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    Shopping spree!

    3 Houston suburbs lead sleigh full of cities with biggest holiday budgets

    John Egan
    Nov 26, 2021 | 9:35 am
    The Woodlands Holiday Market
    Folks in The Woodlands spend big bucks on the holidays.
    Visit Houston Texas

    If you live in The Woodlands, Sugar Land, or League City, you may be making a holiday shopping list as long as a stocking and checking it more than twice.

    These three Houston suburbs rank among the 10 U.S. cities with the fattest holiday budgets, according to a new study from personal finance website WalletHub.

    The Woodlands ranks third nationally, at $3,073, while Sugar Land comes in fourth ($3,023) and League City lands at No. 10 ($2,778). Pearland ranks 13th ($2,669) and Missouri City appears at No. 80 ($1,499), while Houston ranks 372nd ($783).

    “To help consumers avoid post-holiday regret, WalletHub calculated the maximum holiday budget for each of 570 U.S. cities using five key characteristics of the population, such as income, age, and savings-to-monthly expenses ratio,” the website says.

    A suburb of Dallas-Fort Worth wraps up the No. 1 spot on the national list. Flower Mound, according to WalletHub, boasts the most Santa-friendly budget among all the cities: $3,427. Flower Mound ranked second last year ($2,973) and third in 2019 ($2,937).

    Seven other DFW cities unwrap rankings in the top 100:

    • Allen, No. 12, $2,688.
    • Frisco, No. 30, $2,133.
    • Plano, No. 33, $2,044.
    • Richardson, No. 43, $1,857.
    • Carrollton, No. 56, $1,698.
    • North Richland Hills, No. 76, $1,544.
    • Irving, No. 89, $1,439.

    The two biggest cities in North Texas are on the Scrooge-y side: Fort Worth appears at No. 257 ($920), and Dallas ranks 365th ($787).

    In the Austin area, the holiday budgets are more on the lean side, like Santa on a diet:

    • Cedar Park, No. 48, $1,770.
    • Round Rock, No. 134, $1,200.
    • Austin, No. 188, $1,049.

    Meanwhile, the San Antonio area’s two entrants on the list feel like they’ve earned lumps of coal:

    • New Braunfels, No. 196, $1,034.
    • San Antonio, No. 371, $783.

    “In general, consumers are ready to spend and to have social experiences both within and outside the home. This spurs consumption in multiple categories, including food, décor, apparel, and gifts. This trend toward increased spending is mitigated by lingering COVID health concerns, including reticence to shop in physical stores, gather in groups, and travel,” Barbara Stewart, interim chair of the University of Houston’s Department of Human Development and Consumer Sciences, tells WalletHub.

    The National Retail Federation predicts a record-shattering holiday season for retail sales, growing between 8.5 percent and 10.5 percent over 2020 to between $843.4 billion and $859 billion. Meanwhile, professional services firm Deloitte envisions a 7 percent to 9 percent spike in holiday spending this year versus last year. Commercial estate services provider pegs the projected increase at 8.4 percent.

    “The outlook for the holiday season looks very bright,” says Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at the National Retail Federation. “The unusual and beneficial position we find ourselves in is that households have increased spending vigorously throughout most of 2021 and remain with plenty of holiday purchasing power.”

    listsshoppingwallethubrankings
    news/city-life

    Unhappy holidays

    Porch pirates swipe nearly $2B in packages from Texas homes this year

    John Egan
    Dec 17, 2025 | 9:30 am
    Porch Pirate Person in Glasses Steals Packages
    Getty Images
    The Grinch isn't the only one stealing Christmas these days.

    ’Tis the season for porch pirates. If past trends are an indicator, the Grinch will swipe close to $2 billion worth of packages delivered to Texas households this year, with many of those thefts happening ahead of the holiday season.

    An analysis of FBI and survey data by ecommerce marketing company Omnisend shows porch pirates stole more than $1.8 billion worth of packages from Texans’ porches last year. Porch pirates hit nearly one-third of the state’s households in 2024, according to the analysis.

    Omnisend’s analysis reveals these statistics about porch piracy in Texas:

    • 30.1 million residential package thefts in 2024.
    • An average household loss of $169 per year.
    • An annual average of 2.9 package thefts per household.

    “Most stolen items are cheap on their own, but add them up, and retailers and consumers are facing an enormous bill,” says Omnisend.

    Another data analysis, this one from The Action Network sports betting platform, unwraps different figures regarding porch piracy in Texas.

    The platform’s 2025 Porch Pirate Index ranks Texas as the state with the highest volume of residential thefts, based on 2023-24 FBI data.

    Researchers at The Action Network uncovered 26,293 reports of personal property thefts at Texas residences during that period. The network’s survey data indicates 5 percent of Texas residents had a package stolen in the three months before the pre-holiday survey.

    The Porch Pirate Index calculates a 25.8 percent risk of a Texas household being victimized by porch pirates, putting it in the No. 5 spot among states with the highest risk of porch piracy.

    The Action Network included online-search volume for terms like “package stolen” and “porch pirates.” Sustained spikes in these searches suggest that “people are actively looking for guidance after something has happened. Search trends serve as an early warning system, revealing emerging-risk areas well before annual crime statistics are released,” the network says.

    Tips to avoid being a victim
    So, how do you prevent porch pirates from snatching packages that end up on your porch? Omnisend, The Action Network and Amazon offer these eight tips:

    1. Closely monitor deliveries and quickly retrieve packages.
    2. Schedule deliveries for times when you’ll be home.
    3. Use delivery lockers or in-store pickup when possible.
    4. Ask delivery services to hide packages in out-of-sight spots outside your home.
    5. Install a visible doorbell camera or security camera.
    6. Coordinate deliveries with neighbors or building managers if you’ll be away from your home when packages are supposed to arrive.
    7. Request that delivery services hold your packages if you can’t be home when they’re scheduled to come.
    8. Illuminate the path to your doorstep and keep porch lights on.
    holidaysporch piratescrime
    news/city-life
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