Shopping spree!

Austin suburb unwraps one of the biggest holiday budgets in the U.S.

Folks in Cedar Park have big budgets for the holidays.

Courtesy of Cedar Park Parks & Recreation

If you live in Cedar Park, you may be making a holiday shopping list as long as a stocking and checking it more than twice.

That's because the Austin suburb ranks among the 50 U.S. cities with the fattest holiday budgets for 2021, according to a new study from personal finance website WalletHub.

“To help consumers avoid post-holiday regret, WalletHub calculated the maximum holiday budget for each of 570 U.S. cities using five key characteristics of the population, such as income, age, and savings-to-monthly expenses ratio,” the website says.

Cedar Park ranks No. 48, according to WalletHub, with a budget of $1,770.

Another Texas city wraps up the No. 1 spot on the national list. Flower Mound, a Dallas-Fort Worth suburb, boasts the most Santa-friendly budget among all the cities: $3,427.

Eight other Texas cities rank in the top 50:

The Woodlands, No. 3, $3,073.
Sugar Land, No. 4, $3,023.
League City, No. 10, $2,778.
Allen, No. 12, $2,688.
Pearland, No. 13, $2669.
Frisco, No. 30, $2,133.
Plano, No. 33, $2,044.
Richardson, No. 43, $1,857.

Among Texas' big cities, Austin is the only one that boasts a holiday budget of more than $1,000. It lands at No. 188 on the list ($1,049). Fort Worth appears at No. 257 ($920) and Dallas ranks 365th ($787), while San Antonio, No. 371 ($783), is followed by Houston at No. 372 ($783).

The National Retail Federation predicts a record-shattering holiday season for retail sales, growing between 8.5 percent and 10.5 percent over 2020 to between $843.4 billion and $859 billion. Meanwhile, professional services firm Deloitte envisions a 7 percent to 9 percent spike in holiday spending this year versus last year. Commercial estate services provider pegs the projected increase at 8.4 percent.

“The outlook for the holiday season looks very bright,” says Jack Kleinhenz, chief economist at the National Retail Federation. “The unusual and beneficial position we find ourselves in is that households have increased spending vigorously throughout most of 2021 and remain with plenty of holiday purchasing power.”

wallethub shopping rankings lists

Trucking news

Driverless truck company postpones Texas route, citing construction

Photo courtesy of Aurora

Driverless semis traveling from Dallas to Houston were expected to launch this year.

Autonomous truck company Aurora Innovation says it won't start hauling freight without humans on board until April of 2025, a delay from previous statements that commercial service would begin by the end of 2024.

The Pittsburgh company said the April launch of driverless semis traveling from Dallas to Houston — originally announced last year — will be “modestly later” than the company had intended. The company also previously announced a partnership with Uber.

The company told investors on its third-quarter earnings conference call that it has made progress toward ensuring its trucks will operate safely.

Remaining obstacles are “primarily in the areas of some elements of surface street driving and some elements of construction that we see on the freeway,” CEO Chris Urmson said. “We want to have extremely high confidence in the system as we as we go forward.”

The company will start with about 10 autonomous tractor-trailers and move to “tens” of trucks by the end of next year, Urmson said.

“This shift to our timeline will have a negligible financial impact and does not affect our scaling efforts on our path to self-funding," Urmson said.

Aurora also intends to haul freight without human drivers from Fort Worth to Phoenix later in 2025, Urmson said.

Aurora in August added nearly $500 million to its balance sheet with a capital raise in August, which the company expects to fund the initial phases of its strategy to scale up driverless trucking.

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