● Money & small business
How much to budget for Christmas: an example $1,700 plan, per person and per month
Most Christmas budgets are gift lists with a number at the bottom. The gifts turn out to be only about half of what the season costs. Here's one example household's plan, line by line, from the sample file of our holiday budget planner. The prices are examples, not averages: use your own.
The plan
- Total budget: $1,700, with $400 already saved and three paychecks to go (October, November, December).
- 13 people on the list, each with their own budget: $875 in total, from $200 for a partner down to $20 for a teacher and a mail carrier.
- 18 gifts, each with a planned price, and the actual price once it's bought. Six are bought so far.
- Everything else in its own category: food and hosting, decorations, cards and postage, travel, wrapping and shipping, charity.
Where the money goes
| Category | Budget | Expected | Left |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gifts (13 people) | $875.00 | $812.38 | $62.62 |
| Food & hosting | $330.00 | $298.20 | $31.80 |
| Travel | $250.00 | $250.00 | $0.00 |
| Decorations | $70.00 | $104.00 | −$34.00 |
| Charity & donations | $60.00 | $70.00 | −$10.00 |
| Cards & postage | $45.00 | $62.10 | −$17.10 |
| Wrapping & shipping | $40.00 | $39.75 | $0.25 |
| Total | $1,670.00 | $1,636.43 | $33.57 |
"Expected" counts each item at its actual price once it's bought, and at the planned price until then. The gifts come to $812.38; everything else comes to $824.05. Half of this Christmas isn't presents. A budget that only lists gifts would be off by about $800 before anyone overspends.
What ran over, and what covered it
Three small categories went over: decorations by $34.00 (a $79 tree against a $75 plan, plus replacement lights), cards and postage by $17.10 (photo cards cost $42.10, not $38) and charity by $10.00 (a toy drive added to the food bank donation). Together that's $61.10 over. None of them is big, and all of them are easy to forget when the budget is only a gift list.
What covered them was the gift list coming in $62.62 under its per-person budgets, and food $31.80 under so far. The whole plan is $1,636.43 against a $1,700 budget, so $63.57 is left. The $30 of the budget that was never assigned to a category helps: it's a small cushion for exactly this.
One person over budget
Per-person budgets catch what a single total doesn't. The partner's budget was $200; the weekend cabin deposit came in at $165 instead of the planned $150, and with $40 of stocking stuffers that's $205. Five dollars isn't a problem, but it's the kind of line that turns into fifty when nobody's looking, and the planner flags it as "Over budget" the moment the actual price goes in. Everyone else is under, and one person (an aunt, $34.50 against $35) is already done.
How much to save each month
The household needs $1,700 by the day (the budget, since expected spending is below it) and has $400. That leaves $1,300 to find in October, November and December: $433.33 a month. Starting three months earlier, in July, the same $1,300 would be $216.67 a month; starting in January, with nothing saved, $1,700 over 12 months is $141.67. The later you start, the more the season leans on one or two paychecks, or on a credit card.
Running your own numbers
- Give every person a budget before you pick gifts. The total of those budgets is your gift budget.
- Put every non-gift cost in its own line: food, travel, decorations, cards, wrapping, shipping, donations. Expect them to be about as large as the gifts.
- Replace planned prices with actual prices as you buy. That's when overruns show up, while there's still time to trim.
- Divide what's still to save by the paychecks left before the holiday, and move that amount on payday.
To try your own figures now, the free Christmas budget calculator does the per-person check and the monthly amount. Every figure above is from the sample file of our holiday budget planner, where every gift, person and category total was recomputed independently. It's an illustrative plan, not survey data.