How seriously sheltered or off-base was my childhood's American Christmas from the norm?
My parents are from a generation that doesn't buy much on credit. They buy something, and then it's like a new family member. They take very good care of things and even limp questionable household appliances and vehicles along well beyond the efforts of most. Case and point: When after 15 years of loyal service they finally bought a new car, they had it paid off in one year for an interest-free deal.
During my brother's and my teenage years, Christmas was almost always spoken about with the "heads-up" of "It's a small Christmas this year."
That's OK. We enjoyed the holiday with family regardless of the size of the "pile" under the tree. And I never really thought any more about it.
Years later, as I begin establishing my own family's traditions at Christmas, and confront our own budget limitations, I came up with a "comfortable" budget limit for this season. My children are very young still, so I guess money goes farther or I don't really know what other families do...
So what is comfortable? Like Goldilocks, I tried on a few budgets:
Too small - What we "really" could afford w/o using credit? $100/kid (yeah our monthly budget is that tight)
Too big - what I *wish* I could afford: $500+/kid
Our "just right" was around $200/kid and then about that much for each parent.
Now... this gives each kid a "bigger" gift and a couple small items. Like I said, they're young still, so it maybe goes farther. I had to shop around to get that bigger gifts at this price, but it did happen.
Talking idly with a few other moms, they're listing what their kids are getting (one family here)... UGGS, VideoGame System, Bike/Scooter, Barbie Dreamhouse, Designer handbags, iPad, Cellphone, etc, etc.
Am I that out of touch? One of these items easily blows one kid's budget out completely.
How much do "normal" families spend for Christmas? I'm not judging, I just want to know if I'm way out of bounds here...
I know this is bad, but I don't know how much we spend. We don't have a limitless budget, for sure, but I don't know that we set it to a dollar amount. We totally should! I think $200 sounds very fair! I am going to pay closer attention this year.. (Thanks so much for linking your blog up on my Facebook page!)
ReplyDeleteThanks for reading! Hoping that as the years go by we can do more, but I think based upon the pile that came in the mail from my shopping, we turned out quite well. :-)
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