{"id":321852,"date":"2025-11-30T06:17:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T06:17:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/321852\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T06:17:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T06:17:11","slug":"exclusive-americans-feeling-stingy-this-holiday-season-as-personal-debt-economic-uncertainty-looms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/321852\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive | Americans feeling stingy this holiday season as personal debt, economic uncertainty looms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Maybe Christmas . . . doesn\u2019t come from a store.<\/p>\n

Nearly two in three Americans say the economy will make the holidays less fun this year, according to a new report from WalletHub called \u201cThe Grinch Economy<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

With inflation high<\/a>, the labor market cooling and fears about tariffs boosting prices, consumers plan to tighten their belts this holiday season.<\/p>\n

Americans are feeling the pinch this holiday season, according to new data from WalletHub. Rob Jejenich \/ NY Post Design<\/p>\n

As many as 85% of people surveyed said they\u2019ll spend either the same amount or less<\/a> compared to last year \u2014 while 60% said they planned to give less to charity.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not all \u2014 one in three say they\u2019ll go as far as applying\u00a0for a new credit card just to help with holiday shopping, and almost half won\u2019t pay for gifts in full by the due date.<\/p>\n

In fact, one in four people are still paying off last year\u2019s holiday debt, WalletHub found. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo that\u2019s a signal that maybe some folks may be getting a little tightening in their budgets this year,\u201d said Chip Lupo, an analyst at WalletHub. <\/p>\n

\u201cNow just by spending the same or less, that doesn\u2019t necessarily mean you\u2019re going to get more bang for your buck \u2014 because prices are inflated in a number of product categories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, consumers spent a record\u00a0$11.8\u00a0billion\u00a0online on Black Friday,\u00a0up\u00a09.1%\u00a0from last year and slightly above forecast, Adobe Analytics<\/a> found.<\/p>\n

Nearly two in three Americans say the economy will make the holidays less fun this year. nicoletaionescu \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

\u201cThe magnitude of discounts yesterday has been a key driver of online demand,\u201d explains Vivek Pandya, Abode Director of Digital Insights.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cConsumers have been conditioned to wait for big promotional events to buy products they\u2019ve had their eyes on.\u201d<\/p>\n

Between\u00a010 am\u00a0and\u00a02 pm,\u00a0an eye-watering $12.5\u00a0million\u00a0was spent online\u00a0every single minute, Adobe said.\u202fMore than half \u2014\u00a055% of online sales \u2014 came through a mobile device, up 10.2%, suggesting possible impulse shopping.<\/p>\n

Adobe\u00a0observed\u00a0large upticks Friday in\u00a0purchases of\u00a0electronics,\u00a0appliances and toys.<\/p>\n

Consumers still spent $11.8\u00a0billion\u00a0online on Black Friday, driven by their desire to snap deals. Robert Miller<\/p>\n

Shoppers were out Friday at Target on West 34th Street at Herald Square. Robert Miller<\/p>\n

\u201cThose tariffs looming does mean that there\u2019s going to be a run on electronics and also apparel, because those are the two categories in which the majority of the products are made outside of the US,\u201d said Lupo.<\/p>\n

AI traffic \u2014 measured by shoppers clicking on a link -\u202fincreased by a whopping\u202f805% year over year, and consumers who landed on a retail site through a link were 38% more likely to buy.<\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly, buy now pay later was up 8.9% from last year, representing $747.5\u00a0million in online spending.<\/p>\n

Buy now pay later sales are up 8.9% from last Black Friday, Adobe found. fizkes \u2013 stock.adobe.com<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, in-store traffic was down\u00a03.6%\u00a0nationwide on Black Friday, according to\u00a0RetailNext.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re seeing a consumer who is still spending, but doing it with surgical precision,\u201d said Joe Shasteen, RetailNext\u2019s global manager of advanced analytics. \u201cThey\u2019re waiting for the right price, stretching purchases across a longer promo window, and walking into stores with a far narrower mission than we\u2019ve seen in past holiday seasons.\u201d <\/p>\n

\u201cThe morning looked more like a busy Saturday than the traditional Black Friday crunch,\u201d added Katherine Black, Food, Drug and Mass Market retail lead at Kearny, who spent the day at the Westchester mall, the Greenwich Avenue strip and also checked out local discounters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Friday morning looked more like a busy Saturday than the traditional Black Friday madness, analysts said. Helayne Seidman<\/p>\n

In store spending focused on essentials, while more discretionary sectors like home, footwear and jewelry took the sharper hit, RetailNext found.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re watching play out is the \u2018value era\u2019 of US retail,\u201d said Shasteen. \u201cShoppers are deal-hungry, inflation-trained, and unwilling to buy outside their priorities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Maybe Christmas . . . doesn\u2019t come from a store. Nearly two in three Americans say the economy…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[142681,28,167,101,21368,8422,7600,194],"class_list":["post-321852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-black-friday","tag-business","tag-deals","tag-economy","tag-holiday-shopping","tag-online-shopping","tag-retail","tag-us-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=321852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}