Don't people save for things anymore?

[Carol in Cal.]

It's funny, when I was a kid it was pretty common to hear things like:

We are saving up for a new car.

or 

We are saving to buy a new stove next year.

I haven't heard that construction in years.  Is it because everything is going on credit cards?  Or because people don't talk about things they want until they have gotten them?

I always thought it was helpful, because then others would let you know when there was a sale on what you were looking for, or if they ran across a used model that might suit.

[Liz CA]

6 minutes ago, Carol in Cal. said:

It's funny, when I was a kid it was pretty common to hear things like:

We are saving up for a new car.

or 

We are saving to buy a new stove next year.

I haven't heard that construction in years.  Is it because everything is going on credit cards?  Or because people don't talk about things they want until they have gotten them?

I always thought it was helpful, because then others would let you know when there was a sale on what you were looking for, or if they ran across a used model that might suit.

 

Couple of things come to mind: The "I want it now" mind set and yes, credit cards make this possible. I am not poo-pooing credit cards all together because sometimes it does enable you to take advantage of a sale / offer when cash flow is tighter as long as you know you will be able to pay it off comfortably.

But this also requires some measure of self-control and this is an asset that fewer and fewer people seem to possess along with an unwillingness to postpone gratification..

[Pawz4me]

We don’t really save for specific things. We do save in general, and thus usually have enough to cover whatever we need. I think many people nowadays are cognizant of keeping at least a small emergency fund to cover the occasional appliance replacement and things like that. 

[Jean in Newcastle]

Sometimes we save.  Sometimes we see a really good no interest sale and buy right away.  In fact, we did both for our new kitchen range.  We've been saving for years for a kitchen remodel that would include a new stove since ours was 40 years old.  But our 40 year old range didn't want to wait and when the entire oven door came off in my  hand. . .   we went shopping.  We could have taken part of the money out from the kitchen remodel fund but they had a zero interest sale that allows us to pay it over two years with absolutely no penalty.  So we kept the money in the remodel fund and am paying month by month on the range (which we can afford) with zero interest so that by the time the interest kicks in, we will have paid it all off.  But it never occurred to me that I should outline all of that to my friends and family.  I just told them that we got a new range. 

[klmama]

I hear it occasionally, but mostly from younger people who are trying not to go into debt.  In my area, older people don't seem to discuss finances as much.

[lavender's green]

People have made a lot of good points, but I'll add one more: DH gets nice bonuses 2-3 times a year. We live on his take-home pay (things like retirement, HSA, and college savings are taken out automatically) and use the bonuses for appliances, furniture, vacations, or whatever else we might need a chunk of money for. Sometimes if the deal is good we'll finance or carry a little on a credit card, to be paid off with the next bonus. I don't know that we've actually worked hard on saving since we were trying to get a down payment on the house. This system is highly dependent on DH's company and bonus schedule, so it won't work for everyone and probably won't last forever, but we have a good system in place.

[HomeAgain]

I think it depends on who you're talking to.

Those my age, and in much of our circles, have established their own homes, have savings, and aren't living so close to their paychecks anymore.  15 years ago, when we were younger and still trying to make our way through the normal part of adult acquisition, those conversations were more frequent.  We don't have to worry as much about things now.  We're old. ?  We have furniture that will last, cars we own and take care of past the average age, and entertainment.  We don't need to save up for as much.  Our two later things will be a generator and new water heater, but both of those have a few years to wait and it gives us time to find a good price and save slowly.

[elegantlion]

I do hear people talking about saving for a car or a house or travel, but other things not so much. Part of it is that buy it now mentality, part of it is things just don't last like they used to. How many threads do we have about washers or dishwashers, people may want to save to buy or nudge an appliance to last a few more years, but more often than not, they just die. In the early 90s, I bought a Krups coffee pot. It lasted about 18 years. Since then I've been through at least 3 coffee pots because they all died - one of them was not cheap either. 

 

[Jean in Newcastle]

Older people have also learned to not discuss finances as it brings out the judgy people.  It's really nobody's business how I afford my appliances or cars or whatever.  Unless I have my hand out or something. . .

[LuvToRead]

I know lots of people who save up for something, myself included.  I think it just isn't talked about a lot.  It can come off either a bit braggy or judgmental (even if the intent is sincere) if you talk about purchasing a vehicle with cash. I would never mention to someone I know who is financially struggling that I just spent cash on a major purchase.  I probably wouldn't mention it anyone, to be honest.  It really isn't anyone's business.  

[Myra]

In  addition, prices have gotten out of control.   It is hard to save enough to pay cash for a house, college tuition, cars, etc.  Many people are on a fixed income or min. wage income and are living pay check to paycheck.  The only way to get basic  stuff is through credit card or financing.  I am not talking about frills but just the basics food, housing, college, cars. insurance.... Although  are very frugal and save as much as is possible, we have to resort to zero-interest financing, an at times, higher interest rates. to get by. 

 

 

 

[HS Mom in NC]

The only people I know who talk about saving up for something is young couples saving to buy a house who have to decline pricier group invitations.  Otherwise I assume significant numbers of people are saving for things, they just don't tell me about it because why would they?

[Jean in Newcastle]

I don't understand the prejudice against zero percent financing.  It's basically layaway but with us being allowed to have the thing right away.  Honestly, it's a super good deal.  You do have to be disciplined though - once interest kicks in then it's not a good deal.  But if I take the total sum and divide it into however many months I have before interest kicks in, then I can pay it off and not pay a lick of interest. 

[Frances]

43 minutes ago, Pawz4me said:

We don’t really save for specific things. We do save in general, and thus usually have enough to cover whatever we need. I think many people nowadays are cognizant of keeping at least a small emergency fund to cover the occasional appliance replacement and things like that. 

This is us. We save every month, but I never think of it as saving for anything specific. We’ve never bought a new car and likely never will, as we’ve generally had really good luck with used ones. And we’ve never paid a cent in credit card interest, although we put everything possible on them for airline rewards.

[Carol in Cal.]

5 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

I don't understand the prejudice against zero percent financing.  It's basically layaway but with us being allowed to have the thing right away.  Honestly, it's a super good deal.  You do have to be disciplined though - once interest kicks in then it's not a good deal.  But if I take the total sum and divide it into however many months I have before interest kicks in, then I can pay it off and not pay a lick of interest. 

I do that sometimes.

We got a credit card 4 years ago that had free credit card balance transfers for the first three months and then zero interest on balances or purchases for the first 15 months.  I can't remember exactly why we had big credit card balances at the time, but I think we had just charged a bunch of college stuff for DD, AND some insurance bills, AND some unexpected car repairs.  We didn't generally carry a credit card balance, EVER, but applying for this credit card meant that we could do so for free.  We also bought some much-needed appliances at the January sales, but we didn't go crazy--we got a dented, returned, but warrantied fridge for a basement use, and that was also when we got our POJunk washer and dryer, because I assumed that Maytags were all pretty OK and a dryer is a dryer (did not know about Speed Queen yet).  So, did the zero interest card lead us to make bad purchases?  No, but the appliance sales kind of rushed me into buying on these assumptions rather than double checking.  I probably would have done that anyway. 

We did pay the credit card off completely before the end of the no interest period, but it was nice to have that margin.  

[Arcadia]

46 minutes ago, Carol in Cal. said:

It's funny, when I was a kid it was pretty common to hear things like:

We are saving up for a new car.

or 

We are saving to buy a new stove next year.

 

When my husband and I were kids in the 70s, our parents generation saying they are saving for some big ticket item was taken as a reason for penny pinching. So other people would understand the cut down in eating out at restaurants, going to movies at opening night and etc. 

Now that we are in our mid 40s, saying we are saving to buy a stove that cost < $1.5k is going to get weird looks because the annual bonus would more than cover that for his colleagues. His parents expect us to take on a low interest car loan if we upgrade to a minivan or SUV, and have cash on hand for the down payment because that’s what they did when they had a $52k annual income before tax. 

Saving for kids college expenses and retirement is a given in my social circle so no one talks about it.  We do talk about kids extracurricular activities payments coming up and having to cut down on wants until the payments are all made and budgets are all double checked and tallied. 

[Katy]

We rarely discuss money at all with anyone.  Most of DH's coworkers live above their means. We purposely live below our means with the goal of DH retiring early. We have a couple of very close friends who we've known since we were all broke college students that we might mention the word budget with. At our last home our friends group was our church small group, which mostly had other families in their 30's and 40's. Most of that group took the Dave Ramsey class with us. After that class discussing budgeting and savings became more open, at least for a while. Then one of the families went on an obvious spending binge - multiple extravagant vacations, a couple plastic surgeries and 3 new cars in 6 months, which tampered discussing it a bit.  Then most of the group moved away due to job changes.

Generally we save for several things at once.  We have an emergency fund, we are planning a kitchen remodel and we need to redo the deck in the next year.  DH has some extra vacation and paid paternity leave he'll need to use up so we'll go on several cheap vacations in the next 14 months.  But part of that planning is spent along the way- like we knew since we moved in here the kitchen needs to be done before we put the house on the market again. We made a plan. We found an amazing deal on appliances and snapped them up, some of which are being stored in the garage because they don't fit with the cabinets in the current configuration. We found some slabs of reclaimed carrera marble at an estate sale and at ReStore and snapped them up, so we have the countertops planned, but we're still probably going to pay a company to configure them. I have a cabinet plan and initially planned on buying them from Ikea, though since then they've changed their cabinets a bit and Ana White's new kitchen is pretty much exactly what I wanted, so we may build them instead.  It depends on how good the next baby is with construction noise, and how chaotic it is around here with a new baby in the house.  If we decide it's worth paying more for lower quality cabinets for the sake of speed, we may buy from Ikea. By DIYing most of it and slowly storing stuff like appliances and stone that we got a good deal on I think we can make it look like a $30-40k remodel for less than $5k total, and that spending was spread over a few years.

But DH also has bonuses, and because they vary we use them to meet savings goals much faster than we would otherwise.  One year we upgraded my car, painted the whole interior of the house, redid the deck, and hired a contractor to handle half a dozen little things that were irritating me about the house that DH didn't have time to do himself, and I didn't know how to do myself. We'd been saving for all of those things, but a larger bonus than expected meant we could do them all at once instead of waiting another year like we'd planned.

[Pawz4me]

28 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

I don't understand the prejudice against zero percent financing.  It's basically layaway but with us being allowed to have the thing right away.  Honestly, it's a super good deal.  You do have to be disciplined though - once interest kicks in then it's not a good deal.  But if I take the total sum and divide it into however many months I have before interest kicks in, then I can pay it off and not pay a lick of interest. 

Here are some of the reasons

Granted not everyone will see those as legitimate reasons for them. And that's okay, of course.  But for others I'm sure they're very valid reasons for avoiding zero percent loans.

[lavender's green]

Forgot to add, it's just not much talked about in my circles. No one needs to know the ins-and-outs of how I pay for things, and I don't particularly care how my friends do it. Sure, we might vent to each other when everything breaks at once, but we don't get into the everyday nitty-gritty.

I do casually mention "oh, we need to save money for that" to the kids. Because it's easier than explaining budgets and anticipated bonuses, and gets them used to the idea that money doesn't grow on trees.

[marbel]

50 minutes ago, Jean in Newcastle said:

I don't understand the prejudice against zero percent financing.  It's basically layaway but with us being allowed to have the thing right away.  Honestly, it's a super good deal.  You do have to be disciplined though - once interest kicks in then it's not a good deal.  But if I take the total sum and divide it into however many months I have before interest kicks in, then I can pay it off and not pay a lick of interest. 

 

I think the part that scares people is the possibility of something going wrong causing a missed payment which will generate penalties, etc. Of course that depends on the contract. And for some, it's the discipline.  Better to for people to know and accept that they don't have the discipline to make it work, kwim?   I'm not disagreeing, just noting some reasons people don't like it.

But we have done this once or twice and it's worked out well for us.  Once, the agreement was kind of weird to me:  if we paid anything on it, the interest would kick in immediately. So we deferred 100% of the payment till we'd saved up the money to pay it off, then paid it near the end of the term.  (We also had other savings we could have tapped if some dire circumstance came up, but that would have involved some penalties.)  But, we never talked about it with people.  I grew up that those kinds of conversations were off limits outside family and possibly very close friends.  My folks didn't talk about money at all except in instructional ways to we kids. 

[LucyStoner]

28 minutes ago, Pawz4me said:

Here are some of the reasons

Granted not everyone will see those as legitimate reasons for them. And that's okay, of course.  But for others I'm sure they're very valid reasons for avoiding zero percent loans.

 

These are all legit concerns.  The companies wouldn’t offer them if they didn’t reasonably know a sizable percentage would end up paying interest.  

We have two things on interest free financing right now and I think I have been careful enough to use it to our advantage.  

Because we need a cushion right now, what I did when I purchased two things with deferred interest was to set the money for the purchase in our savings account ASAP.  

The items in question were non-negotiable (my laptop which all my work depends on and a W/D) and we bought at the low end of the market (within reason- my laptop has to run a giant piece of software).  Then if things really don’t go as planned (I failed to earn that money, which doesn’t seem to be the case) we can pay it off with the set aside funds before the end of the finance deal.  Because I had a reasonable certainty of earning additional money within the zero interest financing periods to pay off each but there are other financial uncertainties at play, I wanted the cash on hand in case the sh!t hit the fan.  Because when push comes to shove, I’d rather pay a interest on my laptop than not be able to feed my kids.  I wouldn’t do it for things we didn’t need but using the laudromat was costing $$$ + I couldn’t duct tape my old laptop back together one more time and it is a mechanism by which to earn money.  Why finance instead of pay cash?  In both instances the products were in a steeper sale if financed and we are in a tight spot in some ways so being able to defer the cost for 18-24 months has been a nice thing.  

[LucyStoner]

When I was a kid, I heard this from other kids. Like “my mom says we are saving for a car” or “dad says we are saving for a trip”.  I think what happened is that in our culture, adults rarely discuss this stuff outside the family.  But we do tend to tell our kids “not today, we are saving for a blah” and in turn many kids tell everyone every thing.  ? 

 

 

 

[kiwik]

I was saving for a new stove but am now having to spend all the money on car repairs.  Finances can be tricky and saving is often not the best way of getting something.

[catz]

We pay out of savings for everything.  Including new vehicles.   We have a mortgage that will be paid off within a year.  We have occasionally financed something very short term when there is a financial gain to do so.   I guess I would never say "we're saving for X" because we're always saving.  If my DH got laid off we'd be ok for a while. We've been saving for college since kids were born.  It's not a unique state for us to be saving.  Finances are pretty personal - I don't think about talking about them.  I might say something vaguely like "we hope to remodel the kitchen one of these days".  

I do think it is easy to overspend and over finance and lenders are more than happy to get you in over your head.   Our mortgage was a little more than half of what we would have qualified for years ago.  I can't imagine going higher.   And this is how our house will be paid off soon.  

[TravelingChris]

I do not talk about finances with others (except for family).  But what really annoys me is when people ask me why we don't ....   Like my son-in-law stating that we could afford an airplane (No, no we couldn't.  Not with our current expenses and savings and not without taking out money away from retirement savings which I don't even think we are allowed to do) or all the people who asked why we didn't travel to NZ to see dd when she was there in Study Abroad (we had spent our money sending her there and paying full price for private college that year).

I also do not want people asking why we are going on certain trips, etc.  Since I am disabled and both my parents died in early 60's and so did dh's mom, we are not waiting for retirement years to do our traveling-- we want to do our traveling while I am still able to do it and so is DH.   But do I need to be justifying to aquaintances anything?  No.  And I do not ask prying questions about finances to others either.

As to zero interest loans, I see no harm in them at all for us.  We have steady income and we do automatic bill pay.  We do automatic payments for lots of things that do have interest or other consequences too.

[Mergath]

My irl friends and I don't really have a lot of conversations that revolve around "things I'm going to buy." Unless it's an African safari or something amazingly cool. But if I got together with my friends and one of them was like, "We're saving up to buy a new dishwasher," it would seem a bit odd. That doesn't mean that none of us is saving our money, though.

[Faith-manor]

We have access to 0% interest cards for up to 18 months so we can break it into payments on the card. We are disciplined about doing it, and not buying anything that we can't pay off without the interest. So leaving money in the money market or whatever even if it doesn't earn much interest is still better than taking it out to pay cash. But that only works when one has the option.

We don't talk IRL about our finances with other people. The culture has become so "in your face" when there are differences of opinion on how to do things. Mostly I try to keep conversations to the weather, music and art, our rocket team, and if I have to, "So how 'bout those Wolverines?" Blech. But, it saves a lot of angst. I talk here a lot more openly, but then I've never identified myself or my exact location to more than about three people so there is still a measure of privacy.

[regentrude]

1 hour ago, kiwik said:

 Finances can be tricky and saving is often not the best way of getting something.

Huh? Could you elaborate on the bolded? 

If I don't save the money but spend it, I don't have it when I need to purchase xyz big ticket item. How else would be a better way? (If I put it on a cc card now, I have to save later to make the payments, so the saving gets just deferred)

[gardenmom5]

I have encountered people who openly mock/scorn those who "save up", or dont' buy something if they dont' have the cash - and that was 20 years ago when I started encountering people like that.

[Carrie12345]

I don’t talk about the details of my purchases. Except maybe when talking about selling curriculum to offset new purchases. 

[Pen]

 I definitely save for things, but I don’t think I tend to talk about it. 

[TechWife]

Why would anyone know about our personal finances, including whether or not we are savers?

[HS Mom in NC]

Tweens and teens I know talk about it and so do their parents.  It's typical in my circles to ask a parent at gift giving times, "Is there anything your child is saving up for? Would giving them cash be a good gift so we can contribute towards that purchase?" Often that's the age group that wants some sort of electronics or to go on a group travel opportunity like a class trip out of state or out of country and they're saving for it.

[Guest]

I saved up my credit card points in order to go to France for “free.” DD saved her money to be able to afford to pay for her part in the Study Abroad trip. DS saved up for a computer and he is saving up now, but he won’t tell me what his goal is (probably because it is either an unnecessary type of car or a fancy guitar). 

It is true I rarely or never frame purchases as, “we have been saving up to get a new family room set.” We have savings and we do set aside money but it isn’t tabbed for specific things. 

[rocassie]

We do, but it's often not for a specific time.  For example, our washer and dryer are 16 years old.  We know that we may possibly need to buy replacements in the next few years so I am squirreling money away in our savings account for it and other larger purchased items.  So far we have had the money when we needed it.  Rather than saving up to buy X next year, we are constantly saving money for X,Y,Z.  

[Garga]

We don’t save for anything specific.  We just save.  And then when something breaks, the money is sitting there waiting.  It’s in general saving for everything, not broken down into buckets for “dishwasher” or “car”.  

We’ve been able to always have the money already there when something breaks.  I suppose if we had just cleared out all our savings, and then the dishwasher broke, we’d hand wash the dishes and have to wait until the money piled up to buy the washer.  In that case, I would say, “We’re saving for a dishwasher.”  But usually we’re just saving for everything all the time.

[kitten18]

2 hours ago, regentrude said:

Huh? Could you elaborate on the bolded? 

If I don't save the money but spend it, I don't have it when I need to purchase xyz big ticket item. How else would be a better way? (If I put it on a cc card now, I have to save later to make the payments, so the saving gets just deferred)

I’m just guessing, but I wonder if she means saving for a specific thing. She gave the example of saving for a stove but she’s going to end up using that money for car repairs. 

We don’t save for specific things, we just have money in our checking/savings accounts that could cover appliances, car repairs, etc. 

[AngieW in Texas]

We don't really talk about saving up for anything specific.

All three of our adult children are at home right now. The youngest is starting back to school full time in the fall at the cc and then plans to transfer to one of the local universities (two within commuting distance that have the right major).

My two older girls have been socking their money away to purchase cars. Right now they are sharing the kid car. My middle dd has enough cash to buy a used car right now but it will completely drain her bank account, so she's taking her time shopping around and continuing to save. She is also looking for a job with advancement possibilities that pays better than what she's doing right now (which has no advancement possibilities at all, but does pay $11/hour).

My youngest just got a part-time job one month ago and is saving to buy a car next year.

[LucyStoner]

5 hours ago, regentrude said:

Huh? Could you elaborate on the bolded? 

If I don't save the money but spend it, I don't have it when I need to purchase xyz big ticket item. How else would be a better way? (If I put it on a cc card now, I have to save later to make the payments, so the saving gets just deferred)

 

If you need something before you can save up for it though, it can be better to finance it than go without.  My work laptop would be a good example:  can't earn money without it, can earn a fair bit with it, old laptop was beyond repair and we got this news right around when we had a larger financial emergency which required me to start adding new clients ASAP.  Fortunately, this was a modest expense overall.  Doing something else besides the work I could do with my laptop (say, getting an office job) and saving up would have been a foolish way to acquire the item because I would have been forgoing income while saving up.  So while generally saving up is the best option, it is not always the best or a viable option.  

[scholastica]

I wonder if it's because some people don't want to be seen as not being able to afford anything they want any time they want it? Just musing, but in a materialist/consumerist world not being able to acquire/consume all the time could be embarrassing if that's important to a person. It's not to me, so I don't know. 

We save for things, but we don't discuss finances in any detail with our friends. 

[Bootsie]

I think that some of it may be that the average items a household buys have changed considerably.  My grandmother saved to buy a refrigerator (she had an icebox she wanted to replace)--she never had a dishwasher or a clothes dryer.  My mom saved to buy a microwave!  It was a major addition to our household.  More items had mechanical programs that could be pieced and patched until one saved to replace the item.  Today it is more likely that the problem with an appliance is electronic--it either works or it doesn't.  So, unlike my mother who might have a problem where she had to make sure that the clothes dryer ran for no more than 10 minutes at a time or it would overheat until she could save to replace it, I am more likely to have a dryer that works or doesn't work.  So, I think more in terms of saving to be able to replace items when needed (whether it is the washer, the hot water heater, the oven, etc.) than saving up for a particular item that is '"on its last leg.."

[Tanaqui]

The only thing we're saving for is, um, everything. The second the younger kiddo goes to high school I'm finding a job, and I'm not saving a cent - every penny from my first year's income, first two year's income, first three year's income if necessary is going straight into the house - the kitchen overhead light, the roof, the furnace, the downstairs plumbing, overhauling the electric, the porch, the siding, the front door and doorbell, all the other doors, the piano. In that order. Anything that's left over is going into the mortgage. Thank goodness CUNY is now free for NYC residents under a certain income, because there's not much left after that!

So I don't talk about it. It's just too, too depressing.

But on your actual topic, I've seen more and more stores advertising layaway, which as a kid I always thought was a real old-fashioned, poor-people thing. I think more people are saving, they're just not discussing their finances with you.

[Tsuga]

For us, everything falls into three categories:

Category 1: We can have it right now. (Date night)

Category 2: We can have it at the end of the month. (New washer, car repair--for less affluent people, this is date-night level).

Category 3: We will not be able to save as fast as the price will rise so screw it, apparently we'll just take out a much larger mortgage / student loans / medical debt than we can ever pay off because what are we supposed to do, drive 4 hours to work or die or just give up and not get an education or something? I dunno. I don't even care. I'm so tired of trying to pretend like my future depends only on me. I saw the USSR fall apart. That could happen to us. Your whole life, just gone.

We make great money and have only been close to poor during the recession. But saving never really worked out. Prices would change (especially housing). Things would disappear. Everything just always seemed so unpredictable to us. Even saving for college, I just feel like... who knows. The government will probably raise the price by 1000% by the time we get there and we'll still have to give it all up for a single day of tuition and we won't get our kids through. I mean why not right? The world is a crazy, unpredictable, unfair place.

So no, I don't think as many people save. Why bother? Why bother when you're just staving off getting benefits for a few months? Get what you can while you can because if it all goes south, you will learn that in the contract you have signed away your firstborn child's soul to Google and yes, the Supreme Court will uphold that contract.

If you want to encourage reasonable long-term thinking you need a system that rewards it. Rule of law. Not fickle policy changes and economic uncertainty that is based on investor whims. Ask South America how extreme ideologies affect human behavior. (Hint: NOT IN A GOOD WAY.)

[Tap]

Sure, I save for things all the time. I save for them, use my credit card to pay for them to get the points and extra buyers protection, and pay off the credit card each month.  When I bought my car, the interest rate was 0.9%. It ended up being one extra payment at the end of my loan to pay for the interest.  Considering that it means I have more money in my savings for emergencies and it helps to keep my credit score up, it was worth it to my to take a loan instead of paying cash.  Sometimes just because you can pay cash for something, doesn't mean it is the best financial move. And just because I use my credit card, doesn't mean it isn't already  paid for with money in my savings account. 

[Jean in Newcastle]

At my socio-economic level I don't know anyone who doesn't save for things.  We don't really talk about it.  But I know that they do the same as I do because of little things they say now and then.  I do know of a couple of people who have gotten into debt especially when they were younger but I also know that they are paying off those debts because they have told me that much.  I don't know anybody who lives beyond their means or who are not financially savvy at least to a normal extent.  I also don't know anyone (me included) who hasn't made a financial goof or two in their life. 

[Liz CA]

4 hours ago, scholastica said:

I wonder if it's because some people don't want to be seen as not being able to afford anything they want any time they want it? Just musing, but in a materialist/consumerist world not being able to acquire/consume all the time could be embarrassing if that's important to a person. It's not to me, so I don't know. 

We save for things, but we don't discuss finances in any detail with our friends. 

 

I think this can be a huge factor - keeping up with the Jones'.

Since most of my clientele is in the 20 -40 range, I do often hear of mind boggling financial decisions that have long-term consequences. Maybe my view is a little skewed by this. 

 

[RoundAbout]

I think most people don't discuss their finances. I only hear this when people are opting out of a social event or group trip because they want to make it clear it isn't personal (ie. "Aww... sorry we can't do a beach weekend but we're saving up for a big family vacation this year." or "I'd love to go to out to dinner, but our car is on its last legs and we need to tighten our belt for a few months."

[Soror]

No, people do not save like they used to, it isn't just that people don't talk about it. There is a lot of commentary on the why. I think consumerism plays a role- our house are bigger and fancier now, even for the same size family. We have more things we consider necessities. Ironically, the percentage of our income spent on food has decreased.  (there are lots of articles and graphics on the savings rate I just picked this one b/c I like how it represented it- I have not studied the org. that put it out)

[scholastica]

46 minutes ago, soror said:

No, people do not save like they used to, it isn't just that people don't talk about it. There is a lot of commentary on the why. I think consumerism plays a role- our house are bigger and fancier now, even for the same size family. We have more things we consider necessities. Ironically, the percentage of our income spent on food has decreased.  (there are lots of articles and graphics on the savings rate I just picked this one b/c I like how it represented it- I have not studied the org. that put it out)

I have heard the saying that one generation’s luxury is the next generation’s necessity. If you look at the number of luxuries we’ve invented in the last 20 years, ouch, that’s expensive. 

[shawthorne44]

I think what happens is that as you get older, the things you save up for get bigger.   For example, we don't explicitly save up for vacations since we are pretty frugal there and it can come from general savings.  But, we just learned that our furnace is on its last leg.   THAT we will be saving up for.