Want a really cheap christmas

sockospice

My OH and I buy each other five gifts, each must cost a pound. Manchester has loads of pound shops and it's real fun to find the most wacky or useful gift. We've been doing it for a few years now and have got friends and family doing it too.

Spendless

ashmit wrote:

OK - there are some great ideas on here - but please please has anyone got any suggestions on how to bring my husband under control??? Last Christmas we agreed to keep it to under £50 - now it was our first married Christmas and so it may be understandable but we both went over. But I only went over by a reasonable amount. He spent over £400 on me! Now I don't want to sound ungrateful, because I loved 'em all, but... we decided that it was our first married Christmas and we wouldn't do it again. But every time I talk about Christmas and a £50 limit, he gets a gleam in his eye and says 'yep, that's fine' in that totally insincere way that means he doesn't intend to stick to it for a minute.

Now, he can afford it (kinda); he spends very little really generally and most spending goes through me, for various reasons (basically cause he doesn't do the internet so I can find much cheaper deals for CDs etc). And I know that with me being 'head of the household' effectively (I deal with all our finances etc and most things are in my name - I'd like to change this but small steps...!) he gets a kick out of treating me (especially as I don't often treat myself) but... seriously? I'd rather he spent £20 on me and we had £380 to put towards paying our debt off.

Anyone got any pointers, cause I'm stuck

I replied to yourself in an earlier post elsewhere about us losing our 1st baby. This happened 2 months before christmas and i was in no fit state afterwards to work. We both had our own house and only OH was working, so 1 job supporting 2 mortgages. Christmas was approaching, we already had most of family pressies, due to me shopping all year round but were stuck for each other. We came up with a challenge to just spend x on as many things possible. I can't remember how much it was but definately it would have not been over £20. So I bought things for hubby like a small travel shoe care kit, so he could polish his shoes if he was working away, and several packs of sour sweets, which he loves. I recall there were lots of little items that amounted to our set amount. Several years have gone by and hubby has had promotions and pay rises, i've worked part-time and we only own one house. We are better off nowadays but last hubby said he wanted to do the same this year for xmas pressies just buy bits that can only amount to a set price as he really loved the idea.

skintchick

For friend's kids, I find you can get games and stuff in toy shops and department stores that cost from a tenner up - they are usually well-received, although last year I got a thank you letter that said: "Thank you for the game - I still can't get it to work though." :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

barbie_babe

woolworths are good for games there chad valley ones normally near xmas are buy one get one half price.i find getting pre owned games for the kids playstation a good buy to .

culpepper

When I first met OH,his family just wrote down what they wanted on a bit of paper handed the money to MIL and waited for xmas.It seemed awful and clinical to me.Once we were married and had a mortgage and baby we just couldnt afford to give the set price to MIL so said we would just buy for the nieces and nephews.I dont think we got more than one thankyou in about 5 years of doing this(10 kids in 3 families ) and finally decided to not bother(we insisted ours write thankyou's and always write some ourselves).Now we buy one or 2 presents for our own kids and something for my Sister and BIL.
OH takes a bottle to his dad and one to his sister in a very'well here's the present...thanks..here's yours' sort of way.

furrypig

We have stopped buying presents for lots of people as it gets harder and harder trying to decide what to get adults. We mostly just buy for children, which still amounts to quite a bit but I have been buying things all year and putting them away. I have been through the present cupboard and only have about 3 out of 38 kids presents to buy and a few adult ones!!

I bought some in the Jan sales and carried on after that. I even got some teachers presents in the sale! Most cards and wrapping are reduced and will get the kids to make cards etc this year.

I really like the idea of vouchers and would love it if my friends gave me a babysitting voucher it would be much better than a box of chocs etc etc!!

Looking forward to reading more of your stories and trying to avoid as much last minute stress as poss. going away to NZ (won the holiday c/o comps board here) then having surgery 1st Dec so will be unable to drive for a bit and no lifting etc for weeks! Need to be organised this year!!

Good luck everyone x x x

taplady

MrsB wrote:

Last year for my DH i bought him a goat, some chickens, and some blankets for orphans.

They were the 'gift vouchers' that Oxfam do. You get sent a card to give to the recipient that says;

For Christmas I bought You

A Goat

Then on the inside it says,

But I gave it to someone who needs it more than you do.

DH loved it, and it meant that somebody somewhere really benefitted from his Christmas present.

My mums already bought a goat for her brother!

[Deleted User]

Over 25 years ago my late husband had come home from abroad, and was jobless for the first time in his life,things were really tough and the wolf was prowling around our neighborhood waiting to bang on our door.My husband had been in a very well paid job and the two girls were quite used to having more or less what they wanted.Christmas I could see was going to be a huge headache. Then I though 'this is absurd it's only one day a year in their lives, and nothing too dreadful will happen to us all if they don't get stacks of pressies.So we sat them down and explained that this particular year as things were hard that we would all spend £5.00 each on buying as many small and inexpensive things as we could for each other and wrap them up and have them around the tree as usual on Christmas morning. Well on the big day my sitting room was knee deep in small parcels .The girls had become very inventive and had bought and wrapped so many different things that we seemed to spend half the day unwrapping them. To this day I still have a cake skewer that one of the girls gave me ,I used it last week to make a hole in one of my grandsons conkers that we had been out and collected.
My two little girls are now grown up and have families of their own ,but they have always said how much that Christmas stuck in their minds .Not for what they didn't have ,but for what they did have, a strong feeling of all four of us pulling together at a time when things were hard.Until then we had always tried to keep things from them ,but even now, every year,apart from a 'normal present' i get a little bag of 'special presents' that both of the girls give me ,it is full of things like ,an individual bath cube ,a bar of saop and similar small items that together haven't cost a lot ,but I know how much thought has gone into them. They are two very special Ladies and I love the bnes of them

Murtle

aliasjo - when we were younger and received "a present" ie a bike or something, where it would be the only pressie we would get. Rather then having it under the tree my parents used to do a puzzle for us. One year my sis you got a bike, was given the garage key wrapped up, she had to figure out what to do with it!! We had word clues, where the letters were slipped into an envelope and we had to rearrange them in to a word or sentance and then follow the clue to find the pressie, or the next clue!! We really enjoyed it and it kept us occupied for ages whilst we tried to solve the puzzles.

Hope everyone has a great christmas!

ben500

I had some lean times as a young father but remembered something from my childhood that meant a great deal to me at the time, each year we would be given a brand new straight from the bank shiny penny! along with our other gifts, I simply used to go to the bank pick up a bag of shiny pennies and attach one to each and every gift, even chew bars would be wrapped and each one with a penny attached, the most important thing to my children were always the pennies and they to this day follow the same practice with their children, shiny pennies every kid loves them! and they are so cheap, you can get them for a penny each at the bank.