Credit Card Review Blog

Instead of Whipping Out the Plastic

Instead of Whipping Out the Plastic…

More and more consumers are saving. Instead of cashing in on the next big sale, consumers are starting to avoid shopping malls altogether. In the past few months, the country has been saving more and spending less.

This is definitely having an affect on retail stores. 2008’s holiday shopping season was supposed to be completely dismal. Sales ended up higher than expected. Although things have just gone downhill from there. Retail sales have been in a slump for several months. To make matters worse, poor retail sales are beginning to affect Wall Street in a drastic way.

The value of stocks have continued to decreased, in part to dismal retail sales. Consumers aren’t signing up for new credit card lines and they certainly aren’t using the ones they already have like they used to. Instead, more and more people are turning to alternative financial strategies. What sort of strategies? Saving.

Those who have steady and stable jobs (and even some who don’t) have begun to save, and save, and save. Hundreds of “pro-saving” organizations have been set up around the country. These organizations strongly encourage people to save and reward those who join the organization and save.

For instance, Utah residents have started a program called, “Utah Saves.” So far, Utah savers have already put aside hundreds of thousands of dollars. The citizens of Akron, OH were chosen to be a “Savings Community” by the United States Conference of Mayors and American Saves (America Saves is a nonprofit organization that strongly encourages citizens to save and sponsors state-by-state savings groups like Utah Saves).

When chosen to be a “Saving Community,” the citizens of Akron were challenged to collectively save $1 million dollars in six short months. Well, the six months is over and Akron has saved well over $1 million. Because of their efforts to save, Akron’s amount of debt has been drastically reduced and citizens there are in a more stable financial position than they were six months ago.

Stories like this are popping up all over the nation. Sadly, it took this major recession for people to stop spending outside of their means and start saving. Think about it…are you going to be a saver or are you going to continue to whip out your credit card?