The holidays are wonderful and expensive, in roughly that order. According to the National Retail Federation, the average American planned to spend about $902 per person on the 2024 winter holidays, a record, covering gifts, food, decorations, and everything else the season demands. Multiply that across a household and the cheerful math turns into a January credit card statement that undoes a lot of goodwill.
None of this means becoming a Scrooge. It means understanding where the money goes and doing a little arithmetic on the deals, because the season is engineered to make you feel like every sale is a once-a-year miracle you cannot afford to miss.
How much do people spend on the holidays?
The NRF's figure of roughly $902 per person breaks into two chunks: about $641 on gifts for family, friends, and coworkers, and around $261 on other seasonal items like food, decorations, and cards. Gifts are the headline, but the non-gift spending is a quiet third of the budget that most people never plan for.
The chart shows the split. Naming the non-gift portion is the first step to controlling it.
National Retail Federation, 2024 winter holiday survey.
- Gifts: $641
- Food, decor, cards: $261
How to actually save during holiday sales
The biggest trap is the discount that is not one. Retailers stack and inflate percentages to make a modest deal feel dramatic. The fix is to run the actual numbers rather than trusting the sign. The discount calculator turns any percentage off into the real final price and the exact amount you save, so a headline number stops doing your thinking for you.
Watch for stacked discounts too. An extra 20 percent off an already 30 percent off price is not 50 percent off, because the second cut applies to the reduced price. The percentage calculator lets you chain the math and see the true combined discount, which is almost always less than the sum of the two signs.
Spending less without feeling cheap
A few habits keep the season joyful and the January statement survivable:
- Set a total budget first, then divide it by the people on your list, rather than pricing gifts one impulse at a time.
- Budget the non-gift third too. Food and decorations are where holiday spending quietly overflows.
- Verify every deal with the real final price, not the percentage on the sign.
- Remember that stacked discounts combine to less than their sum. Do the chained math before you celebrate.
- Beware urgency and 'doorbuster' framing, which are designed to switch off the part of your brain that compares prices.
The bottom line
The average American now spends around $902 on the holidays, roughly $641 on gifts and $261 on everything else, and most of the overspend comes from unbudgeted extras and deals that look better than they are. Set a total budget, plan for the non-gift third, and run every discount through the real math so a clever sign never spends your money for you. A joyful December should not cost you a grim January.