Average amount of presents you get your child for christmas

[DizMe]

We dealt with the issue of family overdoing it on gifts when my girls were pretty young. I asked my parents to put the $$$$ in a college fund. Also asked extended family to do the same...small gift and $$$ in college fund. One of the best things we ever did.

I love this, and wish our family would have listened. We did request it and my FIL and SIL both complied. It's awesome to build up the college fund and I think that's a wonderful idea. I only wish the rest of the family would have either limited the gifts or gone with the college fund but they continued to escalate the gift giving. It got to the point where the kids had piles of gifts that were so large they didn't even want to open most of them. It makes you think of all the kids that get nothing and that's how we hatched the idea of giving the extras to charity.

 

[BCmomma]

I've already picked up 3 or 4 Christmas gifts since July (shopped when I saw a sale) for our 2 DD's aged 2 and 5. But we don't have a set number of gifts we get them, we just do a $ amount (no more than $200 per child and usually a bit less). Also DD2, her birthday is at the end of November, so I need to spread the money out as it were. It's not fair, I don't combine Christmas and birthday presents but I am more budget conscious since her birthday is exactly one month, one day before Christmas.

As for the distribution, about half their gifts come from Santa and the other half from mom and dad.

 

[sarahk0204]

Our Santa goes for quality, not quantity

Santa brings 1 big gift (unwrapped) + fills the stockings. That's all Santa ever brought for me or DH growing up. Past Santa presents for our kids have included an American Girl Doll or a large Lego set (usually something in price comparable to an AG doll). Santa does like to have the money come out about even.

Presents from Mom & Dad depend on how crazy I get. A couple of years it was 8-10 per kid. Lately it has been closer to 5 or 6.

 

[mom-2greatkids]

For the last couple years our kids (now ages 14 and 12) each get 1 gift. It's a nice gift, like a Google Nexus or Xbox, but they just get one thing. They also know exactly what they are getting. Unfortunately it makes for a boring Christmas morning (I don't even wrap their present), but in the grand scheme they don't need "things".

We believe in experiences, so we take two very nice vacations every year, and the kids are in a lot of expensive activities. Every once in a while I'll ask if they are OK with just one present at Christmas (and no present on their birthday ), and their answer is always YES.