Merry shopping
Shoppers in these 3 Houston-area cities have the biggest holiday budgets, study says
If a new study from personal finance website WalletHub is an accurate gauge, Santa will be stuffing a lot of stockings in The Woodlands this holiday season.
The study reveals The Woodlands as having the fifth-fattest holiday shopping budget at $2,444 per person. Two other Houston-area cities rank in the top 10 in the country: Residents in Sugar Land spend $2,321 per person (No. 7 overall) and Pearland shoppers spend $2,238 (No.9).
Proving everything's bigger in Texas — including budgets —the study pegs Flower Mound as the No. 1 city in the U.S. for the fattest holiday shopping budgets — $2,761 per person, an amount sure to be the envy of any elf. That’s nearly 175 percent above the projected U.S. average, $1,007, for per-person spending this holiday season.
For the holiday shopping study, WalletHub looked at several key metrics, such as income and savings-to-expense ratio, to estimate the upper-limit holiday spending tab for consumers in 570 U.S. cities.
Flower Mound is one of six Texas cities appearing in the top 20 for holiday shopping budgets. Two more in DFW made the cut: Allen, $2,244 (No. 8); and Plano, $2,006 (No. 13).
WalletHub analyst Jill Gonzalez tells CultureMap that The Woodlands and Flower Mound are the holiday-budget havens of Texas thanks to their high household incomes and low debt-to-income ratios.
For The Woodlands, the median annual household income is $117,180 and the debt-to-income ratio is 34.4 percent. In Flower Mound, the median annual household income is $133,521, and the debt-to-income ratio is 33.8 percent.
