What is your Christmas budget?

[KittyPup]

I’m considering trying to cut back a bit this year as DH thinks I go a bit mad at Christmas. I’m not sure I agree so I’m just gauging what others do.

I put away £250pm all year and everything Christmas related comes out of that 3k. This includes gifts for our 2dc (approx £400 each), gifts for each other and dc in the family, Christmas food shop, Father Christmas trip, Christmas jumpers, any new decorations / wreath making workshop, fresh tree etc. Basically anything Christmas related in December and then the day itself and a few days in between.

Can I ask what your Christmas budget is? Or do you just not track as you’d rather not know?

I haven't thought about it yet but...

Christmas Day food & drink- about £100 for three of us.
Decorations - £0 Last years, unless the tree lights have stopped working
Presents for ds, about £200
Other presents £200
Wrapping, cards & stamps for the oldies £15
Tree £50

This year I've already made chutneys, liqueurs, mincemeat, Christmas pudding. etc. Probably spent about £35. So about £600 in total.

We'll visit friends, go to the local Christmas markets, and chill out.

We don't buy phones, we get them on contract so it's just the monthly fee.
I wouldn't be able to do Christmas on some the people's £100 budget, that was what I set when they were toddlers. I have a span from mid teen down to baby now, and there's no way I could buy my oldest gifts with £100. Maybe a few books, but the Lego sets she does now are multiple £100's.

I only buy for my 19yo son, my cousin and 3 friends (small gifts), plus we will have 2 new babies in the family by Christmas, so will be buying for them. Probably £250 max on presents.

This year is my year to host dinner, so probably another £150 on food and drink, depending on where I get the meat from. I don’t go mad and, other than the actual Christmas meal, I don’t buy special food for the rest of the festive season.

I save £50 a month throughout the year for Christmas and my son’s birthday - anything left over from that and I treat myself to something nice.

@ilovelamp82 I genuinely don't understand these figures. Is it just because people have very young or adult kids? I have a pre teen and a teen. And Christmas is when they get their electronics, whether it be ipad, lap top, games console, phone. None of which would come into anyone's £100/£200 budget.

I have a 17yo ds. He had a Google Pixel two years ago, and a gaming PC for combined birthday & Christmas last year when he traded in his existing PC. His laptop is his dad's old work one. He bought a Switch for himself with accumulated birthday money three years ago.

He has all the electronics he needs for now. This year he'll get a pair of Asics (£65), some decent bike lights (£20), books (£0 - I got some vouchers for doing surveys), maybe another pair of cargo pants or a jacket. Plus the usual chocolate Santa and little fun stuff.

This will be a cheaper year. He'll go to uni next September when it will get scarily expensive.

About £1500 on presents, food, days out and tree/foliage for wreath making...

Never thought about it before as just keep a rough budget in my head but here goes -
Son - £200
Brother, niece, nephew - £150
Friends - £20/£30 each
Boyfriend/Kids - £150
No parents now sadly
Grave flowers - £30
Hosting Xmas Dinner and Tea - £150-£200
Booze - £100 (I bottle of spirit, prosecco, soft drinks, juice)
Cards/Wrap/Xmas crackers - £60

There's always extra bits and bobs.
So looks I do it under £1000. That seems very low compared to some others but I don't feel as if I'm scrimping and saving.

Foliage? Really?

Mine is different every year depending on what the DC want. This year is about 3k as my eldest wants a new gaming pc. And we are also hosting this year so will need to get the food and drinks in.

I don't have a fixed budget. Never have.

Only me & DP here, plus puppy. We don’t really get it other presents ( we’re old and mostly have everything we need )

We buy 1 Christmas treat food each week for 10 weeks up to Christmas.. such as fancy biscuits, tin of chocolates, cheese, alcohol etc, which spreads the cost without really noticing, maybe £75 in total.
Eat well over Christmas with a turkey crown, a ham, cheese, salad on the day, and we buy all the posh food for a Boxing Day buffet tea at DPs very elderly and wobbly parents, probably about £275 - and we leave the uneaten bits with them so they have nice food. We also make up a hamper of meat and chutneys for them as a present, about £100 worth.

I send my son an online Christmas food delivery as his present, all the dinner items and treats, freezer food etc, about £225.

My friend and I exchange token gifts, around £30 - 40.

Total of around £750 approx

I spend around £400 on food/drink (saved with Tesco this year for the first time), Another £300 on the turkey, some beef and other meats from the butcher.
About £300-£400 on gifts and £500 on a pre-Christmas holiday for me and my husband. I'll probably also get some extras for food/drink in the coming weeks.
It sounds quite a lot when I write it down but we were so poor when we were kids that my mum never did lots of stuff (single parent family and not a lot of money!) and when my husband and I first lived together our Christmases were very sparse!
I know I go over the top now, but, I think it's to show the 19-year-old me from the early 1990s that things have got so much better for us now. I love the lead up to Christmas, I love making sure we've got a full fridge, freezer and drinks cupboard, and I love the fact that in January we'll probably still have loads of stuff left to make January and February feel a bit nicer than they used to! Also, we tend to take any left over drinks and treats on holidays/weekends away in the early part of the year!

I’d aim for around £150 per child and £50 for dh, around another £150 for parents, family etc. £200 food, £200 days out. I’d say around £800 all in. I do think £3k is excessive, sorry OP!
Maybe I’ll feel different when the kids are older, they’re both primary age at the moment. I guess some people spend though out the year though and some people go really big at Christmas?!

I try and save £50 a month but keep dipping into it to pay off my overdraft. I have £250 so far. And it's worrying me.

I have bought toys in the sales which 'will do' for various baby nieces and nephews. I am not sending a gift this year to the child of one of DH's friends because he moaned at me last year for not buying something 'off the list'. We are losing 70% of our income from December so it's going to be a very tough time and things will be tight.

Nada unless you count a holiday. We go skiing every year at that time to get away from all the forced merriment. We don't buy each other presents (have everything we need) and have no children.

Xmas day on the slopes is wonderfully quiet. Bliss. Pizza at night probably.

I hate the over-commercialisation of Christmas. We do very little. We’re going to an adult daughter’s for lunch this year, so traditional. Last year we spent it at home just the two of us, plus dogs and cats. We made a lovely veg curry for lunch and enjoyed stolen and mince pies. This was followed by a walk in woodland with the dogs. We had a very small tree to cheer up dark evenings. We spend about £150 on gifts for family and buy each other something we fancy. It may be very inexpensive, or more if there is something particularly wanted. Sometimes we buy something between us that we’d enjoy. By Boxing Day, we’re sick of the whole thing, since it’s pushed down everyone’s throats al la spend, spend, spend, for months. One year, we tried going away to avoid it altogether, but holidays cost so much more then and we found everything was closed.

Just to add - the one thing we don’t do is buy presents for extended family. Although we are well off, my family are not - so if we buy, all we would do is create an expectation that they reciprocate (no matter if we said there’s no need to). We buy for niece and nephew only (I do spoil them a lot…), my parents and that’s all.

£100 for a posh roast
£100 for each of our two children
About £50 extra for the odd decoration or teacher gift

So £250 all in. I really don’t understand why people go mad unless they are wealthy. Over the years I have managed to get myself out of gifting between people who think I like candles or other twatty things.

Honestly, hardly anything compared to some. Single mum(26) of one (6). Granted she hasn’t started asking for expensive things yet. She chooses 5 things to ask Santa for. I’ve spent about £80 on things from me I know she will like and it will get used/played with. I buy for the kids in the family - I’ve spent £50 on the 4 of them. I don’t buy for adults in the family, we do homemade gifts for close family which are probs £20 total max for materials altogether.

This year I have spent more as we are going to butlins for 4 nights 23rd-27th which was £300 including breakfast and dinners, our Xmas dinner and I hardly spend any money on site. However we do usually do butlins in November time instead so I’m obviously not spending the money on that. And this is an extra special treat as this will be the last of it just being us two as I am fostering a baby in January.

Last year we done polar express in Edinburgh which was around £120 but a one time thing.

About 2 - 2.5k on everything. I can afford it, I don’t buy tat and we enjoy our christmasses 🤷🏻‍♀️

£300. 1 DC, presents for her and the kids in my family. That includes tree, day trips and Xmas dinner out. If I don't have it I cut back.

I'm still in favour of Christmas once every 3years, only a very part of that is due to expense.

Completely fascinated and astonished by the extravagance discussed here. We do a secret Santa round for the adults with a £50 price cap, so everyone gets a nice present. And then we spoil the kids. We eat and drink more than we should. That's Christmas. It's one day.

Wow! Thousands spent on Xmas? This is incred. So now we are all adults, as a family we decided we would just get something worth no more than £10 per person. So a book, socks, or club together with a partner or sibling to buy something dearer. The day is about spending time together and eating a nice meal, which probably costs about £150 (free range turkey being the main cost here, the rest is just veg, and rellies bring Xmas puds and wine.) We don’t even buy our son anything as he gets so many prezzies from all the relllies and his adopted local family - there’s only one young kid in the family. He is sometimes exception to the £10 rule, eg he got a scooter from great granny last year. But other toys from charity shops. Birthdays are when a bit of money is spent. So I’d say each year I spend £60 max on Xmas presents. If we want a thing we get it, time spent together is way more precious. If you like your family lol! When our son starts noticing we haven’t bought him a present we will start buying him something but atm he has so many he doesn’t! He’s only 4.

I spend money on greenery/foliage for wreaths, I make a wreath for us and others as gifts for friends and family

We've not religious so don't go overboard. We spend about £50 on the kids main santa present and about the same on stocking bits. We do a panto trip which isn't cheap but we would probably go to something at the theatre anyway. Christmas day we have found the kids just like a simple roast dinner the most with a few extra like pigs in blankets, and we'll make a Christmas pudding so we can set it on fire (I'm very partial to a mince pie so we'll make those from November).

We've also found that doing token presents for family works well. We have an expectation that people don't spend much and it means there is a lot less pressure on the parts of the family who have less money and it generally a bit more fun for opening.

But we don't save things up for Christmas either if the kids need new clothes we buy then rather than dressing these up as presents, similarly with phones and laptops etc. So whilst Christmas isn't a particularly big spending blip, it is evened out a bit more.

Even my dds refurbed iPhone cost €250. I took her shopping on Saturday and we managed to spend €250! That was in sports direct and penneys (primary) she got 2 hoodies, 2 jogger pants (Nike) two fleece jumpers, pjs, bras, period underwear and a few little random bits, my Christmas budget hits €800 per child.