Savings

Prosperity—Not for All

America is at sailing along at peak prosperity, with the stock market having boomed for 10 years and the last recession coming in the previous decade. Unemployment is at a 20-year low. There are arguments about which President is responsible for this great news, but most Americans are prosperous. Right?

Apparently not. The nonprofit Center for Financial Services Innovation polled more than 5,000 Americans, and concluded that, in the midst of this unprecedented economic prosperity, only 28% of Americans could be considered “financially healthy.” 

We’re Saving More Than We Realized

Quick: What’s America’s national savings rate? A generation ago, you might have guessed 10% and been pretty close to the market. More recently, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about a precipitous decline in how much of their income Americans are saving—down, according to the U.S. government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, to just over 2% this year. There was a brief period after the Great Recession when people were saving at higher levels, up to nearly 9% according to BEA figures, because they were getting serious about paying off debt. But the trend has been pretty dismal since then.

Savings Rates Decline

You don’t hear much about America’s personal savings rate these days, and the reason may be because the news is discouraging: collectively, the percentage of our income that we save is trending downward again, and may be about to hit record lows.

A hugely volatile week concludes. What's next as earnings season gets underway?