I know its REALLY early but...

MWOLFORD

I just realized that our baby will be 3 months old around christmas time and my husband has 14 other nieces and newphews we buy gifts for. I dont want to short them for gifts but money is tight now I cant imagine what it will be when christmas gets here. Kinda freaking out

AliciaSpring

Honestly I start shopping in Oct for x-mas.

MrsGibson07

We stopped buying gifts for everyone and we just do a secrete santa type thing. You could do that with families where everyone will get gifts, but you only buy for one family instead of everyone. That saved us last year, especially since we were trying to sell a house. If you cant do something like that maybe you should purchase one family's kids a game or something they can share. Then you arent buying 14 separate gifts.

MWOLFORD

Thanks ladies!

allowry

For the last 3 year DH have put $50 per paycheck aside just for Christmas.  In our retail store we also have candy machines so what money doesn't go to buy more candy also goes to the Christmas fund.  Any leftover money after Christmas goes to the next year.  Since we started doing this we have managed to stay under budget and we also have the cash if we find stuff early.  If I buy something online the cash pays for groceries.  If you could do $25 per paycheck it is that much of a start.

neesh776

I didn't even think of gift shopping yet..... I have already told the relatives that we're staying home for Christmas this year though. With a 3mo old, I think we will have earned the privilege of having family come to us!

NikiN09

MrsGibson07:

We stopped buying gifts for everyone and we just do a secrete santa type thing. You could do that with families where everyone will get gifts, but you only buy for one family instead of everyone. That saved us last year, especially since we were trying to sell a house. If you cant do something like that maybe you should purchase one family's kids a game or something they can share. Then you arent buying 14 separate gifts.

We do the Secret Santa thing in our family too.  DH's side is huge....6 siblings and assorted s/os and 4 grandkids, assorted cousins...it makes it a lot easier and more cost effective!

sherpa

Woah, 14 kids to buy for is insane.

We don't do gifts. ?Too many?ungrateful?people in DH's family. ?They do the gift exchange thing too and we opt out of it. ?We very secretly buy for the family members that will appreciate their gift (his mom and grandpa) and skip everyone else.

My family is much easier, sometimes we do them and sometimes we don't. ?It's just the adults though, we don't have any kids over 3 yet.

krcdm

I would just agree with your husband's siblings that you aren't going to exchange gifts this year.  Or buy them family gifts like a game or a video or something.

Genevieved

The other thing you can do is if there are a few kids in one family you can get the whole family a game (eg. clue)  they can play together I has some aunts that did this.

jk09uhed89

with dh getting that horrible pay cut this year our families are just going to have to undstand that we are not in a position to be buying gifts for anyone this cristmas. too bad MIL's bday is on the 24th of dec...