Holidays, Money, and Family—Check Out These Interesting Holiday Spending Stats

Dec 9, 2016 10:00 AM ET

Originally published on Making Sense of Cents.

T. Rowe Price recently released the survey – Parents, Kids, & Money, which surveyed more than 1,000 parents as well as their children between the ages of 8 to 14. This survey revealed that most parents actually want to overextend their money and spending in order to get their children what they want for gifts and holiday presents.

This is shocking, especially so because 25% of the parents surveyed have either taken funds out of their retirement funds or even their emergency funds in order to pay for gifts and other holiday costs.

To me, that just sounds crazy. The holidays should be more about spending quality time with those that you love, not being extremely stressed out because you are spending all of your money on the holidays.

Here are some other interesting results that were found in the T. Rowe Price survey:

  • The average amount spend on a child between the ages of 8-14 was $422 and 34% spend more than $500!

  • 87% of children were encouraged by their parents to give toys or clothing away. This is a statistic that I definitely loved from the survey! The holidays aren’t all about receiving gifts, they are also about being charitable and helping others as well.

  • 83% of millennials save for the holidays year round (that is higher than other generations), but they are also more likely to spend more than what they have even saved.

  • 64% of parents believe that they spend more money on the holidays than they should have. That’s a lot of buyer’s remorse!

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