Lower budget parents (£150 ish per child) - what are you buying?

[AllYearsAround]

We tend to spend around £150 per child, not a strict budget but feels about the right amount for us.
Interested to know what others with a similar budget buy! It always seems like very much on the low side by Mumsnet standards.

Mine:
Teen - a couple of Star Wars lego sets
Jeans and a shirt
Dressing gown
An under 16s driving lesson
Stocking with sweets, toiletries etc
£20 cash

Tween - squishmallow
Beyblade set
A fitness/activity tracker
Top and trousers
Ticket to a theatre show
Sewing kit
Comic subscription
Stocking with sweets, hair bobbles, earrings

Kiddo - squishmallow
Art set
Baby doll
Board game
Ticket to a theatre show
Teddy
Dress
Book
Stocking with sweets, bath stuff

I would say we aim to spend around £200 per kid at Xmas. (2 boys age 11 and a 4 year old girl this year) it could end up more less but we do spread the cost throughout the year. I buy stuff in sales etc and put them aside so itll be a little spent here and there which adds up. it's not like I get to December and go oh no I need to drop hundreds now! I also use topcashback.

My family's always gone big at christmas when I was growing up so I'm pretty sure that's influenced me to an extent. Gift giving is my main love language, so I love doing lists and research and being thoughtful about the gifts.

My sons gifts add mostly anime related (dvds/books/figures), harry potter things and some art supplies cos he likes making flipbooks. His main gift is a ps4 beanbag gaming chair.

For my daughter she's really gotten into dolls and playsets so that's been the main focus, and art supplies. A new play doh set and she goes bonkers for stickers lol. Probably priciest item was the set of 4 festive disney princess plushes from the disneystore.

Give it time!
I'm sure he knew about them from school. He'd mentioned it in the run up to Christmas but we'd put him off.
Then the week before Christmas he was off school ill for a couple of days 🤒 every other advert was the Switch, sometimes two in the same commercial break.

A marketing technique that worked I know I wasn't the only person to cave in to a Switch the week before Christmas that year. Someone at work did too !!!

DD 8 has:

• smiggle bag and pencil case (her heart's desire)- £35 ish
• legami pens -£20

-lava lamp-£15

• t shirt of thing she likes -£20
• gravitrax starter set - charity shop, £20

-fluffy pjs-£15

She also spotted a few science kits she wanted, so might get her one of those and she's recently got into sewing so planning on putting a little kit together for that. Plus a couple of books.

Bikes in our family are transport so you get a new one when you need it. Extended family don't really do lots of gifts either, although they'll get stuff from grandparents. Last year they got a switch between them though so it can be bigger ticket if needed. Although it hasn't been much played with really.

Older dd is 11 and never wants anything, just has a massive list of books. She'll probably get some noise canceling headphones, some swimming equipment and some art stuff as well.

Stockings are separate but would be around the £30 mark and include pants and toiletries etc.

That seems like a lot of presents to me! We tend to spend more money on doing things than gifts, but a huge part of this is family culture isn't it? Adults in our family don't do gifts at all but we do spend mad amounts of money on cheese, so...

But the comment I was responding to was about a child in their 6th year changing their mind last minute on which console they wanted. Was the reason I wrote the post.

I'll clarify he didn't change his mind over which console. He'd asked for a £30 toy for Christmas and something similar for 6th Birthday.
Then a week before was bombarded with Switch adverts and asked for a Switch.

The point is 5/6 year old kids do know about consoles, other kids talk about them, particularly those with older siblings. And then the advertisers get in on the act.

Most kids seem to have consoles of some description. So don't think because your school aged kid has asked for a low budget Christmas it will stay that way!

That year has also put me off buying things early. It was also a PITA because I couldn't get family to buy games either they'd done their shopping.

Yup wasn't disagreeing with you. It was the OP who said 5 year olds don't know about consoles. Mine does as his friends have them. I can't remember the last time I saw an advert 😅have been living in a blissful netflix bubble!

£800? 😳 they must have mahoosive houses! I've got 3 children and spend between £250-300 on each. I have to really consider where the gifts are going to live because even with a playroom we don't have an abundance of space. That's crazy money!

I don’t think £150 is a low budget, it’s roughly what I spend. Both of mine are now older teens/adults and I tend to buy 3 or 4 items and they get a stocking.

Not necessarily, I was given a wish list with 4 things, Xbox X £500, and 3 lego sets £150, £50 & £30. Total £730

He was told to dream on but the minute you move from plastic toys the price goes wild.
Labelled clothes too can be wild, trainers £100, replica football strip will easily be £100.

@Superworm24 DS received a Yoto player from his grandparents for Christmas a couple of years ago. Then I spent the money they received for their birthdays on a second one.

I already listed some gifts but here's another example. No cheap shite off Temu or Shein and I already said I often mix in second hand (but like new) though looking back at this list from a previous year, it was all new, so here you go.

This is what my eldest got for around £50:
Echo Dot Kids for her bedroom
Set of 3 Fatface tops in her favourite colours
Pokemon cards
A Yoto card
Stocking including a kids electric toothbrush, sweets, fruit, magazine, Mashem toy

The Dot was on sale on Amazon (about £25), the tops were on sale (about £10), the Yoto card was free as I had built up loyalty points to use (usually £10), toothbrush was a nice Oral B one in the clearance section of Boots for £2.50 (and yes maybe weird for a child's Christmas present, but believe me, she was desperate for one like us and was thrilled), the Mashem toy was also discounted in the supermarket.

I have said before that I understand you'd probably spend more on a teenager but there's no need to spend loads on kids unless you actually want to and have the money spare (hats off if you do) but personally, here are the reasons I don't spend more:

• we are quite conscious of the environment and unnecessary production of things that we don't need
• money is fairly tight: I could spend more but that would impact the one holiday a year that we have
• we have family who go overboard and give tons of plastic toys (which the kids barely acknowledge and we all find it a bit stressful having so much stuff everywhere and having to make space for - either giving away existing things they actually like, or not using the new ones and giving those straight to charity, neither option goes down well with the kids)
• they play better when they have a couple of things to choose from at a time/in each room rather than hundreds that overwhelm them

If people want to spend more on expensive gifts so they get something that will last and that they'll love for a long time, I'm on board, and will probably do the same if I have more spare cash in future and they have more expensive wants. A guitar for an enthusiastic guitarist or whatever, is a nice gift. I just don't like it when the aim seems to be "a big pile" which seems to be the case with my in-laws.

To be fair when you have older children/teens the presents become more expensive and a lot smaller! A new phone, a couple of video games, airpods and some makeup could cost that and fit in a shoe box.

My son is 9. He wanted a ps5 I told him he had two choices, either I could get him a ps5 and that would be all, or I could give him some money towards a ps5 (he usually gets quite a bit from family) and other presents, and he chose the money and presents.

fast forward his dad has decided to get him the ps5 (we aren't together) but it will live at my house because he's here 90% of the time. And I've been asked for a gaming monitor, gaming headphones, trainers, footfall kits and so on. The monitor is his most expensive gift, but managed to get a good deal on it. I do agree the older they get the more it can snowball. My two little girls will look they've got more but it's toys so it's cheaper

It can very quickly snowball with older kids tech, gig tickets and sports kit (golf, watersports, bikes etc)

I was going to say nobody is spending £800 on toddlers but I guess you could go mad with LOs with big things like trampolines, outdoor playhouses, swing sets, bikes, electric ride-on cars.

the main thing for me is why are these kids getting multiple presents? Why not just one present?

I doubt there is any child in the UK who gets up to one present on Christmas morning.

Calm down, Scrooge.

I think you are very naive if that’s what you really think. There will be far too many kids waking up with, to coin a phrase, “jack shit”. Not to derail. But 1 in 3 British kids are now living in real terms poverty. There will be some, though not all, of those, who wake up in unheated homes, with no Christmas meal, let alone gifts. I think there’s probably some perspective needs injecting on all sides on this thread.

Cultural norms.

Ds17 -,trainers using voucher code £120 - t shirt £20 - smelliest £10. Boom £150 spent but it's what he wants and he will be over the moon with his "pile"

Plenty will wake up to nothing.

That's so sad 😢

When I was a kid a neighbour of ours had bailiffs come and take all her sons presents from under tbe tree along with other things on Christmas Eve. Watching his mum cry in our kitchen has stuck with me to this day it was awful

I didn't mean to bring down the tone of the thread, which was actually very useful and interesting, but lots of people will be having an awful Christmas as usual and could only dream of £150 presents - just from their parents!

Hopefully we can get one on sale like the PP mentioned. But we will have to accept that we will need a bigger budget than others on this thread. We don't have a big family and our DC will be an only child so no big gifts from family or shared presents with siblings.