How much do you reckon you spend on Christmas, everything included?

[Forgottenmyphone]

All presents, catering, school events, work events, cards, wrapping, charity, advent, pantomimes, Santa visits, Christmas pyjamas, bedding etc…

I have a Christmas Notebook ( yes I know ) this year I got a Fakey-Filo-Fax that I can replace pages and shift them about .
Every year I write in it What I;m Not Doing or Buying
Christmas cake is one thing . No one else eats it and I cannot eat a whole one .
Too many desserts - again , no-one eats them .

It's amazing what you buy out of habit and because the supermarkets throw them in your face .

I will spend around £1400 on food, presents and cards etc. DH probably another£1400 as he gets the drinks and tree. I will probably spend around £100 on outings with groups I am a member of and then our special Christmas meal at the local Michelin Star restaurant will be around a£450. £3350 in total. We are retired and have 2 grown up sons, one with a girlfriend and only a very few relations to buy for. It is a very special time for us and we save all year for it.

Maybe as much as £500 now. It's a bit embarrassing really as I grew up to be really frugal. I wish we could cut it back a bit as there is so much we could do with that money but the kids like Christmas and everything has gone up loads in price. I try and save up a bit over the year to offset it.

Off the top of my head, about £1,200?

That includes presents, a Christmas event out for DD, Christmas food and a cheap hotel for visiting family.

It might be a bit more depending on exactly what we do in December, but I would say that’s probably a good ballpark. I can’t say I’ve ever budgeted for it- I tend to buy presents throughout the year and the Christmas Day out is booked well in advance, so it never really hits out finances all at once so I don’t really notice it!

I save £200 a month in a regular saver purposely for Xmas. We spent almost that amount last year.

Are you not supposed to give the profit to the school from stalls at school xmas fair? 🤔

We used to budget less but it's crept closer to £1.5k over the years.

£900 budget for presents. That includes £150 each for DDs, £100 for DH and I and then parents, siblings, elderly aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews. We have a reasonably large family on both sides so I don't think we can cut that down.

£300 on food. We try not to go crazy and just buy ourselves a few extra treats and a bottle of Baileys but we host a large party every Boxing Day and that does really add up on food and drink, and the cost has increased over the years as supermarkets have put their prices up.

£100 on "entertainment". Panto tickets are £60 for the four of us because we go to the cheaper showings at the end of November or start of January. Then £40 on seeing Father Christmas at a garden centre. We don't do light trails anymore after spending nearly £100 on one a few years ago. We just drive round our local town and villages to look at the Christmas lights.

Maybe £100 on socialising? I have a work Christmas party, DH doesn't go to his and DDs will have a school Christmas fair.

Then £100 on miscellaneous stuff. I tend to buy one new ornament for the tree each year but reuse all of our old ones. We have an artificial tree so that gets used each year and already have fairy lights etc. We don't have Christmas bedding, DDs each have a winter blanket in a Nordic print that gets put on their beds but that is mainly for some extra warmth and they've been reused for years.

I do tend to buy them some new winter pyjamas each year and a Christmas jumper if they've grown out of their old stuff but I buy them from Vinted.

Maybe some extra spending on wrapping paper or gift bags but we try to reuse gift bags we've previously been given, cut up cards to make gift tags etc so not a lot goes on that sort of stuff.

The only thing we really budget for is the presents as that's where the bulk of our spending goes but we don't put anything on credit cards and just try to spread the cost. I've already bought some Christmas presents for example and will get things as and when I see them. We'll also spread out the cost of the food shop by adding one or two items each week to our normal weekly shop and storing them in a cupboard in the garage so the only things to buy in the week before Christmas is all the fresh food.

We've already bought the panto tickets for this year so the cost is covered. Because we want the cheap showings we always buy them early to get the best seats we can, so normally get them in June.

Dependent on the year - several factors come into play. How much disposable income I have monthly that year after all outgoings (I budget month to month and for November and December paydays, most leftover income goes onto Christmas), how much I can withdraw from my ongoing credit union low interest loan, and also what we need.

This year we are moving and I need a new tree and additional decorations as we've had a very tough housing related year, so for minr and my family's wellbeing I want to make this Christmas feel extremely cosy, glowy and lovely. However they got an absolute ton of presents last year, most of which is still in use, so I don't feel I need to get as much this year which will balance that out.

Last year I probably spent about £1200 all in. We only really by for our little family of 5, my mum and my sister.

I imagine we will spend a bit closer to 2k this year, but around £1400 of that would have been put into my CU scheme. So only £300 in November and December from my actual monthly income, which doesn't sting so much.

About £1400 I think. £1200 on gifts, a bit more if you count cards/stamps and wrapping. I bought the kids some pyjamas and a dress/trousers. We did one visit to Santa's grotto but no big trips. A lot on petrol and the cost of visiting multiple families far away.

Last year I spent

£940 gifts
£100 food
£50 alcohol
£250 Warwick castle tickets

I'm expecting this year to be similar. We booked blenheim palace so was about £100 more. But I want to reduce spending on presents and food.

Probably around £3k

I usually go on holiday for 2 weeks so 1k maybe on holiday, gifts and food.

@TheSeventh A 2 week holiday for less than 1k? Where do you go?

Usually self catering/drive to France or Denmark, accomodation can be shockingly cheap if you book at the right time/place.

£1k

That's the budget for everything Christmas related sometimes its slightly over, sometimes slightly under but only by £100 or so.

Each year we try to make it more and more simple and each year we enjoy it more and more!

Budget for DC we aim for £100 each but realistically it's more like £150 and we have 4 children.

Meat hamper from butchers £50 that sees us into the new year

Other food probably around £500 and that's for at least a week hopefully longer.

It's only ever us and the DC on Christmas day we see family other days. Keep it really chilled and simple. Church on Christmas eve, Christmas day is presents in morning, walk on afternoon then meal around 6pm.

Panto £100.

Don't do light trails or anything.

Tree £30 (real one) and we've had the same decorations for at least 20 years!

I save about £1000 through out the year for Christmas we tend to stick to this but occasionally we go over but only by about £100 or so. Because we save for it its great never skint around Christmas.

No, we rent a stall anything we make is kept. There are quite a few businesses that rent stalls, no one is expected to donate their profit.

There school has its own stalls manned by parents/kids/teachers, all money goes directly to the school, plenty of money is spent on these.

I doubt anyone would ever rent stalls if they weren’t making money, as I said lots of businesses rent stalls at the fares. We don’t care about the profit, it’s about my DCs having fun running stalls and spending the money they have earnt on what they want.

I'm so glad my children are grown up!

£100 for each child
£30 for one child's stocking
£20x4 for niece's and nephew's
£50 for my mum
£30 for my sister
£100 for my grandson
£20 for friend
£40x2 friends

Don't buy food and we don't drink.

For the past two years I’ve downloaded a chart that shows weekly amounts to save, between £2 and £49, that give you £1000 saved by Christmas. I’ve found it very useful. We don’t have many people to buy for, just me, DH, adult DD and a few close friends/godchildren. We do probably spend £1000, but I love Christmas and love Christmas food!

As a family of 3 (exH did his own and is v wealthy - I was min wage), I used to save all year and spend about £1000. Now they are adults and living with DPs independently in their own first homes, life is wonderful - we do secret Santa amongst the family at Xmas - £50 limit per gift. (But if I don’t pick them I always gift them about £150 of cash or something else).

I feel like I don’t do much but it’s still about £1500. £200 per child *4 some token gifts adults £100, school fairs and donations, panto, nicer food and drink for a month it all adds up.

£0

It depends if we are hosting and what we’re buying people.
Last Christmas we ate out and it was such a cheap year compared to when we’ve hosted.
We’ve never really done any big Father Christmas visits as they make my toes curl! PIL always pay for the panto for DC.

Probably £700 - we don't go away or buy new decorations etc so it's only really presents and Xmas food we buy. The kids do a tonne of stuff through school as well like a santa trip x