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My True Love Would Spend 1% More this Christmas
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- On the Twelfth Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me … gifts worth $27,393.17, cumulatively $114,651.18 for all 364 components, as computed by PNC Wealth Management.
PNC Wealth Management today released its CPI -- for Christmas Price Index, not to be confused with the Consumer Price Index, which it used in determining the prices of partridges in pear trees, turtle doves, French hens, calling birds, golden rings, geese, swans, maids a milking, ladies dancing, lords a leaping, pipers and drummers.
And PNC Wealth Management, a subsidiary of PNC Financial Services Group, Pittsburgh, found that My True Love would spend only $280.05, or 1%, more than she did last Christmas for the gifts in the carol whose lyrics were first written down in 1780, first set to music in 1909.
Provident National Bank, Philadelphia, which merged with Pittsburgh National Bank in 1983, began keeping track of the gifts in the “12 Days of Christmas” in 1984, says Karen L. Segesto-Hauser, vice president and senior relationship manager in the Youngstown office of PNC Wealth Management. The items have risen 118% since then, while inflation, based on the Consumer Price Index, has risen 127%.
“This year, the increase in the Christmas Price Index is close to the government’s Consumer Price Index, which stands at 1.7% for the past 12 months through October,” Segesto-Hauser says. “The government’s core index, removing volatile food and energy prices, is up 1.8%.”
With energy prices falling and little increase in personal income, the rise in the Christmas Price Index has been modest despite a couple of huge increases, geese and French hens, Segesto-Hauser notes. The cost of six geese shot up 71.4% to $360 and three French hens went up 10% to $180.50.
Unchanged were the two turtle doves, $125: four calling birds, $599.96; five golden rings, $750; seven swans, $7,000; eight maids a milking (labor only, at minimum wage), $58; nine ladies dancing, $7,552.84; 11 pipers, $2,635.20; and 12 drummers, $2,854.80.
Up slightly were the partridge in a pear tree, $207.68, up 3.8%, and lords a leaping, $5,348.24, or 2%.
“What’s most interesting about the index,” Segesto-Hauser says, “is that since the beginning, year-over-year increases have averaged 2.8%, which is exactly the same number as the U.S. inflation index.”
PNC based the prices of the components as close to buying them on the market as feasible, the vice president says. While dairy farmers use milking machines to milk cows, PNC treated the "maids a milking" as unskilled labor, hence paid them minimum wage, $7.25 an hour, and assumed they worked only an hour a day.
The cost of housing and fresh fruit have risen recently, so PNC assigned a 2% increase to the pear tree and the partridge in the pear tree a 3.8% increase.
The costs of the ladies dancing and lords a leaping were based on the compensation of dancers in the Philadanco studios in Philadelphia and pipers and drummers were based on the rates paid musicians in symphony orchestras.
Over the last week, online merchants have been enticing shoppers to shop over Black Friday and Cyber Monday (today) with free shipping. Even so, the PNC staff has assumed it would cost more to buy the items in the “12 Days” through the Internet.
Rather than $27,673.22 for a one-time purchase in bricks-and-mortar outlets of the 12 items, My True Love would pay $42,959.07 to buy them online, “a surprising increase of 8% from last year,” Segesto-Hauser says, “$15,285 more.” If My True Love sent the items sung about on each of the 12 days, he would pay $192,470.93 for all 364 components, 11% more than the $173,410.13 he paid last year.
SOURCE: PNC Wealth Management.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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