View Full Version : More simple(r) living?
gimmethesimplelife
5-12-20, 2:31pm
Just curious - do you think one of the silver linings of the pandemic will be more folks living simply, either by circumstance or choice? I've read a few online predictions that Americans will be saving more money now.....markedly more.
Just imagine if Americans saved 10 percent of their income.....given that so much of the US economy is based on frivilous spending, imagine the reset that that alone would cause! Rob
Saving more is a silver lining for me, but if I lose my job and am long term unemployed then I am dipping into savings.
Teacher Terry
5-12-20, 2:41pm
We are definitely saving money but not having fun. I hope it encourages people to have emergency funds.
iris lilies
5-12-20, 2:43pm
I am saving money AND having a brand of fun I wouldn't normally have.
I don't understand the purpose of this thread, Rob. So many people are out of work, they will be struggling to survive as this pandemic will have a longterm impact. The major number of employers are the service industries as you know and according to reports they will reduce the number of employees, even shutting down permanently. This pandemic will have impact for the next two years until employment stabilizes. Jobs are gone! Tourists are gone for some time. Those that will save money are those who have jobs and even they are not guaranteed. Am I correctly reading about 15-20% unemployed?
The future in unknown so people may reduce their spending such as they can but the economy needs spending to recover. That does not equate to saving or silver lining, IMO.
I don't understand the purpose of this thread, Rob. So many people are out of work, they will be struggling to survive as this pandemic will have a longterm impact. The major number of employers are the service industries as you know and according to reports they will reduce the number of employees, even shutting down permanently. This pandemic will have impact for the next two years until employment stabilizes. Jobs are gone! Tourists are gone for some time. Those that will save money are those who have jobs and even they are not guaranteed. Am I correctly reading about 15-20% unemployed?
The future in unknown so people may reduce their spending such as they can but the economy needs spending to recover. That does not equate to saving or silver lining, IMO.
I gotta say I thought the same thing. Like "what income?"
I think it's too optimistic to say, oh, people are going to save more.
gimmethesimplelife
5-12-20, 3:01pm
Good point about the mass of folks including myself not currently working. Maybe I should ask - whenever the dust settles and more people are working, do you see an after effect of the pandemic being more saving, more simpler living? Say three years out. Rob
Good point about the mass of folks including myself not currently working. Maybe I should ask - whenever the dust settles and more people are working, do you see an after effect of the pandemic being more saving, more simpler living? Say three years out. Rob
Oh, I see--yes, I would agree that more people will save once the dust settles, as it will be a really vivid lesson about the importance of emergency funds.
Oh, I see--yes, I would agree that more people will save once the dust settles, as it will be a really vivid lesson about the importance of emergency funds.
My expectation is that people will behave as Great Depression survivors behaved for years afterwards, if the economic impact of The Current Unpleasantness is as large as I think it will be.
Half the businesses on my island will likely perish in the next few months.
gimmethesimplelife
5-12-20, 3:06pm
Oh, I see--yes, I would agree that more people will save once the dust settles, as it will be a really vivid lesson about the importance of emergency funds.Thank You, Tybee. This is along the lines of what I was getting at. I guess I didn't make myself clear yet again lol. Rob
gimmethesimplelife
5-12-20, 3:13pm
My expectation is that people will behave as Great Depression survivors behaved for years afterwards, if the economic impact of The Current Unpleasantness is as large as I think it will be.
Half the businesses on my island will likely perish in the next few months.I took the bus up to Sprouts today to do the food shopping as SO doesn't like going up to that neighborhood. On the way up there - it's a much ritzier area than we live in, over by 16th Street and Glendale for anyone familiar with Phoenix - I was thinking just this to myself. How many of these higher end service businesses will exist several months from now?
Where I live the hrocery stores I believe will endure, as will the aluminum can/PETE #1 plastic bottle recyclers, provided a market continues for this material. Dollar stores may be OK. But the rest, I just don't know. Rob
gimmethesimplelife
5-12-20, 3:13pm
Should be grocery stores above. Rob
ApatheticNoMore
5-12-20, 3:22pm
It is very hard to be optimistic about good coming out of this, certainly not in 3 years time (I mean they may have a vaccine but any good other than curing the virus I mean). In 10 years time, oh maybe. I mean assume a Great Depression mentality, but without the post war boom (and it was a postwar boom in a much more equitable society as well). So a mentality of saving without a spare dime to save, aka just grinding poverty.
I suspect on average people already save 10% of their income, it just never gets figured in because they don't count retirement funds as saving etc. etc..
Teacher Terry
5-12-20, 3:29pm
Reno has a ton of small businesses that I bet won’t survive. Even though restaurants could open Saturday very few have. Very few people downtown.
I suspect on average people already save 10% of their income, it just never gets figured in because they don't count retirement funds as saving etc. etc..
According to a 2018 study by Northwestern Mutual (https://news.northwesternmutual.com/2018-05-08-1-In-3-Americans-Have-Less-Than-5-000-In-Retirement-Savings), 21% of Americans have no retirement savings and an additional 10% have less than $5,000 in savings. A third of Baby Boomers currently in, or approaching, retirement age have between nothing and $25,000 set aside.
The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) paints (https://www.epi.org/publication/retirement-in-america/#charts) an even bleaker picture. Their data from 2013 reports that "nearly half of families have no retirement account savings (https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/education/what-is-a-savings-account-14850711) at all." For most age groups, the group found, "median account balances in 2013 were less than half their pre-recession peak and lower than at the start of the new millennium."
The EPI further found these numbers even worse for millennials. Nearly six in 10 have no retirement savings whatsoever. (Article here (https://www.thestreet.com/retirement/average-retirement-savings-14881067))
Add in that most Americans couldn't cover an unexpected $400 repair bill (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/20/heres-why-so-many-americans-cant-handle-a-400-unexpected-expense.html) and I think at least a good portion of Americans have very little cash available in times like these. There is a difference in the availability of emergency funds and retirement funds. But I suspect most Americans are running pedal-to-the-metal, as they have for years. This is a case, though, in which median would be a much better number than average in determining true savings rates. Average includes people like Jeff Bezos and Jamie Dimon, who severely mess up averages like these.
Savings amounts may change post-pandemic, slowly. But I think it will take structural changes in the economy (not seeing that any time soon) and a shift away from consumer consumption as the main driver of the American economy (not seeing that any time soon either). People may salt away a few hundred bucks or so, but several months of living expenses? I don't see that happening any time before the next crisis.
Telecommuting is simpler and better for the environment. I think we will see more of that post- than pre-pandemic, if you are looking for silver linings.
As painful as all of this is, I remind myself that we are all witness to an exceedingly historic time. 2020 has a ways to go so who knows what else might transpire? I hope I live long enough to see how it all turns out but it will probably be years, ir ever, before things settle down. I am so glad that DD is able to be at home with her husband while her twins are little and precious. I can see how it has put their previous hectic lifestyle in perspective so lucky families like them my choose to live simpler lives. It is going to be so hard for those on the economic edge-day to day scraping by probably.
Looks like folks are hunkering down and saving while they can.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/investing/jobs-coronavirus-consumer-spending-debt/index.html
ToomuchStuff
5-13-20, 3:40am
Looks like folks are hunkering down and saving while they can.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/investing/jobs-coronavirus-consumer-spending-debt/index.html
Haven't read the whole article, getting ready for bed, but I do wonder how much of it is fud (fear, uncertainly, doubt) about job loss, length of time quarantined, etc, and how much is due to a lack of ability to go out and "impluse spend" at open places.
I did read the article. Regarding the uncertainty of replacing a lost job, recruiters are contacting me, but for temporary gigs with no benefits. I wonder how much the economy would be helped if we had a single payer system, allowing people to consider jobs like these, and also allowing small employers to bring people back to work without high benefits costs. The extension of unemployment benefits to independent contractors and the self-employed in this crisis is maybe the start of a realization that all workers have value.
Simplemind
5-13-20, 11:31am
I think a lot of businesses will continue to be regarded as non-essential to people after they open. I'm very thankful that my finances have remained stable. When doing a side by side with last years expenditures we certainly have saved a lot of money these past few months. I'm betting that more than a few people living paycheck to paycheck that never believed they could save money have learned through lockdown that they really can.
I'm betting that these businesses chomping at the bit to open are going to quickly come to the realization that customer traffic will not return to the pre pandemic state. Either they won't be comfortable with cleanliness/distancing measures, can't afford it or have decided after going without that they really didn't need it and prefer the cash staying in hand.
Restaurants here in our downtown are closing right & left, with no intent or ability to reopen. Our downtown was in the beginnings of a Renaissance with a new waterfront development. Now all on hold. I wonder how long if at all, the comeback will take. Or whether people will decide restaurant dining several times a week isn't the pastime it was, having gotten out of the habit and found new and simpler, more frugal ways to recreate.
I won't be eating in our local restaurants anytime soon.
We have ~ 1 million tourists a year visit the community, and they all pile into those restaurants. Due to great marketing efforts by the County, our traditionally 8-9 week peak tourist season has grown big shoulders, and there are tourists here in some volume most of the year now. Which has been great for the restaurants, but there is no way I am sitting in one of them with randos from around the world in close quarters for the immediate future.
gimmethesimplelife
5-13-20, 12:18pm
I won't be eating in our local restaurants anytime soon.
We have ~ 1 million tourists a year visit the community, and they all pile into those restaurants. Due to great marketing efforts by the County, our traditionally 8-9 week peak tourist season has grown big shoulders, and there are tourists here in some volume most of the year now. Which has been great for the restaurants, but there is no way I am sitting in one of them with randos from around the world in close quarters for the immediate future.I'm feeling the same way in regsrds to seasonal f and b work and to my last gig at the Convention Center. Just seems risky until there is a vaccine or at least effective treatment available affordably in Mexico. Rob
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