Back when I first started this blog and before the recession had really taken hold, I posted a link to a very good article by Liz Pulliam Weston. She talked about the impact it would have if we all started to increase our savings and use our money more wisely. She predicted that the short-term impact would be a global economic recession since our economy was so dependent upon consumers. But she thought it would be good in the long-run because of the positive impacts to both individuals and the broader economy.
I remember at the time thinking that managing our money and living within our means was still the right thing to do, but that it might be hard to convince people to do this because of the pain of going through a recession. Well folks, the recession happened, whether or not we wanted it to. So if we have to go through this, it’s encouraging to me to hear that savings rates are going back up (although no where near the high of 14.6% we saw in 1975). More people are starting to live within their means now. So maybe we’ll get the long-term benefits the article listed even though this wasn’t an entirely voluntary decision.
