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birb_cromble  8hr ago (text post)   48 thread views

Qeekly Finance Thread - 10/3/2026

A weekly thread to discuss financial matters - from personal all the way up to global.

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I've been reading up more on the federal personal savings rate and it's a pretty interesting concept.

https://www.bea.gov/data/income-saving/personal-saving-rate

The U.S. personal saving rate is personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income. In other words, it's the percentage of people's incomes left after they pay taxes and spend money.

I haven't found an exact definition of what is included and what isn't, but that link is probably a good starting point.

Do you think it's a useful metric? On one hand, it's fairly coarse grained, but on the other hand, it seems like it's very difficult to game for exactly the same reason.

The fact that it's trending from a peak (excluding COVID) in the 1960s is interesting. I haven't found many explanations for why that is occuring. I've seen arguments that it's due to the real cost of living increasing faster than wages, and I've seen arguments that cheap debt and easy mobility make saving less important. I'm not sure if I believe either of them. I'd be interested in any other theories you might have.

  1. Demographics, as always. An 80 year doesn't sock away money for the future. They draw from their savings. America gets older ever year.

  2. Look at the amount of money going into employer-sponsored retirement accounts (401ks). Add this back in and the difference from the 1960s gets much smaller This also explains how the stock market hits new highs every day.

The boring answers tend to win.

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