<prompt> Human: This is something my parents have always done, but I had no idea about it until I got out on my own.Every year they decide how much to spend on each family members birthday and Christmas. Add it all up, divide that number by 12, and thats how much extra they needed to set aside per month. Work that number into your monthly budget. Or however your budget breaks down. Mine is weekly because Im paid weekly. Im sure the amounts changed as they got raises throughout their career, but I would be surprised if it shifted significantly from year to year. This helps stop overspending around the holidays.If a post like this has already been made then I apologize. I was just thinking about it today and thought I would share.  <response>: ThisMy wife and I made this change coming out of 2016 into 2017. We were the only couple in the family giving cheaphomemade gifts and felt terrible about it. We had no choice though because I couldnt justify spending hundreds of dollars we didnt have. Plus we had several medical expenses that had wiped out a major portion of our savings. I decided January 2017 to start saving 50 a month for Christmas and 25 a month for birthdays. It was amazing because all year long my wife would come to me asking about getting gifts for family and I could easily say just take it out of the birthday catagory. There wasnt the stress we had the year prior over it. Plus when we got to christmas it wasnt a big deal to get nice gifts for everyone since we had several hundred saved up. Now for 2018 I just need to learn to cut back on how much I spend on my wife. I ended up spending a third of our budget on her. Luckily I had worked a few odd jobs and was able to easily cover it. 