With the winter holidays approaching, you might be bombarded with ads enticing you to spend your hard-earned money. But this isn’t just a seasonal issue. In general, Americans tend to be spenders, particularly compared to how people approach spending vs. saving in many other cultures around the world, explains Clark Howard, a money expert and personal finance media personality, in a recent YouTube clip from his “Save More, Spend Less” channel.
In middle-income countries, he says people typically save around one-third of their incomes. So if they made $1, they’d save around $0.33. Americans, however, typically save only $0.06 of every dollar earned, explains Howard, albeit with some fluctuations over time. The personal savings rate in the U.S. — the percentage of money left over after taxes and expenses — for October 2023, for example, was only 3.8%, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
