---
title: "Holiday Gift Budget Planner | Bright Basketry"
description: "Plan your holiday gift budget: set a total, give each person a budget, log what you spend and see what is left. Free, private and saved on your device."
url: https://brightbasketry.shop/
---

# Holiday gift budget planner

Pick one total for the season, give everyone on your list their own budget, and log each purchase as you go. The tag keeps the sums, so you always know what is left.

## Your gift basket

Planned so far

- Mum
- Priya
- Grandad Joe
- Teachers (2)

- $205 of your total is not given to anyone yet: a cushion for wrapping, cards and postage.
- Priya is $4 over budget.

Saved automatically in this browser only.

## How the planner works

Start with the **total** you can comfortably spend this season. Add each person, or a group such as "Teachers", give them a **budget**, and type what you pay into **Spent** as you buy.

The tag does the sums. **Planned** is everyone's budgets added together. **Left to spend** is your total minus what you have spent. Any gap between the total and the planned amount is money not yet promised to anyone: a cushion for wrapping, cards and postage. The ribbon under each name fills as that budget is used and turns red when it runs over.

**Worked example:** the sample plan has a $600 total and six budgets adding up to $395, so $205 is unassigned. With $217 spent, $383 is left. Priya's present cost $64 against $60, so she shows $4 over, which you could balance by trimming another budget.

**Share total equally** gives everyone the same whole amount and leaves the odd remainder spare: £500 across six people is £83 each, with £2 left over.

## More for the gift season

Each one works on its own, and the ideas list can fill your tracker.

- [Shareable wishlist maker](https://brightbasketry.shop/wishlist-maker/): Write your own wishlist and send it as a single link. The list lives inside the link, not on a server.
- [Gift ideas by recipient & budget](https://brightbasketry.shop/gift-ideas/): Ninety-odd original ideas, filtered by who it is for, how much you want to spend and what kind of gift.
- [Printable gift tracker](https://brightbasketry.shop/gift-tracker/): Who gets what, ticked off as bought, wrapped and given. Prints as a tidy one-page checklist.

## Recommended

Two free services for the online side of gift shopping.

Disposable email · no sign-up

### CleanTempMail

Gift season brings a pile of sign-up forms: ten-percent-off codes, store gift-registry accounts, advent giveaways. CleanTempMail gives you a free temporary inbox straight away, with no sign-up, a random or custom address on hundreds of domains, and every message deleted automatically after 3 days.

Collect the code; keep your real inbox for the people on your list.

[Get a temporary inbox](https://cleantempmail.com/)

Disposable cloud browser · free lookups

### WebTraceCheck

Found the perfect present on a shop you have never heard of? WebTraceCheck's free DNS and domain lookup shows the details behind the shop's web address, and its disposable cloud browser opens unfamiliar links on an isolated desktop that is deleted after each session.

Nothing to install, with free time every day.

[Check a shop with WebTraceCheck](https://webtracecheck.com/)

## Questions

**How much should I spend on holiday gifts?**

There is no right number. Work from what is left of your monthly money after bills and savings rather than from last year's spending, fix the total before you start shopping, and then split it so the total still holds.

**Should the total include wrapping, cards and postage?**

It helps. Add a line such as "Wrapping and post" as if it were a person, or leave part of the total unassigned as a cushion. The tag shows how much is unassigned.

**Where is my plan saved?**

In your browser's local storage on this device only, under the name bb-budget. Nothing is uploaded. "Start empty" clears it, as does clearing this site's data in your browser settings.

**Can I type amounts with a comma for decimals?**

Yes. 1,250.50 and 1.250,50 both mean one thousand two hundred and fifty and a half. Pick your currency for the symbol; the maths is the same in any currency.