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Tab for 12 True Love gifts of Christmas in 2024 tops $49,000

Older couple happy family Christmas gift exchange
Giving the perfect Christmas gift for your true love can be better than receiving a present. It also can be costly if you use "The 12 Days of Christmas" lyrics as your shopping list!

Stubborn inflation means a costlier holiday season. That’s especially true of Christmas gift givers who follow the True Love shopping list in the classic carol The Twelve Days of Christmas.

The 41st annual PNC Bank Christmas Price Index® (PNC CPI), which is based on a whimsical tabulation of the price to gift all dozen items in the song, rose 5.4 percent. That’s double last year's 2.7 percent increase and surpasses the official federal Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index (BLS CPI) October year-over-year reading of 2.6 percent.

Those percentages mean the dollar amount of purchasing one each of all the song’s 12 items will cost $49,263.47 in 2024.

And if the buyer is truly, deeply in love and goes all out, buying the gifts with verses repeated for a total of 364 presents, the PNC CPI says the True Cost of Christmas will cross $200,000 for the second consecutive year.

"Believe it or not, we're still seeing the cause and effect of the pandemic-inflation hangover, even nearly five years later," says Amanda Agati, chief investment officer of PNC's Asset Management Group. "With years of steep price increases, we'd think inflation has nowhere to go, but we'd be wrong. This latest PNC CPI is an accurate reflection of what we're seeing in the market."

Some True Love gift prices unchanged: First, the good news. Data compiled by PNC's Investment Office from sources across the country, including dance and theatre companies, hatcheries, pet stores, and others, found no price increases in 2024 for five True Love gifts.

PNC_ChristmasPriceIndex-2024-04-calling-birds

The gifts that cost the same in 2024 as in 2023 include the Two Turtle Doves, Four Calling Birds, Five Gold Rings, Seven Swans-A-Swimming, and Eight Maids-A-Milking.

The Partridge’s price also was unchanged, but the Pear Tree in which it is perched went up by 15 percent.

The bird’s home can be seen as proxy for human housing costs, which continue to increase despite average mortgage rates edging lower.

Wages push up prices: However, rising wages for skilled labor and other services, produced higher prices for some of the melody’s presents.

The PNC CPI found the cost of Nine Ladies Dancing and 10 Lords-a-Leaping jumped to new heights. The Lords, at $14,539.20, are the highest priced gift in the index for the third straight year.

The 11 Pipers Piping also trumpeted higher, and the 12 Drummers Drumming beat a stronger sum.

In aggregate, prices for performers increased 7.9 percent this year, substantially higher than last year's 3.3 percent.

E-commerce's seasonal cost: If you're turning to e-commerce to avoid holiday shopping crowds, note that using technology does not add up to savings on the PNC CPI gifts.

Buying all 12 gifts online costs 3.9 percent more than in 2023, producing a total price tag this year of $54,073.69. One reason for the higher virtual tab is shipping costs.

Fuel costs have a major effect on the cost of shipping. And, notes PNC, fuel prices have been especially volatile over the last few years.

Big 12-day bill: As noted earlier, the annual PNC CPI tradition also includes calculating the "True Cost of Christmas," which is buying the gifts with verses repeated.

Big holiday spenders who purchase all 364 gifts crossed the $200,000 threshold for the first time in 2023, facing a $201,972.66 bill.

The 2024 total for that gift truckload, since that’s what you’ll need to deliver them all, is 3.6 percent more than last year. That comes to a budget busting bill of $209,272.

You can check out the cost of all 12 gifts on PNC's website.

And Agati has a final shopping, and financial, tip for all those looking for the perfect present as Dec. 25 nears.

"Buying the same gifts year after year may seem boring," said Agati, "but keeping track of changes in your spending enables you to make brilliant moves with your money, which is what I think the PNC CPI sets out to do."

Regardless of how you're shopping, or what you're searching for, here's hoping you find it at a price you can and want to pay this holiday season.

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