Is there no tomorrow?

Live for today, experiences are more valuable than things, do it while you can, the future will take care of itself, it’s only money, we have plenty of time to save, etc, etc, etc.

The savings rate is down, emergency funds are minimal and Americans are in poor shape for retirement.

Consumers should be spending less by now. 

Interest rates are up. Inflation remains high. Pandemic savings have shrunk. And the labor market is cooling.  

Yet household spending, the primary driver of the nation’s economic growth, remains robust. Americans spent 5.8% more in August than a year earlier, well outstripping less than 4% inflation. And the experience economy boomed this summer, with Delta Air Linesreporting record revenue in the second quarter and Ticketmaster selling over 295 million event tickets in the first six months of 2023, up nearly 18% year-over-year. 

Economists and financial advisers say consumers putting short-term needs and goals above long-term ones is normal. Still, this moment is different, they say. 

A tough housing market has more consumers writing off something they’d historically save for, while the pandemic showed the instability of any long-term plans related to health, work or day-to-day life. So, they are spending on once-in-a-lifetime experiences because they worry they may not be able to do them later. 

“It’s not a regret-filled, spur-of-the-moment decision,” says Michael Liersch, who oversees a team of advisers as head of advice at Wells Fargo. “It’s the opposite of that, where I would regret not having done it.”

Americans Are Still Spending Like There’s No Tomorrow the Wall Street Journal

Lindsey and Darrell Bradshaw went into credit-card debt to finance a vacation to Maui this past spring. The couple booked the trip only a few weeks after Lindsey, 37, quit her job to be a full-time caregiver to their 8-year-old son, who has special needs.

“We did not have the money and we were like, ‘Let’s just do this anyway,’ ” says Darrell Bradshaw, a 39-year-old general contractor in Seattle.

Even though the family decided to cancel subscriptions and cut back on dining out to help offset the bill, they say they have no regrets—especially since they got to see Lahaina just a few months before it was decimated by deadly wildfires.

Wall Street Journal