Personal Finance
Learn about budgeting, saving, getting out of debt, credit, investing, and retirement planning. Join our community, read the PF Wiki, and get on top of your finances!
Note: This community is not region centric, so if you are posting anything specific to a certain region, kindly specify that in the title (something like [USA], [EU], [AUS] etc.)
One thing I haven't seen anyone discuss in the context of the current economic climate is that while we had near-0% effective rates from 2008 to 2022, we had sub-1% APRs on auto loans, sub-3% APRs on mortgages, and 0% APR payment plans through manufacturers and POS systems became common. Google, Apple, Amazon, Shopify, more, all implemented 0% APR payment options for devices and even general purchases for 6~12 month terms. I was looking at laptops just last week and notice Apple is still allowing 1 year 0% APR plans for them. The iPhone upgrade program doesn't seem to have gone anywhere. It seems to me this is probably still a pretty big driver of inflated consumer spending - it's objectively a better deal to not spend the money up front when the fed rate is 5.5%, money market funds are paying 5.4%, HYSAs are paying 5.1%, and inflation is 4%. Of course you should spend the money a year from now when it's grown more and worth less.
It’s true that inflation presents an arbitrage opportunity, but I seriously doubt the average consumer is thinking with anything close to that level of sophistication. I mean, most consumers leave debt sitting on their credit card instead of paying it off when they can.