American consumers are tapped out

US households are notorious for going shopping with money they didn’t have. Now, however, they're not using it to buy things they want, but things they need.

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The Great Recession changed attitudes to spending
(Image credit: 2016 Getty Images)

"The Great Depression fundamentally changed attitudes about spending and saving," Stephanie Pomboy of MacroMavens told Barron's. "So did the Great Recession of 2008." During the 2000s, US households were notorious for going shopping with money they didn't have.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.