A grandmother has come up with a way to ease the financial burden of having the family round for Christmas: charge them all for dinner.
Caroline Duddridge devised a tiered fee system for her relatives that brought in about £180 this year to help cover the cost of turkey and all the trimmings for her five adult children and their families.
“There’s a few out there who think I’m a bit of a Scrooge but my friends think it’s quite a good idea,” Duddridge, 63, told BBC Radio 5 Live.
She said she had the idea after the death of her husband in 2015 left her with only half the household income to live on. She initially asked relatives to put away small amounts regularly towards the end of the year, but the administration became too cumbersome.
“I said to my children, ‘right, it costs a lot of money, I’m going to do a little kitty jar so you can put £2 away starting in September’. It sounds good, doesn’t it? But of course it all got a bit shambolic, trying to keep track of them and there were a few stragglers.”
Instead, the teaching assistant from Fairwater in Cardiff decided to charge her two sons £15 each and her three daughters £10, while her four grandchildren aged five years and older were charged £5 each and her two three-year-old grandchildren paid £2.50, with the one-off fees to be transferred to her bank account.
She explained that she charges her sons more because they work full-time, while her daughters work part-time and care for their families. And she joked there is little sentimentality spared on those who don’t cough up.
“If you don’t pay by 1 December, you’re not coming. Obviously there were a few moans and grumbles saying I’ve got a few children, but at the end of the day that’s not my problem really, is it?”
Duddridge said about half of the money she raised was spent on meat that she said she “doesn’t even eat”.
She said in the past she “always ended up with hundreds of sausage rolls and bags of potatoes but not much else” because her relatives would bring food. “At least this way, I’ve got a bit of autonomy over what I can buy. It saves on food waste which is another important thing.”
But, as she weighed up the cost, she concluded: “Why should the host hold the full financial burden? I’m hoping that people won’t think it’s a terrible thing and think ‘hmm that is a good idea’. It’s very fair. I’m not out to make a profit, I’m doing it just to have a bit of help with the cost of it.”
