Survey Shows Parents Will Spend An Average Of $173 Per Kid On Christmas Gifts, & Many Are Using One Simple Tip To Avoid Overspending
Interestingly, it's Gen Z parents who are spending the most.
RichVintage | Getty Images Signature | Canva Pro The holidays are here, and for most of us that means one thing: Spending way too much money at all those Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales — especially if you have a lot of children to buy Christmas presents for!
A new study gives an idea of just how much parents will be shelling out for their kids this year, and it reveals some interesting dynamics about how moms and dads spend their Christmas cash.
The survey found parents will spend an average of $173 per child this Christmas.
The survey was conducted by the long-running parenting website What To Expect, which spoke to 467 moms aged 18-44 who have at least one child under 5 years old.
Holiday spending varies widely from family to family, of course, but based on survey respondents' answers, the average amount this year will be around $173 per child.
But the data becomes a lot less straightforward in some very interesting ways the more that the various differences between families — like how many children they have in total — were taken into account.
The number of kids and their ages have a big impact on holiday spending — but not just in the ways you'd expect.
Obviously, providing a magical Christmas for two or three kids is an entirely different prospect from showering your only child with gifts. Accordingly, What To Expect's respondents reported significant differences based on these factors.
For parents of only one child, for instance, the average spending number increased to $202, while parents of more than one child said they intend to spend an average of 18% less than their only-child-parenting counterparts.
But what's maybe even more interesting is how age impacts spending. Kids ages 1 to 4 get an average of $161 worth of presents — but they may burn with sibling jealousy if there's an infant in the house, too.
What To Expect found that kids under 1 get an average of $168 worth of Christmas loot, which is kind of ridiculous given that they're too young to even remember what they got — or anything, for that matter!
Interestingly, Gen Z plans to spend more on their kids than other age groups despite having lower incomes.
Age made for substantial differences among parents too, however. What To Expect found that while $173 was the average number overall, for Gen Z parents, it's more like $179 per child.
That's nearly $10 more than their millennial counterparts, who average $170, despite Gen Z'ers having pretty substantially lower salaries than their millennial siblings.
MelkiNimages | Getty Images | Canva Pro
Millennial respondents to What To Expect's survey, who are, of course, older and further along in their careers, reported an average salary of $76,747. Gen Z respondents, on the other hand, reported an average salary of $56,021.
Perhaps the difference in Christmas spending can be attributed to Gen Z parents likely having fewer and younger children than millennials, given their age.
Many parents who responded to the survey are also using one helpful tip to keep from overspending this Christmas.
No matter how many kids you have, it is all too easy to spin out of control on spending during the holidays, of course. So What To Expect also shared a helpful method for reining in spending that some of the moms in their community shared.
"Historically, we've caved to the pressure and gone insane trying to buy tons of gifts," one What to Expect mom said on the site. "But we recently decided to implement a new rule of four gifts each."
But these aren't just four random toys or what have you — the mom buys "one thing they want, one thing they need, one thing they wear and one thing they read."
That covers all of the bases and prevents overspending on heaps and heaps of toys that most kids lose interest in by New Year's anyway!
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.