What Is Your Holiday Spending for Gifts and Tips?
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What does your holiday spending for gifts and tips look like this year, readers? Are there special food items you only buy for the holidays (or special wine or liquor)? (And how are you keeping track of it all?) Let's discuss…
Psst… here are all of our tips on holiday business etiquette!
For my $.02…
My 2023 Holiday Spending for Gifts and Tips
For gifts, I don't know why but I roughly have a “$150 minimum” in my mind for parents, siblings, and in-laws. I can go above that if I want to, but in my mind I'm done if I'm somewhere in the $150 range. For the kids it can be tricky, both because we spend willy nilly on them throughout the year, plus both sets of grandparents are extraordinarily generous… so I may be the only mother on the planet who isn't overly concerned with buying gifts for the kids.
(And when I do give them presents, they tend to be kind of abstract — for example, my 12-year-old is getting a budget to redecorate his room as his big present…)
Holiday Spending on Tips
For tips, life is a lot less complicated than it was years ago with a law firm secretary and so forth. I get the major teachers gift cards, and our cleaning professional's gift will be the same amount as one of her regular visits… and a few other people will get a family holiday card with a small gift card inside.
(Here was our last big discussion on holiday tips…)
Special Holiday Food
We don't have a huge outlay on food or drink because, well, my parents are still doing a lot of it, but my mother will often buy filet mignon and lobster for Christmas Eve and a ham for Christmas Day, and they usually have the liquor cabinet well stocked for their guests.
How I Keep Track of Holiday Spending
In terms of how to keep TRACK of it all… well, I'm still perfecting my system. I tend to buy for people starting in October, if not earlier, so keeping track of what I've bought for whom (and where I am in my random $150 scale) can be tricky for me.
This year I started a Word doc that lists each major family member and then (for each member):
General present ideas:
2023 Xmas Gifts:
2023 Stocking Stuffers:
2023 Birthday:
So, hopefully I can keep track of what I've got on tap for this holiday season, as well as keep a running list of what I've gotten them in previous years, both to generate new ideas and make sure I don't buy things I've already given them.
(We'll see, of course… I actually started the Word doc in 2021 and then totally forgot about it…)
Readers, how about you — what does your holiday spending for gifts and tips look like this year?
Stock photo via Stencil.
We spend a lot at Christmas (my husband likes to buy me very expensive gifts and charge it to the joint card) so I’ve just succumbed to the inevitable and I put $750/month into a “Christmas” savings account all year long, so it’s there when I need it. Part of the expense is traveling to spend a few days with my daughter out of state, but we generally have enough credit card points to pay for the airfare and hotel, so that is a big help. At this point the gift list is pretty small — each other, my daughter, tips for the house cleaner and Hubby’s assistant, small gifts for a couple of other people.
As far as keeping track, I stash stuff in my Woman Cave, although at the moment I think one gift I got for Hubby is MIA.
Oh, and we spend several hundred dollars on Christmas cards and postage. And we spend on entertaining during the holidays (having a dinner party tonight, in fact!).
Do you have any advice for cultivating such a large and active social circle? I feel like I have lost touch with so many friends from the past after leaving social media.
Most of our friends are from our Rotary Club and other community/volunteer organizations. Also we’ve made hood friends at the gym/cycling club.
You spend over $10K on Christmas every year?!?!? You do you and I’m sure you can afford it. It’s just mind blowing to me.
Senior Attorney and had husband are affluent and well-provided-for in retirement. If I had it like that, I would do exactly the same thing she does.
I do not keep track of my holiday spending but it’s safe to say my spending is more for me gifts than anyone else (there are three people to buy gifts for in my family and one if those just wants/needs money so that’s what I do). The two others have everything they want and need and I have been trying to stop adult gift giving for years to no avail.
Anywho, tips – house cleaners get the cost of a visit tacked on to their regular pre holiday clean, my regular massage therapist got a 60% tip last time I went (they work for a med spa not themselves), and my hair stylist gets a 40% tip even though she is now the salon owner (been going for 15 years or so). I didn’t add any extra tip at my last Botox appt bc I see her twice a year (shrug). I don’t tip my lawn mowing teen at the holidays bc he has been done for months. I don’t have a regular mail carrier. So that’s really it?
In a LCOL area with comparative salaries, so I spend less than other people do. About $100 for my parents, $150 for my husband, and we jointly spend $150-$200 for our toddler. I spend about the same on Angel Tree presents (I adopt a child every year). My in-laws don’t really do presents for adults, so it’s just for the kids. I have a few friends whom I buy presents for, usually $50 or so.
I assume we will spend more on our kiddo when he gets older. We also tend to do things year-round that don’t get wrapped up into Christmas spending: weekend trips away, water parks for my son, random treats for the family. We also don’t really do stuff that he needs as a Christmas present, so that $200 is all fun stuff (doesn’t include clothes, sneakers, coats, etc.).
We do Hanukkah so the traditions are a little different, and in our families at least the holiday is really just for kids. Husband and I have never exchanged gifts (which suits me fine) and we don’t exchange gifts with any other adults in our families. In a typical year, we probably spend $100-200 on our kid, although this year her big Hanukkah gift (American Girl doll) was free to us since it was mine from childhood, so we probably only spent around $50 or $60. I spend ~$100 total on gifts for my two BFF’s four kids (and they send my kid things too). For teachers, this year we did $25 to the classroom teacher and $5 each to a bunch of aftercare staff members. We spent more on teachers in the daycare years. We tip our cleaning service the cost of one cleaning, but don’t otherwise do special tips at the holidays. We both work in higher ed and don’t have assistants and don’t receive gifts from our bosses, which is fine with me.
Mine is pretty minimal. I buy gifts for my parents, my one brother, my one cousin (but not the other 8), and my one set of aunt and uncle (but not the other 5). I spend $50-$75 for my parents and brother and $25-$50 for my aunt, uncle and cousin. I don’t exchange gifts with friends, but I do a secret Santa exchange with two groups of friends. The budget for both is $30. I typically buy gifts online and ship them to my parents’ house. I usually buy online on Black Friday / Cyber Monday and am always searching for deals. When my grandparents were alive I also gave them gifts.
I used to host a house party / Christmas party but I don’t anymore because usually everyone has so much going on. That would be about $100 for a few cases of beer and a few appetizers. I definitely go to more happy hours and other gatherings during December, but to be honest I go to a lot of happy hours year round so it’s not a noticeable difference.
I live ~30 minutes from my parents and my extended family (I live in the city, they live in the suburbs). My travel costs are virtually nothing ($12 round trip train ticket). If my parents are hosting Christmas, I’ll help with some cooking but my parents provided the ingredients.
As for tips, I do a $10 gift card for my mailman but that’s it. I don’t really use services that would lend to tipping – I don’t have kids or pets, I don’t have a cleaning service or lawn service, and my apartment is in a 4 unit building so no doorman or anything. I have a typical stylist that I adore, but I only get my hair cut 3-4 times a year and it’s not typically around the holidays. Nails and massages are about as frequent as haircuts, but I always see different people.
errr, a couple thousand? Never really counted it up before… Holiday tips are about $400 total (cleaner, mail, UPS, trash, recycling, hair), about $400 for each set of parents, $150 for work-related gifts, $200 for holiday cards and postage, and then we splurge a bit on each other with higher-end wish list items.
I love giving people gifts, and my husband struggles with it, so I willingly do the bulk of the work. We each have 2 siblings and give gifts to them, their partners, and their kids. We also give gifts to my father and his wife, and to a special aunt who helped us out when my FIL passed away. All in, it’s around $3K. We may or may not give things to each other, but leaning towards “not” this year. We tip our building super $100.
I think we’ll be around $3K-ish when all is said and done. I spend a lot on food and baking ingredients, $500+, another $200+ on liquor and mixers, and we have 10 people we give gifts to, plus each other. I also spend about $150 adding to our decorations and ornaments.
We don’t have anyone to tip, though, because we don’t use most of those kinds of services at all, and the ones we do use are not very frequent and we tip at the time.
About $200 for DH’s and my parents (so $400 total), another $60 each for his sister and my two closest friends. And then about $500 total for socks, shampoo, and new watches for the two of us. Oh, and I suppose $120 in various cookies, candy, and holiday treats for the house bought as part of the normal grocery purchases and $50 in cards from Barnes & Noble. There’s nobody to give a holiday tip to. All in it’s probably in the range of $1,250 – $1,500 spread over two months so it really isn’t too bad.
My best holiday hack is to save up all of my cash rewards points on one of my credit cards during the year, and use those to buy gifts for office parties, my parents, and friends.