Christmas Spending

Ho Ho Ho

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Seriously I love Christmas. This past weekend we put up our tree and watched Christmas Vacation. It’s time to get into the mood! Home Alone, Elf and Rudolph. My Oh My. Friday we get to bust out the elf on the shelf again, good times! When I was a kid it was all about the gifts but now a days it truly is about hanging out with friends and family as well as the smiles on the kids faces. I find even when you go out shopping or to restaurants people are friendlier and there’s just a different feel in the air. (maybe the frost)

Christmas Spending

I was just reading a article that the average Canadian will be spending 100 dollars more this year on gifts than last year. Last year was 550$ this year will be 650$. Out of 1000 people surveyed 27% of people will spend more, 53% will spend the same, 15% say they will spend less and 5% are undecided.

They expect the average Canadian will spend $1500 over the holiday season. Roughly 650 on gifts, 680 on travel and 210 on entertainment. Personally the travel number for us will be way lower but I think entertainment will be up.  We tend to go a lot of cousin stuff around Christmas, lunches and movies and other stuff. Me and my wife combined won’t even come close to 3000 though.

Our Christmas

Our son’s 2nd Christmas we decided to spoil him, I think we spent close to 400$ bought him a new power wheels car and some other toys. That power wheels car barely gets used and toys get phased out just as fast as he grows out of his pants. Those days are over. We don’t do that anymore, in fact we make a point to show him kids that don’t have it so good. We will take him to walmart to pick a boys and girls toy that we will buy to donate at the fire hall each year now – Roughly 60 bucks. He generally doesn’t go crazy anymore with the lists. Also we now give him allowance, if he asks for something for Christmas I ask would he buy it with his allowance money, if he says no there’s no chance we are gonna get that!

So we will spend maybe 200$ on our son and like 50 bucks on a gift for both of us. We also need to buy stocking stuffer’s for each other like 25$ each. So our immediate family we will spend 300$

On my side of the family (sisters, dad, stepmom and step bros/sisters, niece and nephew) We draw a name every thanksgiving (adults only) from a hat and we will all buy that person we picked 30$ in stocking stuffers. We also buy our niece and nephew something. Probably around 50 bucks each. So the niece and nephew and our 2 stockings cost us another 160$

Our friends do 2 different party’s her crew and my crew generally we draw names for the kids and buy one of them a 40$ gift. Since we only have our son at the moment, we need to buy only 1 gift per party. We also buy my best friends daughter a gift for around 50 bucks. Bringing these gifts to 130$ Of course there’s the added cost of beers and something for dinner.

My wife has a monster family haha so Christmas is always busy with parties and hangouts. We have been buying 20 dollar gifts for all the kids in the past but they are now bringing in my tradition of drawing a name for a kid. 40 bucks. Sweet! We also buy some gifts for her parents, sisters and godson. Bringing the total on her side lets say 200-250.

Cough Cough – General Mills

Totals

So after writing it all down and doing the math we are looking to spend roughly wow $890. Seems like we are way higher than what the survey averages came up with. But that was the average person so I guess we can cut that in half right? 445$ ok sweet we are under! I bet we will probably go over that number though.. Its easy to impulse buy Christmas shopping. Lucky for us December is a big dividend paying month! Although it will all be reinvested, makes me feel better.

We generally pay cash for everything so we wont have that January hangover, well probably January 1st though! Woot Woot 2018! I knew we spent a bunch of money each Christmas but this might of been the first time writing it down like this. I believe it truly is better to give than receive, it definitely always sucks getting that gift from someone you didn’t give anything to. Unless it’s a Terry’s Chocolate Orange, I’ll always take those. They tend to only be around at xmas…..

How About You?

What do you plan on spending this year? Do you still buy big gifts for your spouse? Did you start your shopping already? I haven’t, well no I bought a drone at half price at a black Friday sale. I guess I have then…..

Cheers!

Rob

Hey I’m Rob, creator of Passive Canadian Income.

In 2011 me and my wife had almost $60,000 in debt and a negative $7,000 Net Worth. Through hard work and financial education we paid all that off. Now we are focusing on increasing our Passive Income Streams to make the money work for us. Feel Free to Follow along the Journey by clicking the Social Media links below or subscribing to get notified of new posts on the sidebar.