Kate plus 8 Christmas stockings.
As the holiday season approaches, Kate Gosselin explained to her TikTok followers how she budgets gifts for her eight children in “good” and “not so good” years financially.
Former reality star Gosselin, 50, said Wednesday that she is asking her adult children for their wish lists in November “so I can take advantage of holiday sales.”
The former TLC personality – who is estranged from the latter two, who is mother to 25-year-old twins Madeline and Cara and 21-year-old sextuplets Arden, Leah, Alexis, Joel, Collin and Hannah with ex-husband Jon Gosselin – did not say whether she would give the gift.
Kate keeps a note on her phone with all the “links, sizes, colors and prices” lists she receives from her children.
The “John and Kate Plus 8” alum then goes through the initial list and comes up with an appropriate budget for each of the child’s siblings.
If Kate “exceeds” someone’s budget (something Leah “often does,” she joked), she raises all the other kids’ budgets.
Kate got the idea from her mother, Charlene Crider, to make it “fair to the penny” by setting up a decorated box of cash on Christmas Day.
“It may sound silly, but being fair is really important to me,” Kate said.
“Some people will receive $150 in the box if they don’t ask for too much,” she explained. “It went really well and the kids were really happy.
“Sometimes not everyone gets a square box,” Kate continued. “That means I completely finished your list and ended up spending an extra dollar or two out of necessity. That usually doesn’t happen.”
Plus, she gives the whole family one joint gift for the whole family to enjoy.
She said Christmas “doesn’t last as long” as her children are older and their luxury goods are getting more expensive, and she’s “slowing it down” by wrapping everything up, including her skincare and toiletry favorites.
Kate’s social media upload comes three months after she admitted she had been forced to return to work due to the “sickening” economic downturn.
In the comments below a candid video from August, Kate talked about the difficulty of “feeding eight kids.”
She said that in addition to her college funds, she “continued to use drugs in court” during her divorce, and the costs were significant.
Kate added: “Sadly, without the lawyer, my children could have saved more and I could have saved more for my retirement.”
Kate and John divorced in 2009 after 10 years of marriage and are now dating former bodyguard Steve Nield.
