Another Christmas, another year of rising prices

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.