Newsflash: Personal savings increases to 5.6% in September!

[frugalecon]

http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/national/pi/pinewsrelease.htm

[Bart1ma3u5]

.2% increase in one month, atleast it is going in the right direction...

[strider3700]

mock them all you want.  I live in a province that has had a negative savings rate for a couple of years now.   The entire place is so screwed  but keep on going with the spending orgy.   I saw that new car loans hit a record high a couple of months ago.

[robotclown]

I was looking at my charts the other day, and for kicks I decided to see what kind of spending money I would have with a 10% savings rate.  And...I have no idea how I would spend that much in a month.  It's not like I make a ton of money either. 

[MoneyCat]

Main categories in which people easily lose control of spending: restaurants, coffee houses, bars and taverns, and clothing stores.  All of these categories are completely unnecessary too.  Even clothing can be purchased much, much more cheaply by buying used at thrift/consignment shops or buying new at warehouse stores or off eBay.  All of those categories are easily controlled if people weren't so afraid to really tackle their personal finances.

[frugalecon]

Main categories in which people easily lose control of spending: restaurants, coffee houses, bars and taverns, and clothing stores.  All of these categories are completely unnecessary too.  Even clothing can be purchased much, much more cheaply by buying used at thrift/consignment shops or buying new at warehouse stores or off eBay.  All of those categories are easily controlled if people weren't so afraid to really tackle their personal finances.

I think I might add vehicles to this list...people end up buying more than they need by financing rather than paying cash. At a family gathering, the subject of credit scores came up, and I commented that I didn't need to worry about how mine affected my access to credit, since I didn't plan to borrow any more money after the mortgage was retired. My sister said, "well, you will still need car loans." It wouldn't even occur to her that paying cash for a car is an option. I kept my mouth shut.

[sisca]

The problem with averages is that they are just that, averages. One guys saving 50 % and 9 guys saving nothing gives you an average of 5 %, yet it is totally meaningless to talk about averages. If the one guy increases his savings rate to 55 %, the average rises to 5.5 %. Still nothing to cheer about for society as a whole.

[Albert]

They could try to find out what are mean savings instead of average.

In my experience the most common categories for spending too much money is accommodation and transportation.