Should Mercer County, NJ Residents Have A Holiday Budget To Avoid Financial Stress?

Christmas shopping is on your mind we know it. Do you give yourself a budget on how much you should spend on gifts? Personally, I've given myself a budget before and it always fails.

Wallet Hub recently shared a list that shows the 2021 Holiday Budgets by City. I will say this, we are not spending much according to this list and that is good.

We probably should not be surprised that the holiday budget for the City of Brotherly Love is a little bigger than the one in Trenton.

The list of 2021 Holiday Budgets by City has a total of 570 cities on it and Wallet Hub shared that Philadelphia ranked 415 while Trenton 564.

For those that live in Philadelphia, Wallet Hub shared that the holiday budget is $733. For those in Trenton, it is $398.

The question is how did Wallet Hub get these numbers?

According to Wallet Hub, the way these numbers were found was through "five key characteristics of the population, such as income, age and savings-to-monthly expenses ratio."

This was all created to help people avoid any post holidays financial stress.

From the looks of it, not even the COVID-19 pandemic could hold Americans back from spending a lot last holiday season. Wallet Hub shared that "holiday sales still grew 8.3% last year despite the pandemic." Some of the predictions by experts are saying that the holidays sales may grow even more this 2021 holiday season.

Maybe all of the stimulus checks and extra unemployment checks made people spend a little more last year than normal.

If we stick to those budgets shared on Wallet Hub for Trenton or Philadelphia we should not have that much financial stress after the holidays are over.

The city with the biggest holiday budget in New Jersey is Clifton in North Jersey with a budget of $1,451.