Early January brings a small flood of women into Erica McCain’s financial services office near Cincinnati, Ohio. Many come to borrow against their retirement after bingeing on pre-Christmas sales.
The most recent holiday spending poll by Gallup shows that American adults expect to spend about $720 on gifts, up 3 percent from last year. That’s between the $866 that was spent in 2007, right before the economic meltdown, and 2008 when holiday spending dropped to a recent-memory low of $616.
But while holiday spending reflects some economic trends, consumers often feel buyer’s remorse following seasonal gift shopping. Ms. McCain said in her 15 years of providing financial services, she’s seen a lot of women in her Cincinnati-area office who went overboard during the holidays, “spending money on items that won’t even be remembered down the road.”
“We live in a time that if we want something, most people just go get it. They find a way. I think it’s imperative not to take shopping too far,” said Ms. McCain, who wrote “Ladies with Loot,” a 2014 book about women and how they spend their money. “I know people, women especially, who don’t enjoy the holidays at all.”
WalletHub just released a list showing the biggest states for personal spending overall, not just during the holidays. The top five include Mississippi, Idaho, New Mexico, Alabama and Utah, adjusted by income and cost of living.
“Blowing cash appears to be the new American pastime. Between 2010 and 2020, global spending will increase 43 percent from $28 trillion to $40 trillion, according to a report from consulting firm A.T. Kearney, and the U.S. will account for an entire quarter of the growth pie,” the WalletHub article said.
On safari
Black Friday got its name because it’s the day retailers expect to finally put their bottom line in the black, said Dan Cook, a professor of childhood studies and sociology at Rutgers University-Camden. He’s also the former chairman of the American Sociological Association’s section on consumers and consumption. For many of those who are shopping, he said, it will be “red” Friday because they’ll go into debt to make purchases.
He thinks that from a social and cultural perspective, holiday shopping — and especially the big-event sales like Black Friday — have an element of sport to them.
“For a lot of people, it’s kind of a pursuit — pursuit of a deal that may or may not exist. There’s an element of hunting, in the sense of capturing something. Capturing a moment, making something special about what are essentially mass-produced and globalized products.”
Popular retailers typically carry the things they did before the sale, so there’s not much of a new-frontier feel, he noted. What is fun for lots of folks is the hope that they’ll find a deal.
“There’s a certain element of thrift and a certain element of getting one over on the system, finding the better deal than someone else could get somewhere else,” said Mr. Cook. “There’s a skill involved in it, a cunning, if you know where to go first, which aisle, which outlet has it….”
And if you stand in line for one of five items the store has at a heart-stopping price, only to come up No. 6 in line, chances are good you’ll be tempted to buy something to avoid leaving empty-handed: “If you can’t get the 12-point buck, you might have to get the eight-point buck,” said Mr. Cook.
Overboard and other no-nos
The more toys a parent gets little children, the less time is spent playing with each one, said Ms. McCain. It’s simple point-in-time math. She challenges indulgent moms to name three things the children got for Christmas last year or even before age 10. Neither mom nor child will likely remember most of them.
“You don’t have to buy a lot of gifts,” she said. “Buy a couple of quality gifts they are going to remember and appreciate.”
Better still, she said, instead of spending $100 on gifts, put half away into a college fund. If they don’t end up going to college, it’s a great car or first-house fund.
“That’s helping your children,” she said. “That’s planting the seed. They may not love it at the time, but they will and they’ll respect you for it.”
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