Marketplace®

Daily business news and economic stories

Another Christmas, another year of rising prices

Twelve drummers drumming, six geese-a-laying and one partridge in a pear tree. What does it all add up to?

If you were in the market for a turtle dove, a swan-a-swimming or piper piping, keep reading.

PNC Wealth Management took a look at how the prices behind the carol “Twelve Days a Christmas” has changed over the years, and this year was one of the larger jumps on record: Almost 8 percent.

Since PNC launched their index in 1984, increases in the so-called ‘Christmas index’ have matched inflation in the U.S. at about 2.9 percent.

According to PNC, if you wanted to buy all the goods, services, animals, etc., listed in the “Twelve Days of Christmas” box-set it would have cost you “$27,393.17 in 2013, $1,192 more than last year and the largest increase since 2010 when the index jumped 9.2 percent.”

“We were surprised to see such a large increase from a year ago, given the overall benign inflation rate in the U.S., but the dancers in the index took a huge leap this year to play catch up from paltry increases the previous few years,” Jim Dunigan, managing executive of Investments at PNC Wealth Management says.

We’ll stick to bitcoin for our speculative investments though, thank you very much.

Related Topics

Collections:

Latest Episodes

View All Shows
  • Marketplace
    3 hours ago
    25:19
  • Make Me Smart
    9 hours ago
    19:00
  • Marketplace Morning Report
    12 hours ago
    6:55
  • Marketplace Tech
    16 hours ago
    8:33
  • This Is Uncomfortable
    3 days ago
    56:05
  • Million Bazillion
    24 days ago
    32:45