Gallup is all in a lather that holiday spending remains about 20% below last year’s poor showing.
Rather than moping that hard-pressed consumers aren’t flinging money all over malls, Gallup should look for the good news.
The graph shows a slight dip last week. If you look back at earlier weeks, that dip falls in an “on” week for biweekly paychecks and remains above all but the highest levels of spending prior to Thanksgiving. A lot of folks won’t see another paycheck before Christmas Eve.
To me, that means that folks out there still have hoarded cash but are waiting for deals and discounts before next week’s final dash through the stores.
This weekend should also see final online orders, while folks have the cash and there is still time enough to ship.
Retailers may not be happy heading into the last week of Christmas — they may need to work extra hard to convince folks to part with that hoarded cash.
But anybody cheered by prudent spending should have a very merry Christmas indeed.
That includes me.
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Tags: Business, consumer spending, economics, holiday shopping, personal budgeting
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