Your holiday gift budget, based on your income
DecidePlan Editorial · Published August 13, 2026
The most-cited 2026 figure for holiday gift spending is right around $1,007 per person, on average. That number is true and also not very useful, because it hides a big gap by income: shoppers earning over $100,000 plan to spend roughly $1,479, while shoppers earning under $50,000 plan to spend about $651 — less than half. Treating $1,007 as "the" holiday budget means either overspending relative to your income or underspending relative to what you can actually afford, depending on which side of the average you're on.
A budget that scales with income instead
Financial planners generally recommend a percentage-of-income approach instead of a flat number: somewhere between 1% and 3% of annual gross income, with 1.5–2% cited most often as a reasonable middle ground. On a $60,000 household income, that's roughly $600–$1,800 total for the season — a wide enough band to fit very different family sizes and gift-giving traditions, but still anchored to what the household actually earns.
| Annual household income | 1.5–2% gift budget |
|---|---|
| $40,000 | $600–$800 |
| $60,000 | $900–$1,200 |
| $90,000 | $1,350–$1,800 |
| $130,000 | $1,950–$2,600 |
These bands are a starting framework from general financial guidance, not a personalized figure — they don't yet account for how many people you're buying for or whether you're also hosting.
What most percentage-of-income rules leave out
- How many people you're actually buying for — a couple with two kids and a couple with a large extended family aren't the same math, even at identical income.
- Whether you're hosting a holiday gathering, which adds a real cost most gift-only budgets don't include.
- Whether travel is part of your holiday plans, since that competes for the same seasonal budget as gifts.
A percentage rule gets you a reasonable total. It doesn't tell you how to split that total across a gift list, a hosted dinner, and a flight home, which is usually the harder budgeting problem once the season actually starts.
Answer a few questions about your income, gift list size, hosting, and travel — get a Comfortable, Sweet Spot, and Stretch holiday budget that covers the whole season, not just gifts.
Use the holiday calculatorThe national average will keep getting quoted every November because it's an easy headline. It was never going to be your number. Start from your income, then work outward to your actual list — that order gets you a budget you can hold to in December, not one you're still adjusting on the 23rd.