Debt.com’s latest Holiday Spending Survey shows many will spend more due to inflation and will use credit cards to cover costs.
Inflation is still driving prices on everything from groceries to holiday gifts, but a new Debt.com survey shows many Americans aren’t as concerned about sticker shock as they were last year.
Debt.com polled 1,000 U.S. adults about their holiday shopping plans. More respondents (60%) than last year (54%) feel they will spend more on holiday shopping this year because of inflation. Among those respondents, 3 in 5 (54%) say they will use credit cards to cover the cost of holiday shopping.
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“It’s almost an American tradition to go into debt for the holidays. Leading up to the holidays the fear of high prices and ‘FOMO’ (the fear of missing out) runs deep,” says Howard Dvorkin, CPA and Debt.com chairman.
Two-thirds (66%) of respondents are shopping earlier than last year. More than 1 in 3 (34%) started in November, and 15% started over the summer when inflation briefly dropped for the first time in two years.
Still, credit card debt increased 16.6% from just a year ago and Americans now owe over a trillion on their credit cards.
With average interest rates of more than 26% on major credit cards, and retail store cards at over 30% Dvorkin asserts, “Shoppers should ask themselves if they really need to buy gifts for everyone or instead, to buy gifts for a small core group of family and friends.”
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