How much do you spend on adults?

[Henrywilldoit]

If you buy for the adults in your family/extended family. What's your budget per person? How many adults do you buy for?

Or do you have a rule of not buying for adults?

I'm just interested to know what other people do.

I give adult DC £200 each, GC £50 each, mil £50, bil £30. My parents both dead as is fil. My sister's and I don't buy gifts but instead all share a spa day with Xmas meal in early December.

We don't buy gifts for the adults, including each other. We bought gifts for our nieces and nephews until they were 18 and we now buy gifts for our grandchildren.
However, although we don't buy gifts for them, we do give money to our adult children at Christmas, usually something between £250 and £500 each.
They don't buy us anything, because we ask them not to.

I buy for siblings and husbands/grown up children, spend £25-30 each, 9 of them.

It’s expensive, but we all spend Christmas Day together.

We buy something for our parents, and continue with nieces/nephews, but no one else.

No gifts for over 18s ... except adult DS. I buy my DM a token gift (£20) and we have a day out together she insists on paying. No PILs. As we now only have one DN under 18 buying Christmas presents isn't an expense I worry about. DH and I don't buy each other gifts.

We stopped buying for adults 15 years ago . So liberating, apart from the money side of things .
Our rule is full time education and SEN adult only.

We also don't buy for adults. We all stop buying for nephews/nieces/friends's children after their 18th birthday. The exception is DH's parents.
DH wants to stop that, as we are just exchanging stuff/vouchers that really no one wants, but he isn't brave enough to talk to them about it - so I can't see that stopping. We spend around the £50 mark on each of them (some of that is often a joint gift).

We don't buy for adults on DH side and we do secret santa with my family. All kids get a £10 gift voucher and selection box

I stopped buying for my nieces and nephews once they reached 18 - they’re my DH’s side of the family and we aren’t close at all. I give a hamper addressed to them all instead, which is cheaper. However, now my niece is pregnant. Really don’t want to start buying birthday and Christmas gifts for the new baby. My other This will surely be the first of many great nieces and nephews. When does it end?

I’m hoping a generous new baby gift will suffice!

On my side of the family, I have 3 siblings who are all married with children. We agreed many years ago that we would stop buying for the adults and just buy for the children. We now have 9 children between us so in recent years we also set a budget of £5ish per child to make it more manageable. So this will usually end up being books, hair accessories (I only have nieces, no nephews), bath bombs, cosy socks or something cheap and cheerful! On the rare occasions that we are all together for Christmas we might do a couples secret santa between us.

On my DH’s side we are the only ones with DC (3 or them) and he has two siblings who are both married. So we do buy gifts for them and spend about £20-30 per couple. They buy for the children only or sometimes get us a token gift too if we are seeing them for Christmas.

We only buy for parents around £70 each and nieces and nephews around £50 each. We stopped doing sibling/ cousin/ auntie gifts years ago as it got ridiculous.

Family presents I spend £50-100 on mums and dads and £50 on brother, sister, dh brother, 2 nieces. For partners of siblings they just get a token gift from dd for less than a tenner. Are you buying for siblings partners as well? If so I'd look at getting them a joint present to cut the cost, maybe make up your own movie night hamper or similar.

One in particular asks every year for items twice our budget and we then have to have the embarrassing conversation that we aren't spending that much
They just sound like a complete twat!

I definitely won't be buying for grand nieces and nephews @MazzleDazzle. Our DC got gifts from great aunts/uncles who they had no direct relationship with/have never even met - I ended up resenting the task of getting the thank you letters written and posted. They are PIL siblings and I heard PIL moan on several occasions about 'having to' buy for the GN (10 in total) - so it all seemed like a chore all round.

@MazzleDazzle One of my husband's nephew's now has a child and he's started buying for them. I'd only just got him out of the habit of buying for the nephew. 🙄 I've warned him it's a slippery slope. He has four nephews and a niece and they are all very family orientated so if they all have two kids each, for example, that's going to be very expensive for him every year. And due to circumstances it's unlikely we'll have much of a relationship with most of them.

But it's his money so 🤷🏻‍♀️

We do roughly between £50-100 each on parents (my mum, Mil & FiL, although FiL has had a lot more this year), £25 each on my DB and SiL, £25 on one of my friends and if DH sees something his best mate would like, he’ll buy it, but that’s not every year. Other than that, it’s children only, although DH and I spoil each other rotten.

My DM, DB & SiL aren’t in a position to buy for adults but we’re pretty close to them and they do a lot to help us out, so we’re very clear that our gifts to them are more of a token gesture thank you, rather than an exchange of gifts because it’s Christmas. It’s usually only pyjamas and vegan snacks for DB & SiL which I’ve been buying them since they were teenagers, so it’s never enough to make them feel uncomfortable.

We’ve both got another two siblings each and their partners who we don’t buy for, and if we started with extended relatives we’d have to turn to crime to pay for it all.

Easiest way to do it would be a group text saying ‘Dear family, we love you all dearly but the cost of buying 12 of you gifts each year is becoming prohibitively expensive and we cannot do it any longer. So starting from this year, it will only be warmest seasons greetings to and from our household. We’re more than happy to be involved in a secret Santa if anyone wants to arrange it though. Lots of love, Henry & Co’

We buy for both sets of parents and siblings on my side of the family as neither of my siblings have children yet, probably spend £30-40 per adult, maybe a bit more for parents.. On DH's side, he's one of 4 - all of them married with kids, we do a secret Santa with a £20 budget between the 8 of us and then just buy for the kids.

There are 10 adults in our family. For dh's side (3) they each get a gift (approx £50 - £60 each). For my side (7) we each get allocated one adult to buy for with a budget of £80. It's one gift per person so a couple (eg dh and me) buy for two adults. Just means that each adult is guaranteed one nice gift each and it's fair for singles and couples. The only rule we have, is that you must give a list of gifts you'd like so that we don't waste the money on something unwanted.

Personally I think it's a shame when adults get nothing for Xmas but I understand why people do it.

Nothing. Stopped this ridiculous consumerism years ago. If I want something I buy it for myself. Everyone has too much anyway.

We don't buy for the adults in our family except parents. This year my siblings and I have decided not to buy for each other's dc neither as none of us can afford it

@MazzleDazzle

I started winding down individual gifts by sending a generic mini-hamper type thing to the whole household - a couple of bottles of wine, biscuits, scented candle etc.

Aldi has some nice hampers.

@Aria2015 I agree, but admitting on Mumsnet that you are an adult who enjoys giving and receiving Christmas presents is basically the same as saying you kick puppies for fun. 😂

£115 - my kids
£85 - DH
£10 - next level immediate family (parents/siblings)
£5 - rest of family (in laws, aunts, uncles, cousins)

It adds up when you buy for multiple people - I use to buy loads but I've cut back over the years as honestly, most adults don't seem to appreciate it much.

I'm always shocked at seeing people claim they spend £100s on parents and £50 on each the nieces/nephews and even god children.

@Aria2015

There are 10 adults in our family. For dh's side (3) they each get a gift (approx £50 - £60 each). For my side (7) we each get allocated one adult to buy for with a budget of £80. It's one gift per person so a couple (eg dh and me) buy for two adults. Just means that each adult is guaranteed one nice gift each and it's fair for singles and couples. The only rule we have, is that you must give a list of gifts you'd like so that we don't waste the money on something unwanted.

Personally I think it's a shame when adults get nothing for Xmas but I understand why people do it.

I love buying gifts... it's my thing.

I don't really expect anything back from anyone except DH (and my mams like me so will buy loads).

I DESPISE being asked for a list though, the entire point is the giver is supposed to use effort to think of something... anything I can think of that I want/need I buy myself unless its crazy expensive (in which case I wouldn't ask someone to buy it) and the best gifts have always been things I didn't know existed until I opened them.

I don't like saying budgets on here as I'd hate people to feel bad.

We stopped siblings when kids came along. Then started one again when their circumstances changed.

I haven't stopped my adult nieces yet.

Parents we still buy for but I think we should cut it to token consumables.