How much did Christmas cost you?

[Jbrown76]

And how long will it take to pay it off? Or how long will you be skint for?

It'll be Summer before I'm in the clear 😓

Probably just over £1k. The kids' presents cost about £800 (2 older teens). It's ridiculous really.

About 3k including
including travel, food and drink. We were expecting this amount. Dh self employed, so more if we take the 2.5 weeks he'll be off work but again this was always the plan. Wouldn't get into debt and think it was worth every penny.

I also have 22 to buy for, spent approx £1k including a few meals out, Christmas light walk and hosting various evenings.

I save all year and start buying in Sept to spread the cost.

I don't want to think about how much (most of it on food, its so expensive this year) but I don't go into debt for it, I save up and I also buy throughout the year.

Just buy for immediate family and friends' children. Got DD Barbie Dreamhouse on Marketplace (ideal as didn't have to assemble!). We usually budget £300 and save throughout the year for it, spending about £20 per adult and £10 per child other than DD which is £100. We have small families. However we don't host Christmas and if we did I reckon we'd spend about £600. I don't go in to debt for it.

But the extra spent on food does go far as I still haven't done a food shop since two days before Christmas and I've got half a ham sliced up in the freezer for when we feel like eating ham again. Going to do a very small one today to get bread and milk and fruit.

I did about 4k 😭😂
I don't understand how you're all spending so much less.
3 kids; oldest had Dr Martins at £175, a cosplay thing for £250, teen had a tracksuit at £200, an electric scooter at £400, and some trainers at £175, youngest is into horses so had an Equidry coat plus Le Meiux matchy matchy and Schleich and a Go Pro. Then add stockings, DH, 4 neices and nephews, alcohol, parents, ice skating, 3 x Christmas trees, decorations, food, and the rest!

I don't really buy my kids 'designer' (I'm talking the Nike Tech/Trapstar etc) stuff throughout the year though, they get it all at Xmas.

Around 2k , we’ve not used credit cards /overdrafts but we will have to mindful until the next payday of what we spend ,( although have our rainy day funds if required) . My children are getting older and gone are the days of requesting a doll or superhero , it’s now requests for iPads and the like

I hadn’t considered people spent so much on Christmas that they had to spend time afterwards paying it off if I’m honest and it would stress me out. I can’t imagine enjoying it knowing I have debts over it. It was under £450 for presents for the 3 kids, DP and niece and nephew probably another £50 to include what he bought for me. We didn’t buy for anyone else. Food didn’t cost us upfront anything more than a normal weekly shop as we had saved Tesco club card and Asda rewards to buy anything in December and had food vouchers from the school. January will probably be a bit tight as I spent lots of my December pay on it as I’d had no pay for 3 months.

we put aside £100 pw from end of Sept, this gave us £1000 in the Christmas pot, we pretty much spent that. That was all family gifts, children’s gifts plus real tree. Doesn’t include food though as my mum does the dinner.
We had been saving our Asda rewards so used that to top up the weekly food budget for the ‘big shop’.

About £1000 over presents, socialising, food, decorations, and events.

I managed to pay for it all over three months so I haven't used any credit, but I'm going to save up properly each month next time. This is the first time I've really looked at how much we spent so my budget will be more realistic next time.

I've been using YNAB as a budgeting tool as it's really geared towards building sinking funds and not being blindsided by expenses that were foreseeable.

Likewise, I can’t understand how you’re spending so much, but then if you don’t have it and couldn’t pay it back (like we couldn’t) it’s just not an option. Those presents/multiple of those presents are out of our league, my dd had a switch bundle (230 in black Friday sale) plus one extra game which was joint from my dad and us, and a couple of very cheap stocking fillers. So from your list, it would have been one main present and it would have either been shared cost between my dad and us, or as a joint birthday and Xmas present.

Well £175 on trainers and £200 on a tracksuit is completely out of my league. It's easy to see why it cost you so much.

I think it came to around £750 for gifts / cards, this includes Mum & DD birthday. Didn't spend much on food or drinks. I bought some new decorations which came to about £40.
This year I've manage to trim the buying list by x4 adults after discussing with them that theres nothing we need/ want and they agreed the same.

A lot more than I planned...
Teenager around £800 because I spent £640 on an iPhone (which isn't paid off yet)
Five year old - around £200
1.5yr old - around £100

Panto/visits to Santa/cadbury world etc for the little ones including petrol around £300

Total £1400

Next year will be more because we're going to Tenerife the week before Christmas which is self catering so I'll need spending money. Will cut down on presents massively though!!

We just don't spend those sorts of sums of money on gifts which is why we don't spend so much (not hard to understand). Would never dream of paying £175 on a pair of trainers . Technically we could 'afford' it but prefer to buy modest gifts (£100 ish for our DS) and put any 'spare' money in his savings for the future.

Wouldn't dream of getting into debt for Christmas.

Our DS is early 20s now and has never commented that he didn't get extravagant gifts for Christmas ... he is pleased that we could help him towards his first car and will have a contribution towards his first home deposit when appropriate.

I won't give the figure, but I save up monthly through the year in advance. So going into January normally.

A lot! It doesn’t put us into debt though. Luckily we have excess income so just save less than usual over the Christmas period.

It comes to around £400 for all gifts and food (including my gift) its for 2 children, 1 sibling, 2 sets of parents, dh, me and 3 neice/nephews. Plus a couple of aged aunts.
We save nectar points all year for the food so it covers all the additional bits really.

Why did you spend so much??

Around 2k between presents, hosting, new decorations and food. We took it from savings and my husband got a decent bonus so that helped.

Total was about £800 but it came from savings. I wouldn't have spent as much if I didn't already have it.

All in total £0.0p = i dont do christmas.

It's easy. Just don't buy so much.

The second child didn't need an expensive tracksuit AND expensive trainers AND an electric scooter. Any 1 of those would have been more than enough.

DS got about £80 worth of stuff.

We’re not in debt but I suppose we’re in a good financial situation to start with. We need to get more of a handle on what we’re actually spending. I’m going to start with working out what we spent this Christmas.