I diligently check the monthly Personal Income and Outlays report put out by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. It’s a poor measurement of true savings because it’s simply a snapshot at the end of the month of how much money you have lying around, but I look at it nonetheless because it’s the number people point to when they chide Americans for having a negative savings rate.

Well, ha!

Today, I saw an eye-rubbing, is-this-a-typo savings shift. Personal savings as a percentage of disposable income was 0.4 percent in April. In May it was a whopping 5.0 percent!

See for yourself.

Maybe it was that the economic stimulus checks or the tax rebates came in and Americans didn’t have time to spend them before the month was up. Maybe all the bad news has caused us to hunker down. Perhaps we’re beginning to realize that going to the mall every Saturday is not exactly living the good life.

Whatever the reason, I have to say it was a pleasant surprise, although surely we can save more. And I think accurate* reports of our negative savings rate are history.

* I’m sure misinformed people will still say we don’t save for months, if not years to come. Publicly challenge those people for me, would you? Especially financial planners doing seminars trying to convince you to give them your money by scaring the crap out of you.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 10:49 am and is filed under saving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.