Trivia about money, jobs, budgets, credit, debt, and anything related to personal finance.

Holidays

Valentine's Day
*63% of consumers celebrate Valentine's Day. on average each one will spend $120 on Valentine's Day gifts.

*Men will spend twice as much as women.

*$367 million will be spent on pets for Valentine's Day. Source

*8 billion conversation heart candies will be sold between January 1 and February 14. Source

*35 billion heart shaped boxes of chocolate will be sold for Valentine's Day.

*15% of women will send themselves flowers on Valentine's Day! Source

*Get much more Valentine's Day financial trivia here!

Holiday Shopping
*There are roughly 1,175 malls in the United States, which generate $308 billion in annual sales. On Black Friday 2010, retailers at shopping malls reported sales of $10.7 billion, an increase of 0.3% from 2009. Source

*The National Retail Federation considers the “holiday shopping” season to be the full months of November and December, which is usually 55 days. Source

*Coined by the National Retail Federation in 2005 to generate consumer excitement, Cyber Monday (the Monday after Thanksgiving) is the online equivalent of Black Friday. In 2009, Cyber Monday generated $887 million ($1.028 billion in 2010). Source

*The busiest shopping day of the year is not Black Friday, but the Saturday before Christmas. The busiest online shopping day takes place on the Monday or Tuesday a week or two before the week of Christmas.

*Researchers have proven that a “50% off” sign leads in increased sales, even if shoppers don’t know the original price or what a reasonable price for the product would be.

*All 364 items in the popular song “The Twelve Days of Christmas” would cost $96,824 in 2010, an increase of 10.8% from last year. Just one of everything would cost $23,439, which is a 9.2% increase from 2009. Source

*The average holiday shopper will spend $107.50 on themselves.

*On average, it takes five trips to the mall to complete all holiday shopping. Source

*Many “door buster deals” advertised on Black Friday, such as those on expensive items (like HDTVs), are typically in very limited supplies—maybe just 4-6 per store—and act merely as lures to attract customers. Source

*When a salesperson asks a shopper which of several items she or he prefers, the shopper will often skip the question “Should I buy? and instead ask “Which one should I buy?

*Get much more Christmas holiday financial trivia here!

Thanksgiving 2011
*Which President was the Father of Black Friday?
Exodus 10:15 “For they covered the face of the whole earth, so that the land was darkened; and they did eat every herb of the land, and all the fruit of the trees which the hail had left: and there remained not any green thing in the trees, or in the herbs of the field………”

No, this Bible verse was not describing throngs of Black Friday shoppers busting through the mall doors just hours after Thanksgiving dinner, but it sure sounds like it! Yes, Black Friday is coming soon.

Have you ever asked yourself why the fourth Thursday of the month is set aside for Thanksgiving? President Abraham Lincoln was the first to declare Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863 and it was celebrated on the last Thursday in November. But it was Franklin Roosevelt who set the date as the fourth Thursday of November. What was his motivation for changing the date? Franklin Roosevelt wanted to kick off the holiday shopping season earlier in order to stimulate more spending during the Great Depression. His decision was at first unpopular with Congressional leaders who mockingly referred to Thanksgiving as "FranksGiving". However, Roosevelt's plan worked and we now have throngs of shoppers kicking off the holiday shopping season just hours after Thanksgiving dinner.

*Travel: AAA says that in 2011 38.2 million Americans will drive 50 miles or more away from home over the November 23-27 Thanksgiving holiday period, 4% more than 2010, and they expect to pay an average of $3.39 a gallon for gas, the highest level for any Thanksgiving over the last 10 years. Source

*The cost: The American Farm Bureau Federation says that in 2001 a family's Thanksgiving meal cost $35.04. However, in 2011 it will cost about $50.00. Source

*Get much more Thanksgiving financial trivia here!

Halloween 2011
*In the United States we buy $141 million worth of pumpkins with the majority of them purchased around Halloween. More Info

*Chocolate candy bars top the list as the most popular candy for trick-or-treaters with Snickers #1. More Info

*Halloween is the 2nd most commercially successful holiday, with Christmas being the first. More Info

*Together we all give about $100 million worth of Halloween cards to each other every year. 35 million cards. More Info

*Halloween candy sales average about 2 billion dollars annually in the United States. More Info

*Candy flies off the shelves at Halloween — about 600 million pounds of it every season, including roughly 90 million pounds of chocolate, according to market researchers at Nielsen Co. More info

*Get much more Halloween financial trivia here!

New Years Day
*In the old days, the New Year started with a custom called 'first footing', which was suppose to bring good luck to people for the coming year. As soon as midnight had passed and January 1st had started, people used to wait behind their doors for a dark haired person to arrive. The visitor carried a piece of coal, some bread, some money and some greenery. These were all for good luck - the coal to make sure that the house would always be warm, the bread to make sure everyone in the house would have enough food to eat, money so that they would have enough money, and the greenery to make sure that they had a long life. Source

Easter
*Andrew Johnson was the first U.S. President to hold an Easter egg roll for children on the White House lawn.

*Jellybeans were first made in America by Boston candy maker William Schrafft, who ran advertisements urging people to send jellybeans to soldiers fighting in the Civil War.

*Americans consume approximately $2 billion worth of candy during the Easter holiday season.

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