It seems everything costs more these days, and now you can add to that list, begrudgingly, Thanksgiving dinner.
Every year the Wisconsin Farm Bureau in Madison crunches the numbers to determine the cost of a traditional turkey dinner for 10 with stuffing, cranberries, and pumpkin pie. And this year the bill came to $50.86, a little over 5 percent more than the feast cost a year ago.
A lot of the increase can be attributed to the growing international demand for dairy products this year and subsequent higher prices for them.
The good news is, “The survey is catching what is likely the tail end of a wave of high dairy prices,” the bureau’s Communications Coordinator Amy Eckelberg said in a statement released last week. “Dairy is a cyclical business, and all indications are that dairy prices will decline in 2015.”
More good news for today: Higher meat prices in 2014 didn’t include turkey. Wisconsin’s average price for a 16-pound turkey came in at $23.36, only 96 cents higher than last year, Eckelberg said.
While the total cost of a traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner in 2014 comes out to only about $5 per person, and while a “wholesome family feast is still a better deal than a trip through the drive-thru,” as Eckelberg said, 5 percent more is still, frustratingly, 5 percent more.
And it’s all the more reason to enjoy and be thankful for every single morsel.
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