To Thrift or Not To Thrift?
I read, with great interest, an article in the August 3 edition of Brandweek in which David Kenny, managing partner of Publicis Groupe’s VivaKi, stated:
“People are going to emerge from the current recession forever changed. The global recession has changed them. Environmental realities have changed them. New global leadership has changed them.”
In the next paragraph, Google CEO Eric Schmidt says just the opposite, arguing that those who think consumer frugality is here to stay “don’t understand the American psyche.” Quoted from an interview at the Cannes Lions Advertising Festival this summer, Dr. Schmidt went on to say “the moment people feel more comfortable, they’ll go back to spending large amounts of money—which is the American pastime.”
When Schmidt speaks, you gotta listen. (He does have a vested interest in consumer credit card debt, it must be noted.) And yet I believe we are changed. The most recent data available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that the U.S. personal saving rate has climbed by 3.7 percentage points since the recession began, from 1.5 percent in fourth quarter of 2007 to 5.2 percent in the second quarter of 2009, a relative increase of almost 350 percent.
Perhaps the change will come simply because credit has become so expensive, and cash is in short supply. But as difficult as this recession has been, it does feel as if a bit of the Jones-chasing has lessened. Like many Americans, I am spending more time at home, more time with my family, and I am more focused on enjoying the experience, rather than rushing off for the next acquisition.
And that is a change for the better.
