Bah, Humbug Miami Ranks Almost Last For Holiday Spending

MIAMI, FL — It may be the thought that counts this holiday season, particularly in Miami. Personal finance website WalletHub ranked the Magic City near the bottom of the list of U.S. cities for recommended holiday spending amounts. Miami finished 569th out of 570 cities behind only Cleveland.

"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 each of 570 U.S. cities," officials said in releasing the findings on Tuesday.

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According to the website, Miamians should try to limit their holiday budgets to $81 while Clevelanders should spend a paltry $64.

"We calculated the maximum holiday budget for each city using the population's income, age, debt to income ratio, monthly income to monthly expenses ratio and savings to monthly expenses ratio," said WalletHub's Diana Polk.

"The total amount represents the average maximum holiday budget," she told Patch. "Seeing as we considered people's income as well as all types of expenses, the actual budgets should be close to our numbers, but we cannot estimate how much people will actually spend."

Miami Beach came in at 380th on the WalletHub list with a recommended annual budget of $568. Fort Lauderdale ranked 255th with a recommended budget of $679.

But if you're in Flower Mound, Texas, you can spend $2,761,which is more than any other city in the nation. Flower Mound was followed by Sunyvale, California which had a budget of $2,575 and San Ramon, California with a budget of $2,036.

To the good folks at WalletHub, sorry we won't be able to get you anything this year. It's evidently not in our budget.

See where other cities rank here.

Aventura Mall awaits holiday shoppers in 2017. Photo by Paul Scicchitano.