Anonymous wrote:Most families in the dmv will spend 1-2% of gross income on holiday gifts, that should be your target.

Please share your link. Lol

I do about 12-15. Clutter isn’t an issue. My kids are young teens now. I spend about $600-$700, including stockings. It’s usually clothing, shoes, skin care, room decor. nothing extravagant, but it adds up. Things aren’t cheap. When they were in elementary school, I usually spent around $250-$350.

Grandparents usually send $100 and we exchange with cousins ($25). So we don’t have a mound of gifts from family.

We set a budget per kid and the number of gifts they get depends on what they want and how much it costs. They are preteens so they understand that they may not have an equal number of gifts to open if one of them wants something really expensive and the other wants a bunch of smaller, cheaper stuff. We don't usually do practical gifts unless they want something that costs more than we'd usually spend on that kind of item (for example, one wants an Alo hoodie and will get that for Christmas where normally I'm not paying that much for a basic sweatshirt).

2-3 each. Works for us.

I like privacy

Anonymous wrote:Most families in the dmv will spend 1-2% of gross income on holiday gifts, that should be your target.

That is insane.

I can’t imagine wanting to spend that much on gifts. 2% would be grotesque.

Anonymous wrote:Shouldn’t this really depend on a family’s financial situation? A 500k/year family shouldn’t spend the same as a 90k family. We give 10-ish gifts, mix of large and small, no practical items, and we spend a budget that makes sense for our family HHI.

Not really. In my extended family I would guess we have HHI ranging from 150K to 700K (and the wealthiest family only has one kid.) We never discussed this but we’ve all given similar style/number of presents. Kids get things like Lego sets, books and art supplies.

The big differences are in vacation budgets. Lower income families might take a random beach week in the outer banks. Higher income family goes to the Bahamas or Hawaii.

I don’t really worry about this. I just get gifts kind of as the spirit moves me. But if I feel like it will be overwhelming I save some for later in the year.

You only get so much time with your kids. Make their Christmas magical!

Anonymous wrote:I hate clutter so I make the kids go through and donate their unwanted toys around birthdays and Christmas. I would prefer to get them fewer, but more expensive gifts, but other family will get them a bunch of small toys that they don't really play with. And blankets. My ILs buy the kids blankets every year, even though we have enough and tell them to stop.

I do the same thing. One thing needs to go out for each thing that comes in.

My kids are teens, and I have managed to transition some of our relatives to either experience gifts, or souped up version of things that they need (e.g. kid actually needs shoes, but convinces Grandpa to give him a gift card to the shoe store that he can add to what I would usually spend and get nicer shoes).

Our kids are young (2, 4) so one bigger gift, 2-3 shared gifts, 1-2 stocking stuffers.

Anonymous wrote:I hate clutter so I make the kids go through and donate their unwanted toys around birthdays and Christmas. I would prefer to get them fewer, but more expensive gifts, but other family will get them a bunch of small toys that they don't really play with. And blankets. My ILs buy the kids blankets every year, even though we have enough and tell them to stop.

My ILs do the same! We each get a cheap blanket from them every year, in the most hideous designs! The kids love them, but even with me getting rid of some, we must have 20 blankets.

Most families in the dmv will spend 1-2% of gross income on holiday gifts, that should be your target.

I hate clutter so I make the kids go through and donate their unwanted toys around birthdays and Christmas. I would prefer to get them fewer, but more expensive gifts, but other family will get them a bunch of small toys that they don't really play with. And blankets. My ILs buy the kids blankets every year, even though we have enough and tell them to stop.