Few Americans Have the Urge to Splurge for Holiday Gifts
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is Your Money Matters from The Wall Street Journal.
Welcome to Your Money Matters. I'm Charlie Turner in New York. A new survey finds that few Americans are planning big-ticket purchases this holiday season, and this reluctance to splurge on Christmas gifts is not confined to just lower-income households. Let's find out more about Americans' holiday spending habits from Matt Schultz, Senior Industry Analyst at CreditCards.com. Matt, I guess for the purposes of this survey, an expensive gift is one costing more than $50.
How many Americans plan to buy a $50+ holiday gift this year?
So what percentage of respondents plan to buy an expensive gift?
Just 53% of American adults, so just a little over half, are going to buy a gift that costs at least $50 this holiday season. And the fact that that number wasn't higher was a little surprising to us because in the grand scheme of holiday gift giving, $50 doesn't seem like it's going to break the bank for a lot of people.
All right, then what about those planning to spend $100? Obviously, the percentage is lower.
Yeah, about a quarter of Americans say they're going to spend over $100 on a single item. So even with that, that's one in four people who are going to spend more than that.
What share of people plan to spend $100+ or not buy gifts at all?
And I might have guessed that that number might have been a little higher.
And what I found surprising is more than 10% don't plan to buy any gift at all. Did I read that right?
Yeah, that was interesting to us as well. There could be a few reasons for that. One, they might not celebrate the holidays. Two, they may not have anybody to give a gift to. Maybe they're older, that sort of thing. And then there are also, sadly, people out there who just will decide that they can't afford to do gift-giving this holiday season.
Why are Americans avoiding big holiday purchases despite low unemployment?
Why are more Americans in general avoiding big holiday purchases?
Well, even though unemployment's pretty low and the economy is generally doing pretty well, the thing that we haven't seen is wage growth. And it's a whole lot easier to go out and splurge during the holidays if you suspect that you'll be getting a raise sometime in the upcoming year. But if you don't, it may cause you to take a step back and think, well, maybe I'll hang back a little bit and not spend quite as much during the holidays.
I'm speaking with Matt Schultz, who's a senior industry analyst at CreditCards.com, and you're listening to Your Money Matters from The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for listening, everyone. Matt, this survey also broke down the planned holiday spending habits by gender. Who are most likely to be more frugal, men or women?
women are more likely to be more frugal. I thought that was interesting. And we also asked who people were going to be spending on for their most expensive gift. And that broke down in an interesting way by gender as well.
Do men or women tend to be more frugal with holiday gift spending?
And what it gets down to is basically mom is splurging on the kids and dad is splurging on mom.
And as we mentioned before, this preference for inexpensive items is not confined to just low-income households. It also includes a lot of people who are upper-income families.
Yeah, exactly. We found that about 40% of the richest respondents, so folks with annual household incomes of $80,000 a year plus, about 4 in 10 of those plan to keep their most expensive holiday gift under $100. And if you're making $80,000 a year in most of the country, $100 on a holiday gift certainly isn't going to break the bank for you. So it was interesting to see that those folks are not going to spend an extravagant amount of money on a single gift.
Are high-income households also choosing inexpensive holiday gifts?
And Matt, the survey also found that those who were inclined to splurge on gifts were more likely to buy online.
Yeah, it was interesting. There was a slight preference towards shopping online versus in-store. But one of the most interesting aspects of the survey that surprised us the most was that younger millennials, so folks between 18 and 26, were actually the most likely of any age group to say that they would shop in person in the store. And that's such a tech-centric age that you assume that they would want to do everything online.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:02–0:36
2
How many Americans plan to buy a $50+ holiday gift this year?
0:36–1:27
3
What share of people plan to spend $100+ or not buy gifts at all?
1:27–2:05
4
Why are Americans avoiding big holiday purchases despite low unemployment?
2:05–3:23
5
Do men or women tend to be more frugal with holiday gift spending?
3:23–4:21
6
Are high-income households also choosing inexpensive holiday gifts?
4:21–6:02
7
How do age, shopping channel, and parenthood affect holiday splurging?
6:02–6:23
Speakers
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