With last year’s holiday spending having increased 14.1% to a record $886.7 billion, the personal-finance website WalletHub today released its 2022 Holiday Budgets by City report, as well as accompanying videos and expert commentary. It also released its free tool that calculates personalized holiday budgets for all WalletHub members between now and Dec. 25.
To help consumers avoid post-holiday regret, WalletHub used several key metrics, such as income, age and savings-to-monthly expenses ratio, to estimate the maximum spending amounts for consumers in over 550 U.S. cities.
The following are some highlights from the report:
| Cities with the Biggest Holiday Budgets | |
| 1. Newton, MA ($4,233) | 11. Naperville, IL ($2,969) |
| 2. Palo Alto, CA ($3,920) | 12. Weston, FL ($2,955) |
| 3. Flower Mound, TX ($3,531) | 13. Cary, NC ($2,916) |
| 4. Milpitas, CA ($3,480) | 14. Cedar Park, TX ($2,855) |
| 5. Bellevue, WA ($3,401) | 15. Sugar Land, TX ($2,793) |
| 6. Mountain View, CA ($3,258) | 16. Maple Grove, MN ($2,707) |
| 7. Sunnyvale, CA ($3,237) | 17. Allen, TX ($2,670) |
| 8. Santa Clara, CA ($3,224) | 18. Roswell, GA ($2,598) |
| 9. Ellicott City, MD ($3,122) | 19. Rockville, MD ($2,574) |
| 10. Fishers, IN ($2,969) | 20. League City, TX ($2,541) |
Key Stats
- Newton, Massachusetts has the lowest expenses-to-income ratio, 58.25 percent, which is 1.7 times lower than in Hartford, Connecticut the city with the highest at 99.16 percent.
- Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has the highest savings-to-monthly expenses ratio, 646.80 percent, which is 3.5 times higher than in Hartford city, Connecticut the city with the lowest at 185.24 percent.
