• Two new BofA reports warn holiday spending may tighten as prices keep rising.
• Shoppers may feel the pinch as inflation, tariffs, and higher costs put a strain on their budgets.
• Electronics and jewelry could see the sharpest pullback as tariffs drive up prices.

Santa won't be the only one tightening his belt this year — the American consumer is already feeling the pinch, and many haven't even finished digesting their Thanksgiving stuffing. As we head into Black Friday weekend, the forecast for holiday shoppers may be chilly: prices on consumer goods are rising faster than is comfortable for many gift-givers, according to two recent reports by Bank of America.

Sixty-two percent of the more than 2,000 respondents to Bank of America's holiday survey, conducted in late summer, said they expected financial strain tied to holiday expenses, and 58% say gifts feel more expensive.

More than half of the respondents pointed to tariffs as a suspected cause. The firm found that tariffs announced this spring likely contributed to price increases in categories such as electronics and jewelry, goods often purchased as holiday gifts.

Holiday spending per household is up about 6% according to the bank's card data, yet retail transaction volumes have declined slightly over the course of the year. The takeaway: shoppers are shelling out more, only to walk away with less.

BofA's reports also point to a widening chasm in how those along different income brackets are likely to experience the season's bounty.

Higher-income households continue to show spending and wage growth that outpace everyone else. Many white-collar professionals, such as Wall Street investment bankers, are expected to have surging bonus years, according to forecasts, which is likely to hand six-figure year-end incentive pay for higher-income earners.

Buyer's remorse

For everyone else, the most wonderful time of the year is already fomenting stress at the checkout counter.

Electronics spending per transaction jumped nearly 8% in a single month after the spring tariffs, and jewelry spending rose about four percentage points after an August tariff announcement, the bank found. Add in record-high gold prices this year — which have made gold-based pieces costlier — and suddenly, holiday gift-giving has relinquished some of its luster.

With rising prices leaving some shoppers with fewer items to buy, survey respondents say they're getting more selective about who will end up on their "naughty" or "nice" lists.

Thirty-eight percent say they'll only buy gifts for immediate family and close friends, while 23% have agreed with relatives to scale back their gift-giving.

Among those feeling financial strain, 87% plan to shop at discount stores to counter rising prices, and 51% say they'd consider gifting a "dupe," a cheaper imitation of a luxury item. More than half said they planned to kick off their shopping sprees earlier than usual to spread out expenses, the survey found.

Card data showed that spending by high earners increased roughly 3% over the past year, compared with less than 1% for lower-income households. The firm said wage growth followed a similar split — after-tax pay rose about 4% for higher earners, but only about 1% for those at the bottom. Goldman Sachs, meanwhile, is warning that the labor market is softening across tech, manufacturing, and other sectors, which could squeeze those already on the edge.

That means, with prices climbing and paychecks under pressure, holiday shoppers may be left wondering who's actually going to come down the chimney this year: Santa Claus with a sack of toys, or the Grinch, offering only an inflationary pinch.

• The inaugural Stissing House x Substack Pie Fest took place in November.
• There were 33 pies entered for 14 judges — including Martha Stewart — to choose from.
• According to James Beard award-nominated chef Clare de Boer, judges were between two pies.

I've been living in the US for 15 years, and there's one thing I really look forward to during the holidays: pies.

I'm always looking forward to having my favorites (apple pie is at the top of the list) and trying new ones brought by friends and family.

Now I have a new one to add to that list: the salted maple bourbon pie that Martha Stewart chose as the 2025 winner for the Stissing House x Substack Pie Fest.

The instructions are intimidating, but it sounds delicious

Nikki Freihofer describes her now-famous pie as "a pancake breakfast that grew up."

As someone who barely knows how to bake, I find the instructions a bit more intimidating than making pancakes.

The ingredients include a solid dose of high-quality bourbon, such as Bulleit, to impart a distinctive boozy flavor. (When she announced the winner, Stewart joked that she could've used more booze, but it sounds like plenty to me!)

The crust is pretty classic, though it has some spoonfuls of vodka in it, and it's all topped off with a vanilla mascarpone whip.

If you opt to make the whole pie from scratch, it requires starting with the crust the night before, as freezing overnight is recommended. And once all the steps are complete, it's recommended that the pie rest for four to six hours before concluding the process with a generous sprinkle of flaky Maldon sea salt.

Freihofer also described her pie as "the kind of thing people take one bite of and immediately start plotting their second," and I'm already planning to give it a try.

Take a look at the recipe, which Substack shared after the event.

• Cheez-It released a Build It Yourself Holiday House Kit for festive snack lovers.
• The kit includes cheese-flavored cookies, Cheez-Its, frosting, and candy decorations.
• Building the Cheez-It house is fun and quirky, offering a unique twist on holiday traditions.

It's the holiday season, which means it's the kick-off to building the traditional gingerbread houses for many families. I used to do this all the time as a kid growing up in the Midwest — it was just a normal part of the season.

I haven't really kept up the tradition as an adult, though. This year, I decided to give it another go for the first time in ages, but while I'm still making a holiday house out of food, it's not going to be made of gingerbread.

Enter Cheez-It's new Cheez-It Build It Yourself Holiday House Kit. Yep, you read that right. It's a holiday kit to make a house made of Cheez-Its. When a friend posted this on his Facebook page, I felt compelled to try it.

I had no idea what was in store at the time.

The kit was harder to find than I expected

I ordered one from Walmart online. It was supposed to cost under $16 for a single pack before shipping, but by the time I checked out, it came to about $35 — Walmart resellers had already snatched them up and driven the price up. About a week later, the kit finally arrived.

When I opened the box, I found two snack-sized packets of Cheez-Its, a bag of frosting, some candy bits in the shapes of holiday items (a gingerbread-looking person, a round dot, and candy canes), and a sealed platform with some orange cookie house parts.

There were a total of five separate types of pieces inside. It was unclear if the white bag of frosting contained sugar or white cheddar cheese.

Building the house was easy

I recruited a friend to join in on the fun, and the first thing we did was flip the kit over to see if there were any instructions. There was a QR code that linked to a short video, so we watched that before getting started. It walked us through the assembly and showed a few examples from other people's kits — most of them looked like more traditional cookie houses. With some guidance and a bit of inspiration, we were finally ready for the real fun to begin.

I opened the platform that came with the orange cookies. The box said they were cheese-flavored, and while I wasn't ready to taste anything yet, I was curious — so I gave one of the house pieces a sniff. I can confirm it smelled exactly like cheese and cookies. A faint mix of cheddar and sugar cookie sweetness.

The kit instructed me to massage the frosting packet before opening it, so I did. And once I squeezed some out, I realized it was just like the frosting in a regular holiday house kit — more like cake icing than anything resembling cheese.

The kit instructed us to use the frosting to put the orange cookie house together first. This was done by taking the frosting and connecting the house pieces together. There was a piece of the house that needed to be broken off to help the roof be put in place. That piece was used to make a chimney. I had to hold the roof together for a few minutes before the rest of the house could be created.

After the house was put together, it was just a matter of adding the finishing touches with the decorations. This meant using the frosting to put Cheez-Its and the other candy bits onto the house.

We had leftovers after building the house

We started getting the hang of things at this point, and there seemed to be a lot more Cheez-Its than we needed. We could have probably used more candy bits.

The finished house only used one pack of Cheez-Its. I had plenty of leftover frosting afterward, which I put on some Cheez-Its to taste. While the frosting (which was akin to cake-type frosting on a pastry strudel) was sweet, it didn't taste incredibly weird paired with the Cheez-Its. It wasn't the worst, but it wasn't the best, unlike the apple pie-flavored mac and cheese from Kraft I tried earlier this month, which was delicious.

Even though the whole thing felt a little ridiculous, I didn't think it was the worst project I'd ever worked on. It still had most of the usual elements you'd find in a typical holiday house kit. It was basically the same process — just with Cheez-Its added into the decorating mix.

When you really think about it, Cheez-Its — strange as they may sound (and look) — aren't all that outlandish. I've made gingerbread houses with pretzels before, and when you compare the salty crunch of the pretzels to the sweetness of the gingerbread, it's not much different.

In the end, it was a fun activity to get my friends and me started on the festive season together.

• WARN-related layoff filings have risen to their highest levels in nearly a decade, Goldman found.
• Outplacement firm data showed corporate layoff announcements peaking outside a recession.
• Goldman said it has not concluded that AI is driving a significant share of recent job cuts.

Goldman Sachs researchers are warning that the US labor market may be starting to soften as private-sector data show a growing wave of layoffs across several industries, the Wall Street bank said in a new report.

The firm said state filings related to planned mass layoffs have surged to their highest level since 2016, excluding the pandemic spike — the sharpest increase Goldman has tracked in nearly a decade.

Layoff announcements compiled by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a firm that tracks corporate job cuts, had by October climbed to a level previously unseen outside of a recession, the report noted, citing cuts in sectors like tech, industrial goods, and food and beverage as factors that drove the increase.

Goldman's economists said the combination of rising layoff signals is concerning — representing "growing signs of weakness" — because workers are increasingly struggling to secure new employment, making rebounding after losing a paycheck especially difficult.

Even some of corporate America's biggest names haven't evaded the job market's cooling. Amazon, for example, announced plans this fall to eliminate about 14,000 corporate jobs as it seeks to streamline and embrace AI.

"A sustained increase in layoffs would be particularly concerning because the hiring rate for workers is low and it is harder than usual for the unemployed to find jobs," economists Manuel Abecasis and Pierfrancesco Mei wrote.

Decade-high layoff signals

The state filings Goldman cited — known as Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN, notices — are required by companies with more than 100 employees in advance of instituting layoffs. They're a helpful indicator of employer behavior, signaling when cuts may be around the corner.

On top of the rise in WARN notices, the bank found that the leadership of more publicly traded companies had begun openly discussing potential layoffs on recent earnings calls with shareholders. Taken together with the Challenger outplacement data, the picture strongly suggests more companies are considering trims and efficiencies in the coming months.

Still, the bank said weekly jobless claims remain low, which means government reports might not yet reflect the full extent of deterioration in the labor market. A recent Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report for September surpassed economists' expectations.

But Goldman noted that claims tend to lag private layoff trackers by about two months, which could hint at a potential uptick in federal data about job losses as winter continues.

And although concerns have grown about whether artificial intelligence is pushing companies to reduce headcount, Goldman said current evidence does not show that AI is meaningfully driving the latest layoffs.

"While AI may be increasingly considered in workforce decisions," the Goldman researchers wrote, "clear evidence of layoffs directly motivated by AI remains limited."

• The Wang Fuk Court fire has killed at least 75 people, with another 76 missing, Hong Kong officials said.
• The fire is under control, Hong Kong's chief executive John Lee Ka-chiu said.
• Three executives of the construction firm that built the tower have been arrested.

The deadly fire that ripped through the Wang Fuk Court apartment complex in Hong Kong's Tai Po district has claimed the lives of dozens, displaced hundreds, and led to the arrests of three local executives.

At least 75 people have died from the fire, which began Wednesday afternoon, local time, and eventually tore through seven of the complex's eight towers. Roughly 4,600 people live in the complex, and nearly 300 are still missing, and 76 are injured, Hong Kong leaders have said.

Among the injured, 11 are firefighters, and Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region John Lee Ka-chiu said at least one firefighter has died as a result of the blaze.

The devastating fire, which is now under control, according to Hong Kong authorities, is one of the deadliest in recent memory and has already surpassed the death toll from London's 2017 Grenfell Tower fire, which killed 72 people.

Hong Kong authorities have said materials on the outside of the building did not meet fire safety standards, and three executives from the construction firm that built the towers have been arrested for manslaughter.

"We have reason to believe that those in charge of the construction company were grossly negligent," said Eileen Chung, a senior superintendent of police, during a press conference.

Parts of the building were under renovation, with bamboo scaffolding and a flammable safety net on the outside of the towers.

The aftermath of the fire is being felt locally and internationally. K-pop awards show, Mnet Asian Music Awards, being held in a Hong Kong stadium on Friday night, canceled its red carpet but still plans to proceed with the event. Pope Leo sent a telegram to the bishop in Hong Kong expressing his sympathies for the victims.

For those affected, the government has established an assistance fund where each household receives roughly $1,300, which is less than the average monthly rent in the Tai Po region.

• Many parents I kknow resist letting their kids quit activities, thinking it reflects poorly on them.
• I want my kids to quit activities and friendships that no longer suit them.
• I think allowing kids to quit builds confidence, maturity, and helps them evaluate their own needs.

Not a week goes by that I don't hear a parent saying their child is miserable in an extracurricular activity, an advanced placement class, or even a friendship. That parent often then remarks that they won't allow their child to quit. It seems that parents have inherited and sustained the idea that letting a child quit is a moral failure and reflects poorly on the parent with a resounding, "I'm not raising a quitter!"

I am taking the opposite approach with my own four kids, two of whom are teens and two are tweens. I believe there are perfectly acceptable reasons to quit — the main of which is that quitting can be a healthy habit. After all, as an adult, I have no problem quitting a job, a relationship, a volunteer position, or even holiday plans if they no longer serve me and my family.

Ultimately, I ask, why should I have a different standard for my children than I have for myself? If the goal of parenting is to raise well-adjusted, well-functioning adults, why not let them quit?

I let my kids quit sports

Last year, one of my teens was enrolled in an elite, short-term sports program. We were convinced that the tough love she was getting on the court would help her have more grit and build skills.

Our child, who thrives with calm coaching and more private criticism, was miserable with the coaching style of this team. She asked to quit, and we readily agreed because she was reporting to us that she wanted to completely give up her beloved sport. The mental anguish wasn't worth the "elite" program.

I'm happy to report that quitting worked. She's still in her sport, just not at an unhealthy capacity.

I let my kids quit relationships

Many family-to-family relationships develop because parents want to spend time with other kids' parents, but the kids? Sometimes they grow apart or never even liked each other at all. I try not to force my kids to stay in these uncomfortable situations.

Quitting a relationship can be a quiet fade; it doesn't have to be loud and dramatic. We want our kids to evaluate relationships and understand what is and isn't healthy. The same goes for dating relationships. It's OK to break up with someone who simply isn't a match, rather than wasting time and energy.

I have shared with my kids how I felt two of my own friends stopped supporting me when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and how it was better for me to let them go than to implore them to hang in there with me. I hope they'll do the same if faced with a similar situation.

I let my kids quit classes

Once kids reach high school, they have more freedom to change their schedules, even a few weeks into a class. One of my daughters quit a science class because there was far too much math, a subject she struggles with, than she expected there would be. Just because a kid is qualified to take an advanced placement or dual-credit class does not mean the prestige is worth the sacrifices they may have to endure.

As a college teacher, I have seen far too many students hit burnout from taking too many classes or enrolling in classes that are over their heads, resulting in plummeting grades and deteriorating mental health. I want my high schoolers to learn to bail now, when necessary, rather than suffer in silence.

There's also the benefit of them carefully looking at all the pros and cons, weighing their options, and making a decision that works for them. This builds confidence and is empowering, propelling them into greater maturity.

I let my kids call in

We are fortunate to live in a state that offers students excused mental health days. If my kiddo is feeling overwhelmed, they are allowed to use the days they need, without a penalty from me or the school. Though this technically isn't quitting, I do think it's a short-term "quit" for a day to recharge and evaluate what they need moving forward.

In my opinion, perfect attendance awards are inherently ableist. I don't want my kids to be rewarded for being pushed to (or over) their breaking point. Instead, my children are learning to gauge how their bodies and brains are feeling, attuning to their intuition, and yielding to the warning signs that they need to take a pause.