If you’re looking to purchase a partridge, pear tree or geese-a-laying then it’ll cost you more than it did last year as price inflation has even affected the iconic items featured in the “12 Days of Christmas” song.
According to the 31st annual PNC Wealth Management Christmas Price Index, a set of gifts in each verse of the well-known tune would come with a price-tag of $27,673 in stores, an increase of $300 from last year. If you’re an online shopper and you want to purchase the same items on the Internet then it would cost you $42,959, an eight percent jump from last year.
Shoppers interested in buying all the items every time they were mentioned in the song would set you back $116,273, up nearly two percent from a year ago.
Using data from the National Aviary in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia-based PHILADANCO and the Pennsylvania Ballet Company, PNC was able to produce a list of the cost for each item:
Partridge, $20; last year: $15, Also: Pear tree, $188; last year: $184
Turtle doves, $125; last year: same
French hens, $181; last year: $165
Calling birds (canaries), $600; last year: same
Gold rings, $750; last year: same
Geese-a-laying, $360; last year: $210
Swans a-swimming, $7,000; last year: same
Maids a-milking, $58; last year: same
Ladies dancing (per performance), $7,553; last year: same
Lords a-leaping (per performance), $5,348; last year: $5,243
Pipers piping (per performance), $2,635; last year: same
Drummers drumming (per performance), $2,855; last year: same
“While there are exceptions in given years, what’s most interesting about the index’s history is that since the beginning, year-over-year increases have averaged 2.8 percent, which is exactly the same number as the U.S. inflation index,” said Jim Dunigan, chief investment officer at PNC Wealth Management, in a statement.
The interesting aspect of this is the fact that much of these items would cost a lot more for a large potion of the consuming public since it would be put on credit and then the interest payments would come home to roost. Price inflation and debt are terrible ingredients for the recipe of suffering for the general public.
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