Money Mindful Moms

This one’s for my nosey friends out there.  Do you ever see someone post pictures of their Christmas tree loaded with presents under it and think “Holy cow how much money did they spend?”  Me too!  And while our tree isn’t anywhere near loaded with presents, I thought I might break down what we spent this year.

Spouse Gifts

Let’s start with the easiest one’s first, Abe and I.  We’re not buying each other any gifts this year so $0 spent! To be honest we never really buy each other gifts for Christmas.  We’ve never really been in a place financially where we felt we could justify the expense and since neither of us have a love language of gifts it’s an easy place to cut for our Christmas budget.

Total: $0

Neighbor Gifts

We’re going to keep it simple this year and make Christmas Crack for the neighbors.  If you haven’t tried this yet, plan to make it and eat the whole pan yourself so budget for 2 servings.  It is that addicting!  We haven’t bought the supplies yet but I’m estimating around $20 for everything.  I’m also planning on giving this to my aunts and uncles that I’ll be seeing on Christmas Eve.

Total: $20

Teacher Gifts

For this one I spend a little more than I normally would because I give them Mary Kay gift sets.  I get them at wholesale plus it’s a tax write off for me so I can give a little more than I would be able to if I were buying gift cards.  Between all the teachers at both schools I’m giving

5 mini brush sets ($12.50 each)

1 full size brush set ($27.50)

1 satin lips set ($11)

Total: $101

Family Gifts

We’re staying local this year so we won’t be seeing my husband’s family which makes me sad.  I’m hoping to visit sometime in the next couple of months and we will probably celebrate then.  That being said, I’m holding off on getting any gifts for that side of the family until we visit so I can space out my budget.

For my immediate family, which we will be seeing on Christmas Eve this year, I wanted to do something other than a gift card.  We don’t have a huge budget but I wanted to get them something.  I was searching etsy on Cyber Monday and found a deal on these return address stamps.  Both my sister and her husband, and my parents moved to new houses within the last year and a half so I thought this might be a nice gift.  I got them the stamp plus one refill ink for it.  I’ll probably also make them some Christmas crack, because everyone deserves some of that in their life.

After the discount, with tax and shipping it came to $22 each.

Total: $44

Kids

This is obviously where the majority of my budget went but we were still pretty tight with it.  I’m pretty dang proud of how much bang we got for our buck. Here’s the break down:

Parker (my bestie’s kid aka my niece)- She’s still pretty little so I could have wrapped up an apple and she would have loved it.  I found a book at the book fair that reminded me of her so I scooped that up and also got her some play doh because, what 2 year old doesn’t love play doh?  Total spent on Parker: $6

Evan– He was hard to shop for this year.  The last thing he needs is more dinosaur stuff but that’s what he loves so it’s hard to avoid.  But here’s what he ended up with:

Stocking: dinosaur excavation kit (target dollar spot) $1, mini lego set (target dollar spot) $3, star wars battery operated tooth brush (target) $4.50.

Gifts: I managed to scoop up a used train table from our neighborhood garage sale facebook group for $5.  Just wiped it down and it’s good to go! Then a friend of ours who was moving gave us a bunch of the stuff that goes on top of the train table for free.  Lots of tracks, mountains, bridges, etc.  So that is going to be our big gift and we only spent $5! (#momwin) I also got him a big dinosaur encyclopedia book from the book fair ($20), a dinosaur puzzle (home goods) $8 and a toy train (home goods) $8

Total spent on Evan: $49.50

Farrah– Thankfully we’ve avoided her asking for any of the most popular, hardest to find gifts.  I can’t wrap my brain around scouring the city looking for a needle in a haystack so thank you sweet baby Jesus for sparing us this year. We opted for a few things she needs, and a few things we thought she’d like.

Stocking: Jump rope (The Dollar Tree) $1, mini lego set (target dollar spot) $3, star wars battery operated tooth brush (target) $4.50

Gifts: Our friend’s daughter was selling this Our Generation horse stable that she barely used for $40.  On target’s website it’s $80 so we saved ourselves from paying full price or even beating the sale price at it’s lowest. 

Since we got her the stable, we bought the horse brand new when it was on the best sale I could find for $21.  She will use these with her American Girl dolls so this is her big gift from us this year.  I also got her a gel pen book from the book fair for $5, a set of 2 books that came with a necklace from the book fair for $5, some socks and underwear from target for $15, a kid’s cooking set for $20 (costco), and a sign for her to decorate and put up in her room for $8 (home goods).

Total spent for Farrah: $122.50

Total spent on the kids: $178

Grand total spent for Christmas 2017: $343

We will still have some more to shop for before we visit our family in Southern California in the next couple of months but considering how many people we shopped for and how much we got I’m pretty happy with our number.

What about you?  Did you stay on budget this year?  My theme for this year was “Memories over things” and I think we accomplished that.  Cheers to lots of memories made in 2017!

<3 Krista