How much should I spend on each Christmas gift?

Type what you can spend and who you buy for. You get a fair amount for each person, money kept aside for the rest of the season, and what to save each week. Nothing to sign up for. Your numbers stay on this device.

1Your total holiday budget

2Who do you buy for?

Tap + and −. Pick a gift size for each group if the default does not fit.

3Keep some for food, decorations, wrapping and travel

of the budget is kept for everything that is not a gift. A quarter is a good starting point.

4Already saved? (optional)

Keep track while you shop

A budget only works if you check it before each purchase. The Christmas Gift Planner spreadsheet (Excel and Google Sheets, works on a phone) takes these amounts per person and tracks every gift from idea to wrapped, warns you when a package is late and adds up what you saved on deals.

Get the gift planner

Prefer paper? Printable Holiday Gift List & Budget Planner (PDF, $5). Free tips: holiday budget worksheet and countdown.

How the split works

Each group gets a gift size: Biggest (5 shares), Big (3), Medium (2), Small (1) or Token (0.5). The gift money is divided by the total number of shares, so a kid on "Big" gets three times what a coworker on "Small" gets. Amounts are rounded down to whole dollars ($5 steps above $20) and the rounding leftover goes into a buffer for the gift you forgot.