I had the chance to listen to Dan Heath recently. He’s the coauthor, with his brother Chip, of Switch, a new book about making changes. I’d read their last book, Made to Stick, and thought their conclusions were valuable, so I was looking forward to Dan’s talk.
I’ve been watching the U.S. consumer savings rate climb. It’s been heartening to witness the ascent past 5% on its way to perhaps 7%. Any way you look at it, this is a welcome—if not critical—change in our financial/economic behavior.
I started digging into how this rate is computed and asked a few of our resident economists for some explanation. As a result, I don’t feel quite as good about the savings rate as I did, but I understand the basis for it much better.
Are Americans becoming more thrifty? Personal savings rates are up, the government statistics tell us. This fact has engendered a wide-ranging debate. Is this just a short-term deviation from America’s obsession with spending, or is it a permanent change?
I believe it’s a permanent change, but not for the reasons you might think.
We were vacationing last month in Scotland. At a small country hotel—on a misty Western isle—I mentioned to a group of guests that I conduct research at Vanguard on retirement issues. You guessed it: Suddenly the conversation shifted from the weather (ever-changing in Scotland) to worries about finances and retirement security.
Given the recent market crisis, we’ve heard a lot about how the “only safe place” to invest your money is your mattress.
One of my colleagues forwarded me this story from CNN. It’s about an older woman who had stuffed her $1 million life savings into her mattress—only to be horrified when she learned that her daughter had gotten her a new bed as a gift … and thrown out the mattress with the money in it.
