WASHINGTON — Helen Wilson knows thrift. In the years after the Great Depression, she raised chickens and planted vegetables at her home in Alexandria, Va., to feed her children.
Now she smirks a little when her daughter Loretta Haley, 55, describes the recession as “life-changing.”
“Absolutely I’ve changed my spending habits,” Haley said, as she and her mother came out of a supermarket with just a few bags of what she described as “healthy” groceries in a giant shopping cart. “I’m only getting essentials.”
For Wilson, 86, this new push toward frugality doesn’t compare to the habits she has kept up for generations. She reuses wrapping paper fromone Christmas to the next, depends on layaway instead of credit cards and saves plastic food containers rather than buying Tupperware. Unlike her daughter, she has steadily built her savings.
People beginning to live within their means could wellbe the silver lining of the recession. If people like Haley embrace change and maintain better financial habits, they will benefit in the long term, and the economy will, too.
“There will be good things that come out of this recession,” said Marcia Tillotson, a financial adviser at Wells Fargo Advisors. “Many people had not been conscious of what their lifestyle cost. Now, all of a sudden, they have become conscious of how they spend their money.”
The question is, will the panic and uncertainty of the financial crisis shape a generation and an economy in the deep mold of the Depression? Or will our pledges of prudence have all the heft of a New Year’s diet resolution?
“You have to feel the pain before you really make a change,” said Gerri Detweiler, a personal finance adviser for Credit.com Inc. “The longer it takes for the economy to feel normal again, it is likely to have a longer-term effect on our spending habits, and the more ingrained these habits of thrift will become.”
Wiser habits in each household, experts say, willeventually help strengthen an economy that still shows vulnerabilities.
“The economy really represents decisions made by tens of millions of people every day,” said Bernard Baumohl, the chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group.
He expects that a retooled economy will be fueled less by consumer spending.
According to his forecasts, by about 2015, consumer spending will contribute 65 percent to 67 percent of the gross domestic product - a broad measure of economic output - down from the traditional 70 percent, while exports and business spending will contribute more to GDP growth.
“We’re going to see a profound change in the behavior of consumers, where they will be relying less on debt and on the liquidation of their savings to finance consumption,” Baumohl said. “People will be more disciplined.”
Dan Ariely, a professor of behavioral economics at Duke University, said he believes the recession will drive a change in spending and savings patterns.
“For many people, this was a shock. People in their 20s to 40s, who grew up in this period when the stock market has been good for most of their lives, had a great belief in the stock market,” he said. “This failure has shocked people to the ground and will stay with them.”
Americans are saving more, as they traditionally do during downturns. In October, the personal savings rate was 4.4 percent of disposable income, which compares with an average annual savings of 2.7 percent over the past decade, the Commerce Department reported last week. The current rate, though, is nothing close to the 8 percent to 11 percent that Americans saved in the mid-1950s through the mid-1990s.
Detweiler said there is a “constant tension” among consumers torn between paying off credit card debt and building savings. She recommends trying to do both. “Put something aside for savings, then look for every opportunity to put money toward paying down the unsecured debt,” she said. “You have toset aside money for emergencies, or you’ll turn to credit that might not be available. So get some emergency savings, even if it’s just $1,000. Otherwise you’ll never get out of the cycle of debt.”
Take Robert Allen, 46, of Arlington, Va., who makes close to a six-figure income but has turned to buying used cars and ironing his own dress shirts instead of taking them to the cleaners at $2 a pop. Though he can make all of his payments and is not worried about losing his government job, Allen wants to pay off debt and rebuild his decimated savings.
So he has changed his lifestyle, from trading in his late-model BMW for a secondhand Toyota Corolla, to drinking tap instead of bottled water, and buying cars and clothes with cash instead of credit.
Penny-pinching is no longer voluntary for many people who financed their lifestyles with credit, which was tightened and even turned off in the wake of the recession.
“The fact that credit card issuers have been cutting credit limits is having apositive effect on consumers’ view of debt, their approach to debt,” Detweiler said. “I’m seeing a shift in the fantasy thinking of the 1990s to a more realistic approach to finances.”
Future spending habits will be influenced greatly by the availability of consumer credit. If it remains tight, people won’t have the ability to easily spend beyond their means. Instead, layaway, the use of debit cards and other ways of saving up to make a purchase with cash will remain in vogue.
When the economy was booming, Allen said, his steady paycheck and soaring home value and investment portfolio lulled him into a lifestyle he could not sustain.The economic earthquake, stock market collapse and tales of other people’s woes “really scared me into getting my house in order,” said Allen, as he shopped at a T.J. Maxx instead of his preferred Nordstrom.
He was there to replace a pair of worn-out dress shoes, he said, “but definitely not buy anything else.”
Business, Pages 50 on 12/27/2009