Cost of Christmas

[MattMagnolia]

How much will you spend this Christmas? Including gifts, food and drink, decorations and tree, treats like a pantomime or ice skating. Not including holidays away.
We are 2 adults, 2 children and think we spent about £1000 last year.

Kids gifts - £600
Other family gifts - £200
Food and drink - £50 we go to family for Christmas day and boxing day dinner.
Only spent £20 on some new tree decorations this year
Pantomime - £40
Day out with friends - £100
Days out with kids - £100
New clothes- £250
Also planning a food shop for the food bank maybe around £50

No idea.

Well within our means though which is all that matters.

I think despite my desire to spend less, it will end up being about £1000, mainly gifts for extended family. I won’t be buying any decorations.

I don’t know what to do this year I have 4 kids ages 7,6,4,2 and can’t afford to buy them anything 😢 or we would have no money for food/electric, bills and rent

generally about £1300, possibly more if we are hosting more than once.

Around £1500, presents for each other & the 5dc, including some extra bits on the food shop (we just have a normal roast with a couple of extras & dhs home made stuffing), cards, wrapping paper, family presents. We've done it on a lot less without it feeling any less special, but wouldn't want it to go any higher (in terms of spending for the hell of it, obviously cost do increase over time). I want to treat dh this year as I wouldn't have got through the year without him. The children are getting a couple of extra presents this year too, it's our first without my Dad & while nothing will make up for the fact he isn't here we're hoping it will help distract from his absence a little bit.

My budget is £600 as I save £50 per month through the year. This needs to cover all presents I buy for dd (7) dh and parents. Also buy for 2 friends and have 2 more expecting babies at Christmas so will get an outfit / baby thing for them too.

We do not host Christmas day but go to parent's but will spend about £50 on food contribution eg cheese, fizz, desserts.

Also needs to cover 2 x christmas do nights out inc drinks and taxis etc.

Pretty much spent up already to be honest.

About £500. I save for it especially and only really spend on children, my grandparents and food! I really like christmas food...

We'll go to the theater and ice skating, I will buy an enormous christmas tree, £100 on each child, food and it's pretty much gone.

We host on Christmas day, for 15 people! With that and all presents etc I'd say about £800. This is within our means and we dont buy anything on credit. Most food and drink is bought with our Sainsburys nectar points we accumalate through the year.. we have about £120 worth.

Buy my parents and his parents an Xmas card. Maybe a bottle of fizz and some nibbles. That's it :)

I did a spreadsheet last year and it came to almost 2,000 for the season and am trying to get this down as it was shocking. The majority went on hosting so I am being much more specific on what guests bring this year. Fortunately our families are close and reasonable and appreciate that they don't have to host. So I sent a message in August saying that the shopping had got our of hand and dividing up the expense. Response was great and am actually a bit worried about making a profit!!

This year we've put aside 100 a month and are determined not to go over. We don't spend too much on presents. This year we'll spend about £100 per child for 4 children, maybe less on the younger 2, definitely no more. Thankfully the older ones don't need any tech this year.

We do spend a lot on trips out, one of the problems with starting Christmas with 2 children and then having a surprise 2 more. The rest goes on the real tree, the panto, seeing santa at a national trust property and far too many dinners/drinks with friends.

I usually spend about 450, this year that includes going out for dinner on the day. I save all year but even if I was rolling in it I don’t think I’d spend £1000-£2000 on Christmas

Probably about £100- £150 for presents for teenager and toddler and food / drink

We’re budgeting £60 per child, although it will probably go a bit over. That’s two presents each they really want plus a book each and a stocking of little bits. So about £260 on gifts.

Then about £100 on fuel to visit family.

I guess £100 on presents to each other (so £50 each)

£30 on a cinema trip for the whole family (we have vouchers)

£100 on hosting family /friends over Christmas.

£20-30 on Christmas baking/ crafts (for fun activities for the children)

We could spend a lot more but I don’t like buying stuff for the sake of it. And all the best bits about Christmas are free - carol services, decorating the tree, playing games together, school Christmas shoes, going to see

*going to see Christmas lights in the nearby towns

About £2000-£3000 all in, presents, food, days out etc etc.

Planned for and within our means, we don't have credit cards or overdrafts so no long term affect or worry on what is spent.

It would only ever be within our means, some years it has been less.

Quiteva lotnbut then we love Christmas and celebrate it as the second most important day of the year.
Not sure a raw figure is useful as things we buy and give at Christmas are things we’d usually buy anyway. So I’m giving my husband five days in the Lakes with a nice hotel,stover en route. Raw cost sounds a lot for a Christmas present but we’d probably go anyway so it might as well be a present.
Our daughter wants flights to and from Italy for her and/or her boyfriend. We’d probably pay out for these to support her in her degree year abroad anyway but will give them as a gift so we don’t look like soft touches and somhe isn’t embarrassed.
We spend on Boxing Day drinks but as thats ‘our thing’ in terms of villages social life, we reap plenty of equivalent invitations in return and we’d have to take our turn at entertaining anyway.

Probably 250/300 each on the kids

200 each on dh and I

250 family presents

Not a huge amount, we don’t do presents between adults; £100 cash & around £50 worth of small gifts for teenage DS; £20 each to nieces, nephews & God child (total £80), spending the day at my brothers he only wants us to contribute the pudding & wine (£50 ish), hosting a drinks party for local friends £150?, never got into buying new clothes for Christmas , going to free Carol concerts/ Church services (obviously make a donation £20 ?), biggest expense is probably Christmas cards & postage which I genuinely enjoy sending, over 100 cards, we have moved a lot & have friends all over the world. And a few treats for myself . Tree £50, charity donations £100.

We could afford to spend more but I enjoy keeping things fairly simple and avoiding too much materialism

Not really sure tbh, I've practically done my Xmas shopping. Spent about £250 on family and maybe £150-200 on DP. We don't have kids.

As for food and drinks we've been buying bits weekly with our normal shop to spread the cost, maybe spent about £50 on alcohol, then just bought random bits like nibbles, chocolates, peanuts, nice biscuits and a turkey crown which cost £13. It will only be us 2 at Christmas but every year we buy stuff on the run up to Xmas then when we do out main Christmas shop we are in and out in 20-30 mins. We go early morning and use those hand held scanners so we don't have to queue.

I'm not sure exactly but as with overmydeadbody it's within our means so definitely well below £1000!

Well, Dh and I tend to buy experience type gifts and will get each other weekends away, concert tickets, event tickets etc...

So whilst we do spend quite a bit on each other it's actually a good chunk of our 'doing things' for the year ahead that we would find the money for anyway, iyswim.

Then probably about £250 for wider family presents.

Maybe £75 or so on extra food or drink, closer to £200 if we're hosting.

I don’t add it up, but also don’t buy things like decorations and clothes every year. We have loads of decorations and I can’t stand clutter.

Gifts are usually around £200 for both DC and approximately the same for DH.
The food bill comes out to roughly £150

I’ve stopped buying ‘treats’ in advance as I’ve already munched my way through two boxes of my favourite chocolates and other festive snacks .

We are spending around £800 on presents as that also includes son's Boxing Day birthday plus four other close family members birthdays. We buy for loads as I have a massive family. Would love to cut this down.
Food and drink - we go to my Mam's for Christmas Day but we bring the starter and it’s usually something quite indulgent like scallops so that’s about £50 for 12 people. We just get our usual food shop delivered maybe with a few extras so probably £100 for Christmas week.
I haven’t volunteered to hold any Christmas gatherings this year as we tend to host a lot all year round apart from one night where my friends are coming over but they all bring a dish and a bottle so no cost really.

Decorations- we tend to use ours year after year so very minimal cost, maybe £10 on a few bits to pad them out. I don’t send cards. The kids like to send them to other kids in school but I’ve got some leftover from last year. I’ve got wrapping paper too but once that’s gone I’m not buying more as it can’t be recycled. Brown paper is the way forward.

Days out - we’ve only booked and paid for one Santa breakfast at a premier inn and that’s £36 which I thought was pretty good. The rest are at other people’s houses so free. We’ll make use of our NT membership which just costs the usual monthly fee.