Rex Trulove
Since January 2017, the US economy has been steadily gaining ground. The average wages are up, the unemployment rate is way down, more people are working, consumer confidence and business confidence is up, and, as a whole, people are doing better now than they have in years. In fact, there are now more jobs than there are workers to fill them.
With all of this, and granted, this is the US and not the rest of the world, I thought it would be interesting to see if and how your spending habits for this holiday season have/will change.
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Question of
Compared to the amount of money you spent in the recent past (the last couple of years), how are much are you spending this holiday season?
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I’m spending less than I did in the past
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I’m spending about the same as I have in the past
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I’m spending more than I did in the past
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I’m spending a lot more than I did in the past
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I don’t buy anything special during the holidays
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Question of
Do you feel that you’ve directly been impacted by the substantial increase in the US economy and decrease in unemployment?
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Yes
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No
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I am just not into Christmas this year, I gave a few families money off their rent and that is about it.
We are better off this year than we were last year and our Christmas will reflect that. It is also a big church event. They’ve even talked me into singing in the choir for the celebration they’ll be having a few days before Christmas.
This is a difficult time of the year so my spending is less each year.
I think that is one reason we start as early as we do. We had a bunch of gifts by the first of November and most of our Christmas meal makings were either in the pantry or in the freezer by then.