Spending Plans
We’ve heard a lot of bad economic news lately, particularly for folks in the Midwest. Christmas Day is two months from today, and stores are already offering plenty of ways for you to spend money as the holiday shopping season becomes even more important for their financial survival.
Deloitte has released its 37th annual “Holiday Retail Survey”—and it found that we still plan to celebrate and spend money…but we’ll do it by cutting back on non-essentials.
Overall, holiday spending is expected to be flat year-over-year, with an average household spending $1,455 on gifts…but while we’ll spend the same amount, we’re buying fewer gifts.
And it’s quite a drop, from 16 gifts purchased on average last year, to only 9 anticipated this year. Blame inflation for much of that.
A further shift in spending comes in favor of experiences instead of presents. Spending on “experiences” will actually increase by 7% as opposed to last year. That includes entertaining at home, and socializing outside the home.
And some of those shiny new gifts will be gently used older gifts…nearly a third of us, 32%, say we’ll buy resale items this holiday season.
Other numbers suggest we’ll wrap fewer gifts, spend less time shopping, and visit fewer websites and apps, as well as fewer stores.
But in a brief spot of good news for retail stores, the share of in-store spending will go up slightly, from 33 to 35 percent.
Important to note, however, that given inflation…those dollars we spend may be stable in total, but we’re getting less for our money…and the profit margin of stores will in no way keep up with inflation.
