This is terrific advice. Dump your money into an index fund or target date fund and forget about it for a decade or three. You can't beat the returns per hour of work.

Look up I bonds. They're almost too good to be true. They are incredibly safe and hold their value against inflation. The only downside is that you can't make a withdrawal for a little while after you buy them.

I have a tangential question. I work in a 1,000-person corporation. Lots of employees keep their computers running 24/7. Do you think there's potential in running models in a distributed manner across corporate LANs?

I actually agree with you. I was going for a Christmas theme and it really didn't work out. Normally I'm very restrained in my use of color, and I think I'll go back to that aesthetic.

I also looked at it on my phone after making the post and realized it's hard to read on mobile. I could have dropped the on-bar labels without losing any data, and I could have made it narrower and longer for mobile-friendliness.

Good point, PNC should add that expense

PNC assumes that you pay each one minimum wage for an hour.

PNC Bank uses the federal minimum wage to calculate the cost of an unskilled farm laborer. Sadly, some farm workers earn even less than that.

The numbers come from PNC Bank. I used their numbers since they have a whole system put together.

Some minimum wage jobs aren't designed to support someone living solo. I live in Washington DC, where the minimum wage is north of $16/hour. That makes sense here. But it's still not enough to buy a studio apartment.

I encourage constructive feedback, so thank you. And don't bash your own skills. I started my journey in data science by reading Visualize This. Skip ahead a decade and I run data science for a corporation.

PNC makes some judgement calls to be sure. In their defense, they use the same methodology every year, so at least the numbers are consistent year-over-year.

As PNC explains it in their calculations, "This represents the total cost of all the gifts bestowed by True Love when you count each repetition of the song, totaling 364 presents."

I actually agree with you. I saw this on my phone after posting it and realized I really should have used a different approach. I included my fully reproducible code if you want to give it a stab.

Pretty sad how far the federal minimum wage is from a living wage. I don't know if $15 is the right number, but $7.25 is too damn low.

PNC Bank's annual report makes a lot of judgement calls. That's inevitable given the subject matter. I'll give them credit, though, since they keep their methodology consistent from year to year, which lets them accurately report the inflation.

PNC sets the methodology. To be fair, they've kept it consistent over the years to enable year over year comparisons.

That's the cost of rental, not the cost of buying dancers

Easiest way to share code without any external dependencies

PNC cites "a national bird supplier" as its source without giving additional detail.

True, but I'd say that geese are even worse. Especially when protecting their eggs.

According to PNC, "Hatcheries provided the cost of the hens and swans." Not sure the exact seller. This website suggests that some places charge even more.

library(tidyverse)

price <- tibble(item_name = c("12 Partridges in a Pear Tree", "22 Turtle Doves", "30 French Hens",

"36 Calling Birds", "40 Gold Rings", "42 Geese a-Laying", "42 Swans a-Swimming",

"40 Maids a-Milking", "36 Ladies Dancing", "30 Lords a-Leaping",

"22 Pipers Piping", "12 Drummers Drumming"),

total_cost = c(3362.16, 6600, 3187.5, 5399.64, 9960, 5040, 78749.58, 290,

33232.48, 41940, 6042.8, 3266.93)) %>%

mutate(total_cost_rounded = scales::dollar(round(total_cost)))

price$item_name_ordered <-

ordered(price$item_name, levels = price$item_name)

ggplot(price, aes(x = item_name_ordered, y = total_cost, fill = "#D6001C")) +

geom_col() +

geom_label(aes(label = total_cost_rounded),

position = position_stack(

vjust = 0.5)) +

coord_flip() +

labs(

title = "Total cost of each gift in the song \"The 12 Days of Christmas\"",

y = "Total cost of each item in the United States in 2022",

x = NULL,

caption = "Created by TrueBirch using data from PNC's Christmas Price Index.

Total cost is the unit cost multiplied by number of times a gift is given."

) +

scale_y_continuous(label = scales::dollar) +

scale_fill_manual(values = "#D6001C") +

theme(

panel.grid.major = element_line(colour = "gray60"),

panel.grid.minor = element_line(colour = NA),

panel.grid.major.y = element_blank(),

panel.background = element_rect(fill = "#599C5D"),

plot.background = element_rect(fill = "gray93"),

legend.position = "none",

plot.title = element_text(size = 17),

plot.caption = element_text(size = 11),

axis.title = element_text(size = 13),

axis.text = element_text(size = 12),

strip.text = element_text(size = 12)

)

I created the chart using R and ggplot2. The full reproducible code is pasted in a following comment.

This post made me curious about how much you'd have to pay for each set of gift in The 12 Days of Christmas. Turns out PNC Bank tallies the prices every year. They make a few judgement calls, such as treating a "maid a-milking" as the cost of hiring a single individual at the federal minimum wage. Here's how PNC explains its methodology:

>

"The partridge and dove prices came from a national bird supplier. Hatcheries provided the cost of the hens and swans. The price of the geese came from a waterfowl farm. A national pet chain provided the price of the calling birds, or canaries. The pear tree price came from a Pennsylvania nursery. A national jewelry chain provided the cost of five 14-carat gold rings, and PHILADANCO, a modern dance company in Philadelphia, offered the price of ladies dancing, while Philadelphia Ballet supplied the cost of the Lords-a-Leaping. Maids-a-milking are the only unskilled laborers in the PNC CPI and, as such, they reflect the federal minimum wage. Year after year, the sources for the prices remain the same for the most part for consistency, but they have changed on occasion due to changes in the market or business landscape."

Happy to help!

When I first read your comment, I thought you were still talking about Duck Hunt. I'd read the heck out of that whitepaper.