Birthdays and Christmas

[Butterfly212]

Just out of interest how does everyone buy presents for your partners kids do you just go 50/50 on everything and put them from you both. Just curious how other blended families do it 😊

Unsure what you mean fully.

My partner and I live together with our daughter, and my son from previous. We obviously buy them both presents for their birthdays and Christmas.

My partner has a daughter from previous, we buy her Christmas and birthday presents too.

I do think when my dsd was younger, both her mum and my partner tried to do 50/50 with presents but there were a few occasions that the money didn't turn up for her share etc so now to stop any conflict they just buy her presents separately

We save a little each month towards Christmas and then buy all the gifts for everyone which includes DSC his wife and their DC and our two DC together out of what we have saved. So I guess Christmas is a shared effort but usually DH buys his son a birthday gift and we go halves on our own DC gifts

we used to go 50/50 but things turned sour in regards to money so I refused to pay 50/50 and told him he is fully responsible for the cost of his children. I was spending £600 - £750 a year on his kids. I don’t have any children. I have dogs, never asked for half of their costs. A comment was made about not paying half home insurance as he didn’t choose to have a house hence me saying I didn’t choose to have the kids.
i guess whatever works for each couple but they aren’t cheap!

All our money goes into the one pot for all costs. We are married though.

I don’t contribute anything towards my SC gifts. I used to but got absolutely no thanks (from the kids) so stopped.

They have 2 parents who can do that.

We both buy presents from both of us.

We also label them as from both of us. I normally put a few stocking fillers in and he gets the more expensive things as they are obviously his kids and not mine so I am not spending loads, just a few odd bits.

Everything is labelled from us both but he buys theirs and I buy for mine, we don’t share money so we set a budget ( I always go over - don’t tell anyone!)

All our money is joint so it all comes out of one pot. For the respective SC & our joint kids Gifts/school/college/holidays/cars all from us.

Dh never did joint presents with his ex. I use to but got stuck paying for it all and chasing money so stopped that when she was still younger than 10.

We don't share children so I buy for mine, him for his. Works out easier

Yes i get the same and i go 50/50 which is why i wondered what everyone else does.

Yes starting to think i should have done this ive done myself out of pocket

I suggested this as he has more children than me but my DP didnt seem to think that if i didnt pay for it my name shouldn’t be on it which is why im asking what other blended families do.

Gifts come out of the joint account for all

He sounds like a bit of a dick tbh!

We’re married and his daughter only sees her mum one weekend a month if then. We have joint accounts and buy for his daughter my son and our children all equally and both names. It’s very different from most step relationships though, DSS calls her mum mum and me Smar and my son calls him spar, names they come up with when we got married when they were both 5. I know we’re lucky with this relationship

Both our names are on the presents
for our kids me and DH will agree an amount and we both put in 50/50. So if it’s £200, we both put £100 each.
For my Step child, DH will put his £100 in and il buy some token gifts out of my money but both our names go on it still.
essentially our kids get double but that’s because they have 2 parents here and SC has one and gets more presents at her mums.

Me and my partner share 1 child and he has an elder child… he buys everything he wants to without my input and I buy his own child things I know he’ll like that my partner hasn’t got. For our child we still do it separate and it bugs me because I seem to buy the more expensive stuff all the time and he just does a TEMU haul.

I buy them something nice just from me. I think it's nice for them to get something from their dad.

Both names on presents and cards etc. at the start we did separate but we're married, feels a bit odd to be doing different presents.

This is what we do. We have a joint account for the house, but Christmas I shop for all four of our children and he pays for his and I pay for mine, I keep a note of what is spent and they all get pretty much the same spent on them too.

not according to other threads he has one more child than me

ignore above totally unintentional post sorry. water damaged phone!

For birthday my husband tends to spend a lot on his son as he wants him to have designer gear etc which I think is unnecessary and therefore refuse to pay for (we’re similar with clothes for ourselves and our shared DC - not a stepchild thing before anyone says 😂) so I will often buy him something myself and then we say all of the presents are from both of us. For Christmas, I will tend to buy my DSS and husband something together like a shared experience (football stadium tour etc) for just the 2 of them. My husband will still put my name on all of the presents though or I will because it’s me who bloody wraps them 😂