WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the peak of holiday shopping approaches and winter temperatures drive up heating costs across the U.S., 45% of American households report that recent price increases are causing their family some degree of financial hardship. Ten percent describe it as severe hardship affecting their standard of living, while another 35% say the hardship is moderate.
These results are from Gallup’s Nov. 3–16 probability-based web panel survey.
Lower-income households are most likely to have experienced financial hardship due to price increases. Seventy-one percent of those living in households making less than $40,000 a year say that recent price hikes have caused their family financial hardship. That compares with 47% of those in middle-income households and 29% in upper-income households.
news.gallup.com/poll/357731/inflation-causing-hardship-households.aspx
Even Christmas trees aren’t immune to the pandemic-induced shortages and inflation plaguing the economy.
Extreme weather and supply chain disruptions have reduced supplies of both real and artificial trees this season. American shoppers should expect to have fewer choices and pay up to 30% more for both types this Christmas, industry officials said.
“It’s a double whammy — weather and supply chain problems are really hampering the industry,” said Jami Warner, executive director of the American Christmas Tree Association, an industry trade group. “Growers have been hard hit by floods, fires, smoke, drought, extreme weather conditions.”
apnews.com/article/business-lifestyle-droughts-trees-economy-eedb2f50e0a6c4a485f49682c698cdbe
Americans are hoarding cash because of fatigue and uncertainty, with little chance the trend will reverse soon.
Over the past two years, households have socked away close to $1.6 trillion in “excess savings,” or resources they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to save before the Covid-19 crisis, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The funds are well beyond the three to six months of emergency savings generally recommended by financial advisers.
While the savings rate has dropped back to 2019 levels after four consecutive quarters of record high savings, financial advisers, money managers and economists say Americans are too nervous about potential worst-case scenarios to dip into their funds. And now, with the Omicron variant of the coronavirus threatening to disrupt stability once again, many of them expect the cash hoarding to continue.
www.wsj.com/articles/covid-19-made-americans-into-super-savers-now-theyre-hoarding-cash-11638450002