Money Matters
hiketheworld
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.
Annual gift expenses?
Hi everyone! I've been tracking all expenses for the last few months and I was astonished at how much we spend on gifts. Granted the holidays and most family birthdays are included in this time, but in setting our budget for 2014 I was tallying up how much we'd spend on gifts throughout the year- holidays, birthdays, valentines, mothers/fathers day, cupcakes for coworker's birthday, gifts to our secretaries and doormen, weddings, showers, etc and I'm estimating $3500 for 2014, which seems excessive and yet likely less than we spent on gifts in 2013- we don't have any kids.
How much do you spend annually on gifts and what does that include?
Re: Annual gift expenses?
Wow. That seems like quite a bit.
We probably spend roughly $1,000 a year between Christmas, birthdays, Boss' day, weddings, showers, etc. Christmas this year was a little under $400, and I was pleased with that. We had only 2 weddings this year, so it was about $200 in gifts there. H's parents both turned 50 this year, and we spent $200 on dinner for the whole family. Then we also spent $200 on our anniversary dinner to a very nice place. So this year alone hit that $1,000. Next year we're hoping for it to be less, but we're in debt reduction mode.
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We do not buy gifts for my side of the family for birthdays or anniversaries. For Christmas we only have to buy for one family at a time ($70 limit).
For DH's family we buy birthday gifts for his parents (about $60 per gift) and nephews (4) and niece (1) and those gifts are $10 in cash per child or an equivalent gift in that price range. For BIL and SIL we each put $20 in a pot and the $80 total goes to a family in need.
I think for people (FIL, MIL, BIL, SIL, 4 nephews and 1 niece, and $70 to a couple in my family) outside our immediate family, we probably spend around $300 each year.
For me, DH, DS1, DD, DS2 we probably spend $1k+ on gifts and trips (anniversary each year).
We budget $1000 yearly, so yeah, $3500 seems like quite a bit. We don't buy gifts for each other though, I think we're weird like that. And no kids either.