Christmas 2011 Goals Recap

We did fairly well accomplishing our monetary goals for Christmas.

Goal 1a: Cap spending at $10/recipient for extended family members.

Result:  While we didn’t succeed in capping each individual gift at $10, we did get the average under $10 – $9.65/recipient for Kyle’s extended family (about 15 recipients) and $5.30 for my extended family (one gift for a family).

Goal 1b: Cap spending at $50/recipient for extended family members.

Result: We succeeded in spending less than $50 per recipient for our parents and siblings.  We spent $48.61 on Kyle’s parents together and an average of $39.51 for each of my parents and siblings.  We also made one gift for my father and regifted a free T-shirt we got.

Goal 2: Order as much as possible using Amazon Prime to save on shipping.

Result:  Of the 27 gifts we bought, 22 were from amazon.  Two we asked Kyle’s mom to buy in-store for us to bring to her Christmas celebration, one was from Barnes and Noble for which we had gift cards, and we paid for shipping for one gift from ebay and one directly from a merchant.  We ended up paying $5.82+ for shipping 25 gifts.

Goal 3: Give away 25% of the amount of money we spend on gifts.

Result: In total we spent $368.91 on gifts, so 25% of that is $92.23.  We gave year-end gifts of:

• $10 to WUNC (our local public radio station)
• $5 to This American Life (one of my favorite podcasts)
• $50 to the Christmas Missions Offering at our church (100% given away to local and global missions and ministries)
• $30 to the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina (through a food drive at a local high school to which we contribute each year)

All in all I’m very happy with our spending this year, especially that we saved for it in advance and were able to make those year-end gifts.  It went so much smoother than last year.  We spent less money and were just as satisfied with what we gave and the time we spent so it was far less stressful.

                        2010                            2011

gifts                 $786.07                       $368.91

travel               $716.54                       $67.48

food                 $87.89                         $42.00

giving               $86.00                         $95.00

How did you do with your Christmas goals this year?