Per-Kid Gift Budget Calculator
Enter your total budget and your kids. Get a fair per-child target — plus a suggested want/need/wear/read breakdown for each. Free, instant, nothing stored.
Your kids
$150 per kid (2 kids from a $300 budget).
Equal budgets, decided once — the rule that ends per-purchase fairness math.
Suggested 4-gift-rule breakdown per kid
Want, need, wear, read — weighted so the “want” gift is the star.
Kid 1 — $150
- Something they want $75
- Something they need $30
- Something to wear $22.50
- Something to read $22.50
Kid 2 — $150
- Something they want $75
- Something they need $30
- Something to wear $22.50
- Something to read $22.50
How to set a fair per-kid gift budget
1. Start from the family total, not the wishlists. Decide what the occasion can cost overall, then divide. Working the other direction — adding up what each kid wants — is how one child's expensive taste quietly becomes a 3x spending gap.
2. Default to an equal split. Equal budgets per child is the rule most families land on, because it makes fairness a once-a-year decision instead of a per-purchase negotiation. Use custom amounts only for named exceptions — a milestone birthday, a first laptop — and tell the kids the reason.
3. Watch the count as well as the dollars. Under about age eight, kids measure fairness in boxes, not receipts. The 4-gift-rule breakdown above keeps counts identical across kids automatically.
4. Track against the number as you buy. A budget you set in October only survives if you can see the running total per child in November. That is the part a calculator can't do for you — and the part GiftSnitch's fairness dashboard does automatically.
Frequently asked questions
Budgets are the easy part. Tracking is the win.
GiftSnitch keeps a running fairness dashboard per child — spending and gift counts side by side — tracks every gift from idea to given, and lets relatives claim from one shared link without creating an account. Your budget targets, actually enforced.
Try GiftSnitch FreeFree for families. No credit card required.