25. Stick to our budget for Christmas gifts

We did it...I'm pretty sure that all of our Christmas bills have come in (there might be one more, but it's small) and we're under budget. About 10%. I'm not entirely sure of the breakdown, but I might go through and take a look at specifics. Maybe.

A few years ago we decided that we needed a special account just for Christmas. We contribute a set amount to the account every month. It's nice to have a decent sum of cash to spend at Christmas without worrying about where it's coming from. It's also nice to be able to buy gifts in the summer and have the money sitting there ready to be spent.

We use the money in that account for everything - gifts, stamps, postage for parcels, extra or special food for baking or cooking or parties, special events we go to, everything. We didn't actually do any Christmas stuff that cost money this year, but other years we went on the Stanley Park train or to special Christmas performances.

We made some changes to what we did this year and we're going to keep most of them for next year I think. We didn't buy much for J - she got a Raffi DVD from us (but she doesn't know it yet...it didn't arrive in time for Christmas, so I'm holding on to it until we NEED it!) and a book. Santa brought her a few small things and some play dough. And that was it...from us...she certainly received many nice things from everyone else!

We bought each other things that we had each asked for - not anything crazy or big or expensive. My family asked for a list and we tried to put things on the list that we needed or that didn't take up much space. We got some great gifts from them - including tickets to the movies and a circus show (awesome at not taking up space!) and we got an Aquarium membership.

We gave gifts that we bought. We gave gifts that we made. We gave Alex's grandma coupons for meals with us - the idea was that we'd take dinner to her house and have a visit with her and then leave her some containers of leftovers for her fridge/freezer. We sponsored a family (more on that in another post) as a gift for my parents and Alex's parents and some of our friends. We tried to buy gifts that were on lists or that were consumable (food, special soap, gift cards).

And in the end, we stuck to our budget.