How Much Did You Spend on Christmas (or Other Holiday Gifts)? We Spent Almost $1,000

While looking over Quicken last night, I glanced at our total outlay for Christmas gifts. We had planned to spend $700, but went a "bit" over that -- ending up at $934 when you include everything (presents, cards, postage, etc.) As a percentage of what was budgeted, we were waaaaay over, but a couple hundred bucks isn't that much.

The main gifts we gave this year (to our kids as well as others):

• PlayStation 2 and games
• Gift cards to bookstore
• Books (gave one to each of my co-workers)
• Costco calendars (a big hit again this year)

So, how much did you spend on the holidays? More than you planned or less? And what did you spend it on?

Comments

[Jeremy]

We had only spent about $400 this year, largely in part because the wife and I did not exchange gifts. We wanted to focus on saving money and paying off some additional debt. The bulk of the money spent went to our parents and siblings. The rest was divided up between little gifts spent attending holiday parties with friends and co-workers and such. This was a very low number for us this year as we generally go overboard for the holidays.

[Nick]

I spent way too long looking for the best deal on certain items, but it paid off. Another person might have spent $1,000 on the same gifts we purchased for around $450.

[Eric G.]

Last year i spent $768.95.
This year I wanted to keep in under $600.
The final tally was $587.16. Mainly due to the fact that a lot of the christmas parties did grabbags instead of buying presents for everyone.
Happy New Year Everyone!

[Chris Brooks]

We spent about $1100 this year. We took advantage of some expiring ff miles to get 3 $50 Amazon gift cards... this is not included in the $1100. I was hoping to keep it under $1000 but ended up buying some gifts for friends and coworkers that took me over the top.

[Kaiser S.]

We've been trying to get a grasp on any sort of a budget... the hardest part is finding the right way to track it. Which brings be to my point: I thought you used Mvelopes and not Quicken. Which based on your praises we're going through the Mvelopes trial and it's just not working out so hot. We bank with our Merrill Lynch money market account and it can't seem to grasp that it's not an "investment" account.
Anyways, I guess we can say we went over our christmas budget because we can't seem to come up with one. But I think we spent about 2k.

[FMF]

Actually, for what I've said I use, see these posts:

http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2006/12/another_quicken.html

http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2006/12/another_recomme.html

http://www.freemoneyfinance.com/2006/11/its_budgeting_t.html

[rdub]

I have no idea. I blew a big wad, that's for sure. 2007 is going to be the year I get a handle on my finances. I think I spent between $2500 and 3k. Ain't my wife generous?!?!? I think we got something for everyone we know and their dog. Merry Friggin' Christmas!!!

[mbhunter]

I bought a PS3 on eBay for $25,400.

Just kidding.

I'm not exactly sure either. Probably about $1k. If there's a need/want we just go get it; we don't do it often enough to justify waiting until Christmas. There were some gifts that we gave each other before the holidays. I got my wife a ring and gave it to her early so that I knew whether I needed to return it or not. And we bought new desktops and a LCD monitor when one monitor died and the computers got too painfully slow.

[Clever Dude]

2004 we spent $812. Budgeted ???
2005 we spent $1231. Budgeted $1353
2006 we spent $998. Budgeted $1108

This year, we dropped almost all our friends from our gift list, but raised the budget for family members.

We were able to use rewards programs to get pricey gift cards for free. We also did some regifting (they could use it more than us).

I think next year we might just draw a name out of a hat for my family because my parents, gram and sis are all on tight budgets. We would be able to spend alot more for that one person, and still come in under what we spent this year.