Family Gift Giving on a Budget

When you’re on a budget it can be difficult to make room for gift giving. That difficulty can be amplified when you have a family budget and have to take into account each person who may be buying gifts. This is the hardest during the holidays but you can even feel the strain on birthdays and other occasions throughout the year.  On the bright side there are a few ways that you can help lower gift costs for your whole family.

Set a spending limit. Make an agreement with each member of your family on how much you are allowed to spend on gifts. This may come in most useful on major holidays where members are buying presents for everyone, but you can also make it a yearlong agreement. For example, you can set a limit of $20 per person for birthday gifts. It’s really up to you how you want to go about setting gift spending limits and even if you want to limit this kind of budgeting only to certain events.

Have a gift giving lottery. If you have a big family it might be easiest to set up a sort of lottery for major holidays. Have each person draw the name of another family member. That person is then the only one in charge of buying a gift for the name they drew. This cuts back on the amount of people you have to buy gifts for. Do what you feel is best to make it work for your family. Many families have only the children draw names for gift giving among themselves.

Give homemade gifts. Sometimes the most economical gift giving solution is just to make them yourself. Often these are some of the best gifts to receive as well. They require you to put in some thought and some personal touches which make them mean more to you and the recipient. The materials you have to buy generally end up being cheaper than giving a bunch of store bought gifts.

Buy family gifts rather than gifts for individuals. During major holidays, such as Christmas, when everyone is giving and receiving gifts this can be a great way to save some money and create fun for the entire family. Consider things such as games, which the whole family can use together and enjoy. This means you only have to buy one thing to have a perfect present for everyone.