Free Christmas Budget calculator with clear step-by-step results.
Christmas overspend usually comes from budgeting gifts and forgetting everything else. This adds food, decorations and travel to the gift list, then converts the total into a weekly savings figure for the weeks you have left so it can be funded from income rather than credit.
Total budget
Total = people x average gift + food + decorations + travel
Weekly saving
Weekly = total / weeks remaining
It reveals how much of the season is non-gift spending - typically 30-45%. If gifts are 90% of your budget, the other costs are probably missing.
Either cut the list, lower the average gift, or accept the gap now rather than in January. The weekly figure makes the trade-off visible while there is still time.