Money Matters
Smonet
member
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Christmas gift budget?
First thank you to those that commented on our budget. I'm making some great changes. One of them being a spending freeze for a couple months while I get our shit figured out-except for Christmas gifts, groceries (I'm shopping the ads, using coupons and meal planning!), and gas. For Christmas
I'm trying to set a budget per person, and really scale back.
What do you spend on x-mas gifts on your DH or SO, LO, parents, siblings, nieces/nephews?
What do you gift to help? Daycare providers, teachers, mail carrier, garbage man, cleaning crew? In past years I've given 1 weeks pay to the cleaning crew ($35.00), $25.00 to the mail carrier, $20.00 to the garbage man and last year I gave all 3 of LO's daycare teachers a $50.00 target gift card.
This is what my plan looks like, this is scaled back, but can I scale back more without being inconsiderate or cheap?
Christmas Gift Budget:
Miles-clothes, ikea table and chairs
Sara-
Jared-
Mom-$50.00 (usually $100.00)
Papa-$50.00 (usually $100.00)
Sister-$30.00 (usually $75.00)
Brother/fiance-$30.00 Engagement photo on canvas?
Grandfather-Framed photo-$5.00
Aunt-Framed photo-$5.00
Dice Game-$60.00 (mandatory family game budget)
Total:$230.00
godparents-Framed photo-$10.00
godparents-Framed photo$10.00
FIL-Family Photos $50.00
MIL-Family Photos $50.00
Niece-$15.00
Niece-$15.00
Nephew-$15.00
Nephew-$15.00
Grandma-Framed photo-$5.00
Grandma-Framed photo-$5.00
Grab Bag-$30.00
Grab Bag-$30.00
Total:$230.00
Daycare Teachers:
Melody-$50.00 gift card to Target
Heather-card and treats
Piper-card and treats
Louise-card and treats
Michelle-card and treats
Esther-card and treats
Nicole-card and treats
Linda-card and treats
Total:$50.00 and holiday treats
Cleaning Crew-chocolates or $25.00?
Garbage Man-chocolates or $15.00?
Mail Carrier-chocolates or $25.00?
Total:$65.00
Grand Total:$595.00 plus cards and baked goods
Does it seem like too much? Not enough?
Re: Christmas gift budget?
I am in the middle of budgeting and I am now expert at all, so just take my opinion as just a thought. With the economy the way it is I am sure many people are not expecting much. I will be doing strictly baked goods. I am doing those Christmas jars. A of my friends are just sending out Christmas cards. As long as people know that you thought of them during the Christmas season they will be happy. Then again, I am very cheap. I just have this thing where I need to make sure that my home (family) are good to go before I worry about others. No one else is making sure my family is fine, it is up to me. Okay rant over!
I can tell that you are such a giving person, and want to make sure everyone knows that you appreciate them.
We went through a couple of years ago and completly down sized our buying list. I chatted with family about drawing names for nieces/nephews/cousins. Or just foregoing buying gifts altogether, and they only get gifts from grandparents. Come to find out it was a discussion everyone wanted to have, but nobody would initiate.
Now we buy for each of our parents ($100 each, but will likely do $50 this year), we do not buy for siblings but we made an agreement with each of them that they don't buy for us and we will not buy for them.
For service people (mailman, garbage man, etc) I usually do a plate of holiday cookies. This year I might do fudge in a small container so they don't have to carry it around with them for the rest of the day.
Grab bag (only I do, DH doesn't) the limit is $25.
Altogether we will likely spend about $300. Many people feel the same way about spending so much for Christmas. It has sort of gotten out of hand over the years. Yes, it's nice to get people gifts, but is that really the reason for Christmas? Also, what is wrong with homemade things? Every year I ask for peanut butter balls from my grandma. I don't want any trinket or thing I don't need. The only thing we're going to remember is the time we spent together. Not if they got us the latest ipod or who got what. Those things don't matter. *I'll get off my sopabox now.*
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For Garbage and mail carrier just chocolates? People should understand that sometimes we go through difficult times and have to scale back. It should be the thought that matters, not how much that matters.
Also for day care teacher $50.00 is extremely generous. I have a friend who is a preschool teacher and her gifts from parents are usually in the $10-$25 range
As a former daycare teacher, I'd say you're fine to cut the giftcard to $25. Target or Amazon both work; personally I'd prefer target because it's easier to not have to overspend to use the card that way.
Speaking of Target, I noticed many of your gifts are framed pictures. Watch Target for sales on cute frames.
I like the Christmas cookies idea; I think I'll use that this year for my aunts, uncles, and cousins. Another can't lose $10ish idea that my extended family loves is bottles of wine or craft beer.
On one side of our family, we rotate Christmas gifts. Family A buys for Family B and Family B buys for Family C, etc. We have a dollar amount limit too of $70. This is for the adults. Kids we can by for still, but that's less than $15.
For niece/nephew birthdays, we give cash. Usually $10.
For birthdays for BIL and SIL, DH and me, we put $20 each into a pot and they do the same. We then give the $80 cash secretly to a family we know who is in need.
We are also a family that has decided to draw names for the adult children and spouses ($75 limit). Generally I try to stick to $15-25 for each niece and nephew. Then for my mother I spend 50-100 but just getting her something I know she will like. My SF will get something around $20.
My ILs insist that you buy for everyone in the family and franky I get uncomfortable with what they spend on us. We just cannot afford to reciprocate. I try and beef it up with pictures, or handmade items/ornaments. Our budget last year was well over $900 and we need to bring it closer to $600-700 this year. I didn't see anything glaring in your budget though beyond the daycare. $25 for daycare provider/teachers seems appropriate to me. I also only give a small $5 gift card for coffee to the mail provider and such.
We scaled way down with our Christmas spending about 2 or 3 years ago. We exchange gifts with our siblings, DH and I each just have one sister, and parents. No nieces or nephews for us yet. We spend about $50 per couple.
Instead of exchanging gifts with close friends, we get together for a nice dinner out and enjoy some time together during the crazy Holiday Season.
I didn't read through the others responses. We give only to our respective parents, my sister and my DH's nieces and nephew (there are 4 of them). I'd say max $50/person and $25-30 for the kids. That's it, everyone else gets a card. Nothing for the mail carrier, garbage man, etc. Total of about $350.
We do have a nanny this year for LO and she will be getting one week's pay, which I am told is customary.
I'm inclined to give the garbage man treats, he did t thank me last year and I'm a stickler on etiquette in that sense. I have a new cleaning guy and don't have a strong relationship with him yet, I could probably give a little $ or treats. The mail carrier I will give money but make sure to address it to her name, last year I never got a thank you which leads me to believe a sub kept the money because it wasn't addressed to her name.
My goal is to find items in the above amounts on sale huge so my cost is less. For example I ordered all the neices and nephews Christmas pjs from Carter's last night they were on sale for 10 to 15 dollars and with a coupon I got for another 25% off.
I'm just stuck on my mom and dad. They go huge for us and I work for my dad so he know how much $ I make. I need to get creative to find a wow gift for each of them.
For extended family, we don't see my extended family much and getting together when we do is usually enough since most of us have to travel hours to get there. For her extended family, the adults who want to do drawings then all of the children get drawn. God parents do also give gifts to the child that they are sponsoring. Her other side does the same thing, we have enough Ohio versus PA that everyone draws a name to give a gift.
We don't give to mail person or trash collectors anything. Our city has the large cans that are picked up by automatic systems so the people don't have to leave the truck.
We don't have a person cleaning our house or have our child in childcare so we don't have those expenses.
For our friends, we just get presents for their two children and her parents and them get our son something. This year with both of our families having emergencies that are sucking down our emergency funds we may back down the $20 limit.
Over all, we spend usually around $400 give or take depending on what our gifts cost. We usually spend the most on each other and usually on bigger ticket items that we need. My wife also tries to use gift cards that we may have.
I'm jealous that many of you have mail and garbage people worthy of Christmas gifts. I had to "tip" our garbage people $20 just to DO their flippin' job and pick up old siding that was neatly and appropriately stacked. And they still took a week.
No idea who my mail person is anyway, but they never deliver my packages and instead just (sometimes) notify me with a card I have to go to the post office. Almost had my medication sent back after that last fiasco. The post office is horrific in the entire metro area I live in...have lived in four zip codes in the area.
Sorry to be a grumpy pants, I just couldn't stop laughing at the thought of giving gifts to incompetent people who make life more difficult.
For the immediate family (DH and the kids) we do spend more than it sounds like a lot of people on this board, but that's partially because we don't spend much at other times of the year. DH and I will probably both get clothes, for example, but those may be the only new clothes we buy over the course of the year. When we know there is something we need/want, we just wait until Christmas to get it.
As far as non-family, I have also been thinking through what is appropriate and what we can afford for child care providers and other people who provide much needed services to us. People on this board used to strongly advocate for the rules of thumb you mentioned (1 weeks' worth of daycare expenses, 1 days cost for a cleaner), but it gets tricky when, say, there are a lot of people who take care of your child. In general, I'm not a fan of giving people treats around the holidays because there is always so much of that around, but we do try to give edible items that can be eaten later. For example, we usually can a bunch of apple sauce and give that to people we think would appreciate it.