to understand?

@jinglinghellsbells...
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I expect your home is stuffed to the rafters with toys/ tat and your children only play with a handful of what they have in their toy boxes or rooms
I’m laughing because you actually couldn’t be more wrong!!
Out of interest have you actually RTFT??!! I haven’t got them piles of meaningless tat...I have got them what the asked for yes...I don’t always (as I already told you!!)

We probably hit somewhere between £100 and £200 for DD at Xmas. Though because she has a birthday in the first half of the year we try to alternate big presents so if she gets eg a new bike for birthday then Xmas will be lots of little things and vice versa.

This year is proving really tricky as she doesn't need any new toysand has a ton of craft stuff. She has asked for a scooter from Santa so we'll be doing books, a few clothes, and maybe some new dvds. Stocking will have orange, apple, pound coin and one of the mini My Little Pony eggs.

We've even asked people to stop buying her sweets and chocolate this year cos it sits in the kitchen until one of us eats it (I don't want to eat a ton of crap chocolate, thank you) or it gets thrown out way past its use by date!

Spend what you can afford, have a budget limit but you don't have to spend it all, and focus on buying them things they will like and enjoy.

We spend £30 on the oldest: he gets a gravitrax set (currently for £35 on amazon, i bought somewhere else). he will also get a book each per grandparent, and an electric pencil sharpener and a schleich animal from his aunt. That’s all he wants
Youngest is almost 3 and gets playdoh pots (from us) and books.

Everyone should spend what tgey want, but please don’t equate money spend or number of presents with joy. Apart from the extreme lower end, money and joy are not correlated.
in my experience, affluent families do spend less on presents. This is partially because you to become affluent you need a) lots of money coming in and b) not so much money coming out. also, affluent kids tend to do a lot more -usually sports or art/music oriented - after school care, so talk more about footballs etc than about nintendo switches. And a football is a lot cheaper

Agree with Jingles (& others), what many of us find odd is that you are so focussed on the actual amount of money you are spending. If you have a further £80 for stocking fillers and the total comes to £78.60 I get the impression that you would search for the exact gift to cost £1.40 and then you would complete your Xcel spreadsheet and tick the task off your ‘to do list’.

Clearly you are in a very comfortable position if you have no mortgage, trust funds etc for your children so you could probably afford to spend £1000 on each child if you wished, but why make it so monetary based?

You must be aware that there are people on this site with hugely varying incomes and to appear to gloat over what you are spending is tasteless and unnecessary. Whose approval are you actually seeking?

It’s really not fair to slam posters who spend more than your ‘acceptable’ amount at Christmas just because some people can’t afford it. Some people CAN and what is wrong with that? Bikes, consoles, the games for them, are all expensive. Of course people are going to spend £200 +. It’s easy done and there’s fuck all wrong with that.
It’s not boasting either. They have asked a question on Mumsnet and as usual because you deem her ‘well off’ they are getting pounced on. I see this all over the site. People with money are somehow not allowed to have problems. It’s pathetic.

We spend £15 each on stocking fillers and that's spent in Poundland. 15 small pressies each, varying from rubbers, Pens, face masks etc

Some comments here, especially around OP parenting

My children have a very privileged life, they ask for nothing, we go all out for Christmas, they are both super talented kids, who excel in everything they do.

They are polite, well mannered and good natured little boys (13 &10) they are highly driven individuals and excel in their schooling and sports (they are both academy and country level in their multiple fields)

Yet by going on here by some of the comments because I choose to spend X on my boys... some narrow minded “adults” think that because they get X amount spent on them they are automatically perceived as ill mannered and spoilt individual whose parents are materialistic

Spend what you can afford, don’t be afraid to ask questions, however leave the judgmental tripe at the door.

I don't spend the same on each DC. I try to get them what they want as far as possible within my own budget.last year DD wanted an iPhone. I bought a 2nd hand one for £160, and she had a few other bits and pieces, I'm pretty sure I didn't spend the same on DS. This year DD doesn't want anything particularly big or £££ but DS wants a new Xbox (which will prob have to be 2nd hand) so he will most likely get more spent on him and DDs likely to be £100-150.
We live in a pretty MC area and I'm sure a lot of their classmates will have a lot more spent on them but that doesn't make any difference to me, because I spend what I can afford.

Spend what you can afford. Last year I spent more than twice on my DS than what I’m spending this year but last year we could afford it. I do think £40 on stocking fillers is a lot but if you can do it and your happy then go for it. There’s no right or wrong

Some of us comment because it is such an odd ‘problem’ to have ....... re-reading the original post the OP says she is getting ‘cold feet’ about what to spend. If you are fortunately wealthy why would you start a thread, seeking approval, about how much you are spending?

Personally I am not jealous, I could spend as much on my DS if I wished, as I said earlier, I do save for my DC’s pension, future house deposit etc but I am more tactful than starting a thread to say ‘I save £x per month, is that enough?’. Without anyone knowing my income, financial situation, commitments etc how can anyone else really comment? . If what I saved was more than someone’s food budget for the month then it could be seen as boasting.

@Ragwort I have already stated upthread that it was an estimate of sorts that I rounded up...if I spend less on the stockings then so be it.

I don’t get that either though, I could buy my child a posh car if I wanted but I don’t ....
I bought my daughter a safe reliable source of transport so she didn’t have to stand at cold bus stops in the pissing rain. I paid for driving lessons in the same way as swimming lessons, life skills they need.

I thought the whole point of dragging my arse to work for the past 20 years was to make their lives better