Ok, how much have you spent on the kids?

[Kibble29]

And did you stay within your intended budget?

I just finished ordering the gifts for my (just turned) 3 year old and is came in at about £250. This was pretty much bang on what I intended, and this also includes the stocking and that bastard Christmas Eve box that I wish I never started.

Of course the amounts will vary wildly in the thread, I’m just curious really!

I haven't said anything about safety equipment?

I've got one DD. However unfortunately she also has a birthday around Christmas time. So... £200 on Christmas gifts, £200 on her birthday

@CoralOP Wait until they start driving lessons...

Too much, I’m a sucker for Christmas.

I think it will be £150 each all in. Eve boxes, shockings and presents. My aim each year is to be under £250 each.

It's refreshing to see a thread with people being honest. Normally on Mumsnet there's a competitive frugalism and everyone claiming they are gifting their kids a wooden clothes peg and a lump of coal 😂

We've only spent about £4 on ours, what do I win!

But ours is a baby. We aren't having anymore so no shared gifts and and don't have many family members. So I know once he's older we will be spending some of the bigger amounts I've seen on here.

@CoralOP I say no! Mine ask for plenty believe me, but I'm just not prepared to spend what I consider silly amounts on them. £150 per child is my limit. They're teen, pre-teen and under 10 and aware of brands etc. I'm just the mean mum!

Also for stuff like Nike Tech tracksuits vinted is your friend. You can get some duffers on there but generally I've been lucky.

I got DH a new with tags superdry hoodie for £20 less than shop price from vinted. Not as much choice of course but he's not a fussy man 🤷‍♀️

About £250 on DD4 and about £150 on my SD15 (as she gets a lot of gifts from her Mum.)

We spent less on the toddler that we thought we would.

more on the older kids - but feel happy about it all as even though the gifts are smaller etc, they are better quality and more useful and all will get used. Eg it includes things relating to hobbies and things they hope to study after school etc.
I don’t mind spending more than n things that will help appreciated and used. It was annoying spending on things that never got looked at.

Around £150 including stocking for ds4

About £40 on ds 10 months

£250 per DC and about an extra £15 for stocking sweets (any toys or bits for stocking come out of the £250 apart from sweets).

You buy less fillers and extra stuff.
So this year it's a new Xbox and not much else. And they sort of understand that's the budget taken

My son is 19 and very much an individual who wears mostly vintage clothes. He's a rock guitarist in a band and has long, curly almost waist length hair and love 80s rock and metal. He certainly doesn't follow trends, he creates his own identity so definitely no Air Jordans here! He can't stand TS so no TS tickets either! Just because your ds is happy with what he receives and apparently doesn't follow trends doesn't mean every other teen want the stuff you cite as gifts. If they do, well that's okay too, i can accept that although my ds isn't into that stuff, others might be. Equally, I understand that not every one out there wants to a pair of Jordans and a ticket to see TS!

About £150 for DS and £50 for newborn DD.

DS also has his birthday a week after Christmas so another £100 for that.

Between gifts for being an older brother, Christmas and birthday, I’m overwhelmed at the prospect of all those presents, so not sure how he will take it!

I have two bags of toys to take to the charity shop tomorrow in anticipation of making space.

Aim for £150 per child, I have 3 DC. That includes stocking, main presents and I like to do a couple of joint bits like board games and this year some second hand Playmobil pirate stuff. They are 7, 4 and 2. For DH I aim for around £100 but if it's £50 and looks alright in a pile then it's a win for me! Mainly consumables for him though as our house feels very full with 3 little kids.

When DC were babies / toddlers I spent much less as they didn't need very much. I know it will go up but not beyond budget as I'm a stress head when it comes to £££. I have loads of stuff this year from Vinted.

About £100 each. On budget. 3 children.
Happy to spend more but they don't need anything. Will save the money for Summer.

Dd3 (19) £800
Adult dd's and partners x2
£ 300 each

We budget £1000 per child. DC are late teens / early twenties so its adult items and sizes such as an engraved leather wallet, cufflinks, leather laptop bag. A pack of 3 designer pants is £50 so it soon adds up. They don't have stacks of gifts, but those that they do have are chosen to last and be special.

About £150 on our soon to be 3 year old. But as he has a Jan birthday will probably keep a few bits back for that. Also managed to get a couple of items on vinted so value is a bit higher. I feel bad for the kid going 11 months without stuff though so he usually gets bought bits and pieces throughout the year.

We don't buy for anyone other than my foster siblings (3x all under 18) and people don't buy for us - purely to lessen 1) the stress of the perfect gift and 2) the environmental impact (which we don't preach about, each to their own, other family members still buy for each other).

DH and I also don't buy for each other - money is all shared so we just buy stuff for ourselves whenever we want something.

Mine just don't get top of the range or they got second hand or I go halves with my parents.

I've got my dd ear buds from Tesco for £15 they look like apple ones and work just as well. Luckily they've got good friends who don't judge and they always seem happy with their presents because they see how hard I work and know things are expensive.

Honestly this thread seems like a whole different world to the one I live in, especially things like £200 scooters for little kids. I didn't even know there was such a thing, mine got £40 Disney character ones from Argos. I'm sure if I won the lottery I'd probably go crazy on presents for them though.

Sorry I meant to quote whoever asked how people with smaller budgets got their kids PCs, phones etc.

DH and I are very comfortable financially, but we have a whole pack of kids and I grew up not doing extravagent gifting for Christmas so I've never wanted to go down that road. You're right, Christmas is still Christmas without piles of expensive gifts.

It's obviously different for our littles, but with the middles and teens who can understand prices we ask for them to make a list grouped by price range. So we ask them to give us one or two big-ticket items (set a specific range for what you mean by big ticket), some mediums, some smallish, and some ideas for bits & bobs. This sounds complex but in reality ends up being "Hey Benny, can you add some more things to your wishlist that are under £20?" by secondary age, and before that we tended to do some guided fishing by asking "do you think you might like X for Christmas?" They absolutely do not get everything they ask for and know that - they'll get one of their big items and a mixture of mediums and smalls to fit the budget we've set for each DC. That also means extended family can draw from the medium & small ideas. If there are high-priority items they tell us about we of course take that into consideration - we'll ask "would you rather have X or Y?" and the older ones will sometimes say things like "I know X is a lot, but I'd be happy if that's the only thing you and dad got me." We also sometimes discuss whether a used version of something (like a bike or game console) would be a welcome option.

We pair this by (outside of holidays) having our older DC save up to buy some of their luxury items. They get fairly generous pocket money and are encouraged to work odd jobs for us/neighbors/relatives, and then they use it to "upgrade" the budget we provide. Ex. we have one who wanted rather pricy name-brand trainers that were more than we were willing to spend, so we told him what our contribution would be to a new pair of trainers and he got to decide if saving up the difference was worth it. We do also seem to buy more things mid-year as household purchases (rather than them belonging to a specific child) than other families, so we have family ipads the DC can use and a family game console. The upside of this is it's easier to set limits/rules around those items because they aren't a DC's special possession.

My absolute best tip for anyone juggling wish lists and suggestions for various family members and tracking who has bought what for who is the (free) Giftster app. We got both sides of our family onto it years ago and it's made that process so much simpler and less stressful.

Quite a lot this year on our teenagers, probably around £300 each. But they are getting a lot of useful stuff - clothes NF duffel bags for holidays etc.

Those with littlies can spend less but its all fun stuff like toys etc. They wouldn't get clothes as presents.

We set a budget £150 each this year, which after totalling it up I appear to have stuck to, if not slightly under. I haven't done their stockings yet though, so that will be another £20 each. Mine are 25, 26 & 27.