How much will you spend on your children at Christmas?

ziggy2004

Hooray I get to be the tightwad i have allready bought my christmas presents for ds and the new baby and i spend £6 on a jigsaw puzzle for ds (will be 2 then) and £4 on socks with rattles on them for the baby (due in november). Family are getting a maximum of £10 each spend on them but most will receive homemade presents so cost is usually less. I do give presents to a couple of kids of friends but those are usually books and as I have just emptied a couple of woolworths of their megablocks tubes (priced down from £10 to £2.50 and £3.50) There will be some of them going around as well ( ds is getting one for his birtday at the start of december and will get one for the birth of his sibling at the end of november)

I am sure i'll get to spend more money when he can actually ask for things.

X Anne

dlb

Me and hubby do not buy anything for each other, seeing our 4 kids faces is enough for us.

We buget £100 each for their `main pressie` and then about another £75 each on onther gifts.
They get £35 each for birthdays, and do not get anything else throughout the year.
Step-son gets £100, and we make homemade stuff for friends and family.

So total of around £800 for our 4 kids and my step-son.

joannasmum

I have saved about £200 during the year for xmas this year, I bought about half of my present already. DD will be 2 by then will have about £30 spent on her plus a new dress. Everybody else will get between £5-£10 depending on what bargins I can get. What evers left will go into the pot for birthday presents next year (normally bought in Jan sales).

jo1967

Hi! I am new to all of this but wanted to let you know about my xmas savings.
I am an agent for a xmas club which only deals in vouchers. Family & friends (dont cold call etc) save with me over 10 months & in Nov the vouchers are delivered. They cover the main high street stores & supermarkets. Its a great way to save (any amount per week/month) & an instant present for those hard to buy for people! Plus I get paid commision on the total of my order (£6KK this year - order that is!) for basically collecting orders, making monthly payments & distributing vouchers.

I work on about £100 for 11 year old but sons birthday & hubbys are 3 & 4 November - bad planning! However, I too have cut people out - sick of spending time searching out lovely pressies in budget only to receive rubbish back. I know you dont give to receive but come on...!!! My sister now has 3 kids & this year I will spread the same budget over 3 of them.

Christmas should be happy & not a nightmare!!!

dlb

I really dont mind or care if we dont recieve presents back from the people i buy for, i get them gifts because i want to because they are special people in our lives.
It makes me feel good to give them things they will like, but i would never cut them off the list if we didnt recieve anything in return.

Xmas is about giving and spending time with your family and friends (mainly friends in our case).

My FIL+MIL are very much different to me they want to know what you are getting them, and if i do tell them which i won`t be doing this year! They only spend what we have spent on them, It makes me very mad.Not because of what they spend as said before i dont mind if i only recieve a card from them, its just the point of `oh you only spent this so we are only going to get you this!`That makes my annoyed.
They will be recieving a homemade food hamper and a few small items such as books and smellies, and if they dont like it TOUGH, i will have put the time and effort in to making the hamper, and i hope they will see that is worth more than any amount of money i could have spend on a massive pressie.

Sorry moan over!

Xmas here i comeeeeeeeeeeeee

Lillibet_2

For everyone who asked about the laying down a bottle idea for kids, we spend about £15. If getting port then get Vintage, don't get it from a supermarket but go to somewhere like Laithwaites or Majestic & they will be able to help you. Vintage port should cost between £10-£60 a bottle but as it is going to be kept a long time you can get a new vintage rather than a aged one so should be the cheaper end of the scale. We plan to get port for the first 3 years covering Ruby, Tawny & White ports then move onto a good bottle or 2 of wine a year. We also laid down a bottle of whisky last Xmas & will probably add the odd bottle of good brandy here & there.

I am not so sure about which wines are good to lay down, it can all be a bit complicated but I think the gist is sweet dessert wines age well & also wines high in tanin (?) Go to a good off license & they will be happy to advise you, expect to pay £10-30 a bottle. Champange is not a good choice unless you pay +£200 a bottle! Normal stuff only has a shelf life of around 5 years unfortunately (this was my original idea, to get Spud a good stock for his 21st birthday but it won't work so moved onto Port & wine)

Storage wise don't keep it anywhere warm (like the loft) or you will be wasting your money. There are dozens of storage facilities who will charge you an annual fee but a cold garage, shed or similar will be fine, just avoid anywhere warm or near a radiator:rolleyes:

HTH;)

sarah*a

I've been feeling quite smug as I've done most of the pressie shopping already (just our fathers to buy for - and thats always hard)

Have a couple of bits left to get for DD and OH but nothing much.

Have spent about £50 in total.

However, we are lucky because OH gets 'incentive points' from work which we use to buy pressies with (for example - last year we got our 3 nieces personal CD players, my dad a scanner and his dad a putter.) So we are quite lucky that they all look/are decent priced gifts that have cost us nowt.

Also use stuff i've won on comps - PC joystick for example for my brother, FCUK gift set for SiL

when we do buy gifts we spend no more than £10 on anyone except DD.

I want a dishwasher this year tho - so I guess i'd better start being good

:cool:

Doodles

Hi
I spend between £180-£200 on my son (he's 10). I'm finding it difficult as he is getting older actually as they seem to want more 'electronic' presents don't they!

moggins

I don't set a budget. If I did I would scare myself but I do have most of the shopping done by the end of November and whatever is left in December goes on extra presents for the kids. I did go overboard last year as it was DD1's last christmas at home with us and they've all been told not to expect so much this year.

swizzle_2

We spend £25 each for birthday and £80 each at xmas. I have 2 older step daughters and my hubbie wanted to spend so much I would have spent less!

How ever what age is a child no longer a child? Hubbie has told oldest now 18, not to expect £80 at xmas as she is now an adult and xmas is for children. Not sure hoe much he is going to give this year I think £40. She said he was tight!!

Her mum spent over £200 on her last xmas, I think that is too much.

Our kids get the £80, but last year spent £30 on youngest then 3 1/2 and put rest in bank-so he can put it towards an expensive prezzie when he`s older.