Naperville is projected to top the nation in holiday spending this year, nearly tripling the national per-person average for holiday spending.
According to WalletHub, Naperville residents are expected to spend $2,381 on holiday shopping this year, compared to the $967 the National Retail Federation predicts the average per-person shopper will spend in the 507 other cities analyzed for the survey.
In conducting the study and arriving at their conclusions, researchers considered such factors as income, age and savings-to-monthly expenses ratio.
While no one knows for certain how much the spending might benefit community businesses and local merchants, Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Nicki Anderson seemed excited by the possibilities.
"If people are coming down here for shopping and dining, they're spending their money here, and with that come taxes that benefit the city as a whole and help the city continue to deliver great services," she said in a recent Chicago Tribune article.
The Chicago Tribune has reported the findings represent a dramatic increase for Naperville, which ranked No. 62 on the per-person shopper list in 2016, with average spending of $1,187 per person.
Other Illinois towns placing in the top 100 per-person shopper list include Palatine, which came in at No. 40 for a projected $1,383 in average spending, Arlington Heights at No. 51 with $1,315, Schaumburg at No. 52 with $1,306, and Skokie at No. 69 with $1,177, the Tribune article said.
Overall, the National Retail Federation pegs the national per-person average for holiday spending in 2017 up about 3.4 percent from 2016, an increase of more than 20 percent over the past two years.
The end result is Americans are now on track to end 2017 with more than $60 billion in additional credit-card balances. WalletHub estimates such extravagant spending puts the country perilously on track to land somewhere in the neighborhood of the nearly $1 trillion recorded for such debt at the height of the Great Recession.
Rounding out the top five towns when it comes to individual holiday spending is Sugar Land, Texas, at $2,368; Bellevue, Washington, at $2,367; Sunnyvale, California, at $2,360; and Carmel, Indiana, at $2,330.
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