I don’t save for it throughout the year but I know what I’m prepared to spend on people. I have a budget and I’ll stick to it as much as I can. Since I left my permie job and am a poorly-paid temp, I have taken to making edible xmas gifts so that keeps the costs down and people do seem to appreciate it.
Also, I will budget for xmas food/drinks and stick pretty much to my list so that we don’t have way too much food in the house that we’ll never get through before easter.
Not really, we don’t see it as a particularly expensive time of the year. The extra additional expense due to christmas itself is £100 each in presents for both children, £40 for a good turkey, £50 worth of good wine and perhaps £30-40 for a little something for each other.
So maybe £350 all told and as we are pretty frugal people anyway that doesn’t cause a problem.
I confess, I hear stories of husbands and wives buying each other or children lavish gifts and going into debt to do so and it makes my jaw drop. Can’t afford it? don’t spend it.
We don’t keep a household budget so we don’t do one just for Christmas. We do, however, generally try to keep the total expenditure for all nieces & nephews within a few dollars of each other, and similarly try to keep expenditures on our kids’ gifts fairly even, but we don’t establish a fixed pot of money for Christmas and make sure we spend within that limit.
My wife and I agree on a dollar limit for each other; she is pretty good about toeing the line and I routinely, intentionally, go over. Because she’s worth it.
My wife budgets. Then I ignore it. Then she gets frustrated with me and, luckily, it’s a year before it comes up again.
Mind you, by “ignore it” I mean seeing another $20 item I think would look nice under the tree, not spending $3,500 when we budgeted $300.
I don’t really know what “budgeting” means, how strict you have to be about it for it to be considered “budgeting.”
I do keep in mind that during the holidays I need to reduce my own spending on myself and use that money for other people. I don’t give myself hard limits in a ledger or anything though. It’s all mental.
Some years I go overboard and then I budget it in my mind “well last year I got dad a new TV so this year I’m not going to be so generous.”
Does that count as budgeting or do I actually need to be writing things down and setting aside a certain amount of cash each month into a special “account” that I won’t touch until holiday time?
I get a Christmas bonus from work and I try to spend about that amount on Christmas gifts.
I don’t really get anything for my wife and she doesn’t get anything for me.
So, I guess we don’t budget? 
To elaborate, we aren’t really scrooges either. We just don’t give any sort of significance to this time each year.
I am eternally grateful to be a family that doesn’t really go on for gifts. My parents are crazy generous, but it’s not connected to the holidays. And the siblings/grandchildren just don’t exchange gifts. My mom is religious, and dislikes a focus on material things, and my family is also just too large and unwieldy: my mom is one of 12, and had 6. There are so many cousins and grandchildren and great grandchildren and great great grandchildren, and such variation in economic circumstances between us all that any gifts at all are a mess. We just do Christmas as Thanksgiving II.
My son is 2, and I really hope to raise him with the idea that mounds of Christmas presents is more a “TV thing” than a real thing.
If I see something they will like for $20.00 and something I know they will love for $50.00, I spend the $50.00. If other people want to start comparing the monetary value of my presents, that’s their problem.
The only gifts I give are birthday gifts for my grandchildren and that is usually cash.
My sister said she had to give a gift worth a minimum of $500 to her MIL and would get the same size gift from her. If they didn’t she would have a fit. It meant that a lot of the luxuries they got were chosen by others and vice versa. Does that make any sense? Not to me, it doesn’t. Cash seems sterile, but objectively it makes a lot of sense.
I would say we are mindful of what we are spending, but not really budgeting. For our family of three (2 adults/1 teen) we have fallen into the habit of one big family gift (last year it was tickets to see Bruce Springsteen, this year a nice new TV for the family room) and then buying smaller stuff to open under the tree. Books, Magic cards, yarn, brewing supplies, etc. Usually it’s hobby related, sometimes just fun.
We plan ahead for the more expensive item, but don’t spend that much on the Christmas morning items.
My niece and nephew are respectively 7 and 4. They are just not getting a $200 gift from us. When I say budget, too, I mean “within a range”. They have so many toys they can never play with them all, so their gifts are one book and one toy - everyone else is giving them toys, too, so they have a ton of things to open.
One book and one toy are not that expensive!
It is confusing to me because to suddenly spend $200 when I had only anticipated $30 or $40 - well, that’s almost ten times the amount. I don’t write down in a little book exactly “I am going to spend X dollars” but I am very much aware of the range.
In November we have 6 birthdays, including mine - to spend $200 on each of them, even by accident, would be way too much.
As for my husband, a $1000 purchase is something that would need to be discussed ahead of time. I would never spend $1000 without checking with the household and making sure it was something he actually wanted and we had agreed on ahead of time. I don’t even usually spend $500 on my SO, but that’s more because we don’t have kids and thus buy what we want throughout the year.
No, but I have so few people to buy for that it doesn’t matter. I don’t buy it all at once, though. I know what people want and and I buy throughout the year.