Every year, in a never ending quest to reduce our consumption, my family and I decide we’re going to limit our spending for X-mas. Hell, my family isn’t even Christian. And yet, every year I set a budget for myself, and never even come close to meeting it.
<sigh>:(
This year I budgeted for $600. It looks like I’m probably going to double that by the time I’m done.
Does this happen to anyone else?
I budget for $200 (since I’m a poor student, but I don’t want to look like the Grinch at Christmas), but I usually go over.
For example, I got my brother 2 Coldplay tickets for Christmas and they were already around $130. And I have another gift for a friend that’s about $70. Hehe oops!
What astounds me though, is where I get this money for these gifts. 
I buy in couples where I can. My list is: my parents, my mom’s parents, my dad’s dad, my mom’s brother, my dad’s brother and his wife, my cousin, the kid, her cousin, her grandparents (#1 bf’s parents), my boyfriends, and God willing if I’m not out of money at the end of that, maybe a friend or two. Also from the same budget, my live-in boyfriend’s gift to me.
The budget? $150.
I’ve gotten a couple of the nice fleece/velour throws and may embroider initials on them (they’re $15 each or less); I have jars to make homemade apple butter and can it; I have spare yarn sitting around and may or may not knit some hats, depending on how good I get in the next week or so (I started knitting last week and am halfway done with a vest, so it also depends on if my vest gets done). And there’s none of that “going over budget twice” shenanigans… we don’t have the cash for it. We might go $160, but that’s as far as we can stretch.
Corrvin
[ I have spare yarn sitting around and may or may not knit some hats, depending on how good I get in the next week or so (I started knitting last week and am halfway done with a vest, so it also depends on if my vest gets done).
Corrvin
[/QUOTE]
Get yourself a Knifty Knitter (the green one makes adult size hats and they are available at any craft store, individually or in sets). Knitting skills are not “really” required, and you can do a hat really quickly. I’ve made dozens with this thing, and i LOVE LOVE LOVE it! Trust me, it’s way easier than knitting with needles, and I actually even love to knit 
colleen
I’ve been trying to get my husband to call his brothers and get them to agree that we don’t need to exchange gifts among us - just cover the kids. Neither of his brothers can afford to be buying crap for us that we don’t need anyway. My sibs and I stopped exchanging years ago, and it’s wonderful!
As for budget, no idea. We’ve gotten something for my mother, my husband’s father, and our daughter. My niece and nephew are getting Target cards, because that’s all they want anyway, I guess. No matter - they never thank me no matter what I send them. So we’ve got to come up with something for his mother and his brother’s son. We’re not getting anything for each other this year. In fact, if FCD had his way, we wouldn’t even put up a tree.
It’s gonna be a grinchy Christmas here.
Budget: 0.
Expenditure: 0
Next problem?
Gifts are for when you want to give, not for when the Christmas Machine tells you to give. My extended family is drowning in stuff & they (& I) don’t need any more. Everybody’s OK on money, so lack of abillity to give isn’t in question.
Give the gift that matters: Act in the Christmas spririt for more than 2 weeks a year. And do it to everybody you contact.
My family has decided on no gifts for adults for years now. And I have one nephew. One nephew with enough toys for 10 kids. Same nephew is really, really tired of his aunt buying him books, “please no more books, I hate books”.
/sigh
This year he gets a Target gift card, my sister will take him and get a video game he didn’t wind up receiving from someone else. I’m out of town and don’t know what his other relatives will buy him.
Gifts - $50.00
Cards/postage $15.00
If I see a book that my husband would like, I’ll get him a book. We’ve been separated 3 years, but I enjoy buying books for people who like to read.
Ah - lovely idea. But when people load you up with gifts, you feel like a bit of a scrooge if you give them nothing. Saying “Well, it looks like you have enough stuff anyhow.” doesn’t really take the edge off either.
Me? Set a budget for Christmas? And actually try to adhere to it? Ha!
Sorry…we just try to stay in the neighborhood of the per capita GDP of, say, Anguilla.
We buy extended family members small gifts, usually in the $50 dollar range. But for the kids and ourselves, well, let’s just say everybody pretty much gets what they want, within reason, of course.
Well, I’d love to post more, but the Christmas Machine beckons. Off to amazon.com!
Is it saying ::waaaaaniiiiiiiiiiitaaaaaaaawaaaaaaaaaaniiiiiiiiiiiiiitaaaaaaaaaawaaaaaaaaaniiiiiiiiiiiiiitaaaaaaaaaa::?
'cus mine is going
::giiiiiiiiiiiiiiingeeeeeeeeergiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiingeeeeeeeeeeeeergiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiingeeeeeeeeeer::
and it’s really starting to piss me off.
We have a strict budget per person, and it goes like this:
Child (neice/nephew/friend’s kid): $20
Non-parental adult (siblings, friends): $35
Parent: $50
Each other: To Be Determined, usually $75 - $150, depending on the year.
We buy for nine children, four adults, and four parents. So, that comes to $520 before we buy for each other. Plus, hubby’s mom’s extended family does a Yankee Trader gift exchange each year, with a limit of $20 per gift, so now we’re up to $580. But, we almost never end up spending $50 on my husband’s dad - he’s damned near impossible to buy for - and sometimes we find something for each kid that’s just perfect, and not quite $20. If we go over with someone, we go under with someone else. Plus, I don’t feel obligated to buy gifts for each of my close friends. If I find something, great! If not, it’s no big deal. We make a helluva lot more money than most of them, so it’s not like there are huge expectations for lavish Christmas exchanges. It’s just that easy.
See, this doesn’t happen to me. If someone wants to give me something, I don’t feel obligated to reciprocate, and if I do, it doesn’t have to be on the same level. I mean, I know my in-laws spend something like $150 per son or daughter-in-law, but I don’t feel like I have to do the same for them. I think we probably spend more on my BIL and his wife than they spend on us, but that’s because they have 3 kids and she’s a SAHM, and we’re DINKs (for the next 21 weeks, at least). My brother is single, so he can blow his cash however he wants. He’ll probably get something from eBay or the Nike outlet from us this year (like every year), and if we ask him for a nifty new toaster oven, we’ll probably get it.
I just got my first paycheck, and so that is my budget for christmas/hannukah shopping. I work at a place where I can get most people stuff, with a nice discount. So, everyone will get basically the same stuff, with slight differences in scent.
As with most years though, I can gurantee I will go over. As I go shopping with other people, i will see something that I have to get for a friend, for the BF, exc. That will blow my budget to smithereens, but Im hoping that I’l work so much that it won’t be a problem!