WWL) Yea, it’s not yet Thanksgiving but consumers are already flooding stores for gifts and are projected to spend, on average, 1007 dollars this year for this holiday season, up 4 percent over last year’s totals.

National Retail Federation Spokesperson Ana Smith says we’ve never seen a November and December this big.

“Our average spent this year of over 1000 dollars is absolutely the highest that we’ve seen in our consumer survey for the holiday season.”

21 percent of consumers say they already started their shopping back in October.

On a whole it’s the biggest year on record as the economy is on the up-tick and some customers are finding themselves with a little more cash in their pockets than they used to have. Smith says 720 billion dollars will be spent this season.

“Our holiday forecast is coming in between 4.3 and 4.8 percent over total sales from 2017.”

Gift cards top the popularity list, followed by clothing, then books, movies, music, and electronics.

That thousand dollar average will be split up among your traditional gifts, and party goods you purchase to make that family get-together memorable. Smith folks are even spending a little more on themselves.

“Gifts which is around 638 dollars, non-holiday gift items, 215 dollars, then self-gifting items, which is around 155 dollars.”

Online shopping is on the rise, with 55 percent of customers saying they plan to both shop online and in store.