Just how expensive are the holidays, anyway?

I don’t want to alarm everybody, but it’s almost the holiday season. The signs are all there: No leaves on the trees, Halloween candy being replaced with cans of cranberry sauce at grocery stores, red cups at Starbucks.

And you know what holidays mean! Spending money. Travel expenses, gifts, turkeys, and long-distance charges trying to corral your wonderful and not at all infuriating family.

All of which have gotten more expensive over the last couple of years of inflation. Well, except one, but more on that later.

How much more expensive? Let’s talk some turkey.

According to a hot-off-the-presses Forbes report, while the retail cost of turkeys has slipped a little bit this year – which has more to do with turkey prices being at an all-time high last year– prices, even taking that into account, have risen a whopping 25% since 2019. And you can forget about switching to ham, because ham is also at its all-time highest price. Lucky us!

Meanwhile, travel expenses continue to be outrageous. According to Nerdwallet, nearly one-quarter of Americans who don’t plan to travel for the holidays this year say it’s because they can’t afford it. And of the ones that can afford it, 75% say they plan to use credit cards to pay for at least some of their travel expenses.  

Around 1 in 12 Americans who put 2022 holiday travel expenses on a credit card still haven’t paid this debt off.

That seems bad, because, according to Moneygeek, credit card debt totaled $1.031 trillion in Q2 2023 — a 20-year high. That translates to about $3200 in credit card debt per American!

But surely your phone bills haven’t also gone up? Hold on to your hat because yes, they have! We’re sure you’re completely shocked. In fact, according to Telecompetitor, a vast majority – 94% to be specific – of Americans have had their phone bills rise by 5% this year.

Now I’m sure that not everybody in the remaining 6% of cellphone users that didn’t see their bills rise are TextNow customers...

But I bet some of them are. That’s because TextNow doesn’t charge you anything to call or text someone. Can’t raise prices when it’s free, right? That’s just math.

Don’t take our word for it – download our app (available in both Android and iOS flavors) and see for yourself!

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