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We have drastically cut our spending during the pandemic, not by choice. Usually we take summer vacations to see family, eat out at more restaurants, drive a lot more and thus have higher gas and maintenance costs.
Since we stay in the house most of the week, our regular expenses have fallen drastically. I'm paying month end bills like the credit cards, etc., and the balances are all much lower than before the pandemic.
We were planning to buy a new car to replace a 20 year old car that is near the end of its life, but have put it off since that old car still runs fine and works perfectly for driving the dozens of miles per week we need vs the hundreds of miles previously.
I believe there are a number of households where savings has gone way up compared to prior to the pandemic.
There is a lot of pent up demand (we will travel when it's safer to do), and cash saved up by households that could be unleashed once we get past this virus, I feel.
One of the biggest lessons from this pandemic is how much money we spent without thinking about it, such as transportation costs, travel costs, entertainment costs (gosh I miss going to the movie theater), mundane every day costs like fancy clothes for work, etc. We spend so much money just to maintain the status quo..it's been pretty enlightening how we can save a lot more money by saving on daily commuting and other mundane activities.
That is perhaps why retirement can be a savings bonanza since retirees have far less daily expenditures than regular working folks.
Daily, about the same. I'm driving less, so the gasoline bill is lower.
I've got $1500 stimulus money tucked away in my savings account. So savings have grown by that much. I expect the feds to take it back in taxes, though.
Money is losing its value over time and this ill conceived stimulus is going to devalue it pretty severely, so the numbers in my savings account will stay the same, but the purchasing power will shrink.
The local government is going to have to pay for all the damage and expensive programs, so I am expecting the government to raise property taxes, thus dipping into my savings and reducing the amount that I have.
Daily expenditures have gone way down. Spouse and I have plus kids have been home since March so not much driving. We only use 1 car and filled it up for the 4th time last week. We did not go on a spring break vacation or summer vacation so that has saved us thousands of dollars alone. I noticed my CC bills have been much lower as well. As a family we don't go out to eat since March, but we do get takeout 1-2 times a week, but still a lot cheaper than going to eat at restaurants. As much as it's nice to save money, I really do wish we were back to things before CV19 came around.
Investments aside, yes, absolutely. I'm spending less on a lot of things like travel. I'm spending a lot more on takeout and dining out in general as we help small businesses stay afloat. I'll spend it all once we get out of this mess for sure. Probably on much needed vacations.
We are spending less eating out and travel but increased spending on hobbies .....we bought quite a few expensive new lenses for our photography hobby .....we also took some of what we didn’t spend and gave each of our 3 kids a distribution ...so we have not really seen a difference at all in the amount , just on where it goes
The wife and I joke about our PPP — i.e. pandemic prosperity plan. The federal and state governments hand out money and we bank it knowing full well that this foolishness will blow up in their faces when the gravy train ends.
Daily, about the same. I'm driving less, so the gasoline bill is lower.
I've got $1500 stimulus money tucked away in my savings account. So savings have grown by that much. I expect the feds to take it back in taxes, though.
Money is losing its value over time and this ill conceived stimulus is going to devalue it pretty severely, so the numbers in my savings account will stay the same, but the purchasing power will shrink.
The local government is going to have to pay for all the damage and expensive programs, so I am expecting the government to raise property taxes, thus dipping into my savings and reducing the amount that I have.
Two things;
First, stimulus money was to be spent to stimulate the economy,
Second, if money is losing its value over time, you definitely want to spend the stimulus money before it's worth less.
Part of those expensive programs was giving people money. Clearly they overspent since not everyone needs the money and some people are saving it.
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