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The holiday shopping season that officially starts on Black Friday is the shortest it can possibly be this year, but fear not! Americans will still find a way to spend lots of money.

How it works: Thanksgiving always falls on the fourth Thursday of November, except that one time President Franklin D. Roosevelt monkeyed around with the date and caused chaos.

The earliest possible day we can turkey up is Nov. 22 — that's if the first of November is a Thursday — translating to a 32-day Christmas shopping season that runs from Black Friday through Christmas Eve.

The latest possible day is Nov. 28. That's the situation this year, and it means only 26 days for official shopping.

What they did: Stanford economists Neale Mahoney and Ryan Cummings reviewed retail sales going back to 1992.

Their research, shared with Axios, finds little correlation between total retail sales growth and the number of days between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Zoom in: WalletHub's separate holiday spending study finds that sales this season are expected to grow between 2.5% and 3.5% over last year and surpass $980 billion nationally.

The average consumer in Indianapolis is expected to spend $1,395.

That puts the Circle City at No. 219 on WalletHub's ranking of holiday spending budgets out of 558 cities.

Zoom out: The Indiana city set to spend the most is Carmel. The Hamilton County suburb came in at No. 9, with consumers spending $3,424 on average.

The most frugal Indiana city on the list is Bloomington at No. 556 with an average budget of just $419.

Fishers is No. 24 ($2,910), followed by South Bend (307th, $1,178), Evansville (343rd, $1,107), Hammond (347th, $1,100) and Fort Wayne (490th, $805).

How much Hoosiers will spend this short holiday shopping season

The shopping season is shorter in 2024, but Americans are spending more.

Illustration of a gift wrapped in hundred dollar bills

The holiday shopping season that officially starts on Black Friday is the shortest it can possibly be this year, but fear not! Americans will still find a way to spend lots of money.How it works: Thanksgiving always falls on the fourth Thursday of November, except that one time President Franklin D. Roosevelt monkeyed around with the date and <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="caused chaos" data-vars-click-url="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/11/24/franskgiving-fdr-moved-thanksgiving/" data-vars-content-id="64b4a073-3c85-423b-93e3-9e6960b03a9f" data-vars-headline="How much Hoosiers will spend this short holiday shopping season" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/11/24/franskgiving-fdr-moved-thanksgiving/" target="_blank">caused chaos</a>.

News

Money

Data: Redfin analysis of MLS data; Chart: Axios Visuals

Putting your house under contract doesn't carry the same sense of inevitability that it used to.

Driving the news: About 18% of Indianapolis-area pending home sales fell through in September, as mortgage rates kept inching up, according to Redfin data.

Why it matters: It's another sign of how steep mortgage rates are squashing sales activity.

Flashback: Back in the before times of January 2017, fewer than 12% of pending home sales fell through in Central Indiana.

Context: Typically, homebuyers sign sales agreements with a contingency that lets them back out of the deal if, say, there's an issue with an inspection or something's off in the appraisal.

But deals can also fall apart because surging mortgage rates suddenly mean the buyer can no longer afford the house — perhaps because they didn't lock in a rate when they went into contract, or their rate lock expired.

Such buyers either walk away — or underwriters pull approval.

Between the lines: Buyers are just more jittery now, even as mortgage rates back away from 8% highs.

Meanwhile, home sellers, locked into low mortgage rates, are less likely to make concessions to nervous buyers, said Daryl Fairweather, Redfin's chief economist. They're not "super-motivated."

The bottom line: This is partly why home sales are on track for their slowest year since the housing crisis.

Indy's "under contract" home sales keep falling through

About 18% of pending home sales collapsed in September.

Real estate

Putting your house under contract doesn&#x27;t carry the same sense of inevitability that it used to.Driving the news: About 18% of Indianapolis-area pending home sales fell through in September, as mortgage rates kept inching up, according to Redfin data.

Emily Peck

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