Low spend Christmas’s. Our $200 Christmas Budget.
Christmas spending in our families
My family is a tad bit more cautious with their spending which makes Christmas at my house a little bit easier than Christmas at my spouses. Though there are pluses to every group. Currently there are less little kids in my family however we don’t do a gift exchange at my spouses family. In my family my little sister is quite a bit younger than me, so we still exchange gifts between us siblings & spouses, we draw names and each buy for the person you drew. The amount to spend is $25 and it’s not a secret so you can ask for gift ideas. We will do this gift exchange until the my lil sister is a bit older. We only buy Christmas gifts for our godchildren so I only need to get a present for my nephew instead of both of my nephews. In the future the numbers will go up quite a bit I would assume (I have 4 siblings) so godchildren will be very helpful when present buying. However we will do presents for our godchildren until they are 18 so it’s a long time range of Christmas present money in the Christmas budget.
My spouses (S) family does Christmas presents for all nieces and nephews so there are more kids to buy presents for. But we most likely will only buy presents for them until a younger age than 18. We don’t do a gift exchange between S siblings anymore which saves us money in the budget. We do however do a smallish gift exchange between S extended family, about $10 is the gift amount. I try to use gifts that I get as gifts around the holidays/throughout the year that I really don’t need or didn’t really want for this exchange. [They aren’t horrible gifts, I just don’t need them.] This way I don’t have to add any extra money to the Christmas budget for this category and downsizing win it keeps extra things out of my house. In the past we have done gift exchanges at work and I have just used whatever presents I have gotten as the exchange gift for the exchange gift at S family. I didn’t really need the gifts and it saved me money. This year I got most of one of the exchange gifts for free during black Friday shopping and the rest of the present only cost me $2. You just need to keep your eyes out for good deals and be open to what they can be used for.
Our Christmas budget is $200.
We have had the same Christmas budget for just about all the years my S and I have been married. We have had to tweak it every now and then to be able to manage all the presents we need to buy during the Christmas season. But by keeping our budget to the same smallish amount we have been able to manage reasonable Christmas’s. We have never had debt from Christmas purchases which we are very proud of and we don’t plan on ever having any Christmas debt before/after the holidays in our future. We just don’t see how presents are important enough to cause debt. Usually it’s just STUFF and stuff isn’t a need.
By keeping our Christmas budget to $200, we can then break it down further to $100 by us each contributing to the Christmas fund by the beginning of Nov each year. This year my budget has been very tight so I had to earn extra money to manage my $100 dollars. Since $100 is fairly low it didn’t take me too long to be able to come up with the amount I needed with extra non-paycheck money. By having all the Christmas money by Nov I can start buying presents as soon as they go on sale or I find a gift for a good price. Waiting till the last minute doesn’t leave nearly as many options for saving money and staying within the Christmas budget.
A break down of our $200 budget. -We used this budget last year as well and it worked well. We spend $25 on each of our parents for a Christmas present(s). Then we spend $25 each on an exchange gift at my house. Then we use a $50 budget to buy presents for 4 niece/nephews. -This is probably the most challenging category since it averages out to $12.5 each person. But kids presents can be cheap if you put a little planning into it, watch prices, and sales. Last but not least we spend $25 on each other. We enjoy being able to have our own Christmas by sharing gifts with each other around our Christmas tree. There was one year we skipped gifts to each other at Christmas time and we missed it, not the gifts specifically but the celebration of Christmas between the 2 of us. We did cheap/homemade gifts our first year married and that work out nice because then we still had a Christmas for the 2 of us, that year.
Current Budget
$50 parents
$50 gift exchange (at my house)
$25 me
$25 spouse
=$200
Can this work for you?
Can you use a $200 or less Christmas budget? Maybe, maybe not. You probably have different people on your Christmas list and different amounts you need to spend. But you might be able to apply the principle to help you with your spending this Christmas. So what is the principle behind this plan you might ask? Below I have broken it down in 4 steps.
1. Create a plan for your Christmas spending.
We start our plan by listing all the presents/people we have to buy for the Christmas season.
2. Come up with a budget for the gifts you need to buy.
Basically determine how much/how little you can spend on each person on your list to fit in your budget.
2.5 Decide on a total Christmas spending amount and stick to it.
Total the amount of money you plan to spend on each person and adjust the amount per person if you need to, to make the total more reasonable. Once you decide on an amount don’t go over that amount and don’t feel bad if you spend less. There are always extra things that pop up around Christmas and extra money is great for those.
3. Decide how you are going to finance your Christmas fund.
There are lots of different options for funding your Christmas budget. Below I have listed 3 different ways to build your Christmas budget to give you a few options/ideas.
•Budget monthly. Take the total amount [say $200] and divide that by 12 (for the months in a year) and then add that to your regular monthly budget. [If your total amount is $200, your monthly amount would be $17 per month for the year. -If you don’t have a year to save it would be more and depend on how long you had until you needed the money for present buying.]
•Extra money you already have. You might be able to pull the money out of a general or misc. fund you have if there is enough money in it.
•Extra money. Use money from a side job, side hustle, rummage/garage sale, etc..
Personally, I like to keep Christmas money out of my monthly budget so I usually pull from a general or misc. budget fund if there is extra money available, use money from a side job or extra money to reach our Christmas fund.
4. Shop. Shop with specific items or people in mind and don’t be swayed by extra things if it’s not on your present list. Keep in mind your budget per gift/person, sales tax, box/bags, gift wrapping, cards, and postage to you and/or them. Anything you need to purchase for a gift factors into the budget cost, especially if you don’t have a separate fund for wrapping/accessories.
Shopping should be the fun part. Finding gifts for the people that mean the most to you should be fun. -Don’t stress out about the money. When you know how much you have to spend then you just look until you find something they will like that is within the dollar range you set. It can be challenging but some challenges are fun.
Previous years
There was a time when we did a gift exchange at my spouses house as well. When we did that we needed $50 more in our budget for that so there was a year my spouse and I didn’t buy each other Christmas gifts in order to keep our Christmas budget low. We don’t really need gifts from each other but its nice to have our own family Christmas and without presents it doesn’t really work very well. In the future if we have to cut our Christmas money for gifts to each other we will definitely do free homemade gifts or very inexpensive gifts $5 or less. Because it’s nice to be able to share the gift giving joy with each other even if it’s only something simple/small like a pair of socks.
We stopped doing the gift exchange at my S house one year because of tight budgets. I was very happy that year because our Christmas budget went up due to the extra cost of buying gifts for siblings kids. -It really does add up. I have been thankful every year since for the extra room in our Christmas budget. It also saves us time, money, and worry. The more gifts to buy the more pressure to get everything within the budget that the gift receivers will like.
Once our niece/nephews grew to a separate budget category in our Christmas budget we knew we had to pay extra attention to our Christmas spending. It’s easy to get carried away with gifts, especially adorable kids gifts. More kids in the family means more presents to buy. I’m sure one day I will have to extend the budget much farther due to more nieces/nephews. Next year for instance it will go up again, a bit. There will always be an adjustment of some kind because things change. We enjoy getting them Christmas presents because giving to little ones really does spread the Christmas cheer. Giving in general spreads joy and makes the Christmas/Holiday season wonderful.
Below I have broken out two other different Christmas budgets we have had in the past that total $200 dollars as well. I have also included my guess as to what I will use for our budget next year, we will aim to keep it at the same $200 mark as we have in the past. To do this we will probably cut our present fund to each other down to $20 each. Which will still allow about the same presents as this year. The reason I am showing you all 3 of these other budgets is to give you an idea how slight changes can make a difference in the gifts without having to change the total budget amount.
Past Budget 1
parents 50
gift exchange s house 50
gift exchange my house 50
niece/nephews 50
Past Budget 2
parents 50
gift exchange s house 50
gift exchange my house 50
me/spouse 50
Estimated Budget for Next Year
parents 50
gift exchange my house 50
niece/nephews 60
me/spouse 40
I hope this post has helped you to be able to lower your Christmas budget this year. Maybe it has inspired you to start [finally start] a Christmas budget this year so you know how much you’re spending and keep things from spiraling out of your control while you are buying gifts. It is easy to get carried away spending way to much on gifts. There are so many fun things out there to buy and the joy of giving to others is enticing and exciting. However, it is important to remember that sharing and giving don’t have to cost a fortune, just to make someone else or yourself happy. Be conscious of your spending this holiday season, your finances will thank you.
Merry Christmas! Enjoy the Holiday Season!
About the Author
Finding a Happy Medium 