Christmas Expenses

We paid our bills last Sunday, so I won't bother posting our numbers until we have our next money meeting in two weeks. In the meantime, I will explain what we did for Christmas expenses this year.

In the past we use to set a monatary amount per child, but our kids really range in age from 13 to 1. Spending $100-$150 might be easy to to on the 13 year old it is a little silly on the 1 year old.

A dear friend of mine who also has 4 sons said they buy their kids 3 gifts each....one from dad, one from mom, and one from Santa. With no monatary amount necessarily stuck to it. I liked that idea so that is what we went with. Here is what we got the boys and the rough costs.

13- A gigantic nerf gun that he wanted--on sale for $25
A new Go Phone--his was a brick and he wanted a flip phone--$50
Hollister clothing---there stuff is outrageous so this is the only time of the year I will pay for it! I got him 3 t-shirts and a jacket--total was $55.00
Total on him---$130

10-A bigger nerfgun --looks like an automatic weapon $39.00
A smaller 2 pack of nerf guns--$10.00
A new bike---$85.00---His was stolen this year and this is what he wanted more than anything.
total= $134.00

6 yrold--Batman cave--30.00
Batmobile--$20.00
Giant nerf gun -same as big brother--$25.00
Total=$75.00

18 month old---ok don't laugh, but we probably spent in most eyes a ridiculous amount on our youngest--but here is the thing----HE LOVES TO PLAY WITH CARS/TRAINS. Honestly, we do not have many cars....none of the older boys were into them much..we have maybe 10 match box cars in this house right now and a couple of trains. We found this cool table from Step 2---it holds both cars and trains....18 month old spends all his time pushing cars around everywhere so I know he will love it....but it cost $95.00! We then bought two little cars that totaled $10.00 So those are his three gifts= $110

A lot of nerf stuff is coming there way from other relatives as well..my house will be covered in nerf bullets very soon!

Now as for their stockings I have been buying little things from my leftover grocery money for the past 2 months.

I am ashamed to admit how we paid for this Christmas, may it be the last year we have to do this!
We signed up for skip pay at our credit union. OH THE SHAME OF IT! I KNOW! This gave us about $750 in the month of December---we have 3 paychecks this December. So we charged everything and have been sending in the skip payments to the credit card as we get them.

We did pull back alot on what we would normally spend on other relatives. We also have decided not to mail out Christmas cards this year. I refuse to feel guilty about it. We took our family portrait ourselves in front of our fireplace and at the Christmas get togethers we will hand them out. My husband and I are not really exchanging any big gifts..we are giving stocking stuffer gifts to one another bought from our personal allowances (more on that later) So there is the rundown on our expenses for Christmas...what about you?? Did you go overboard?