As Inflation continues to rage on, savings are down as people want to maintain their standard of living as their dollar doesn’t reach as far as it did two years ago.
The big picture: At $32.3 trillion, those monies are down 14% from their high point in the second quarter of 2021, to their lowest level since the second quarter of 2020.
- In real 2022 dollars, however — after accounting for inflation — the funds are down 22%, to their lowest level since the third quarter of 2018. In other words, we’re now down to well below pre-pandemic levels.
The bottom line: These numbers include all the money that people have put into retirement savings over the past couple of years — but they also reflect all the money that retirees have pulled out of the market and spent. Which probably exacerbated inflation.
Axios Markets By Felix Salmon · Dec 17, 2022