Holiday shoppers stick to spending pledge

Allison Linn Senior writer • Profile • E-mail

When it comes to holiday shopping, Americans traditionally have been great at saying they were going to cut back — but not so good at actually doing it.

This year appears to be an exception. Concerned about the recession, job losses and a steep drop in investment portfolios, many Americans shunned their usual shopping sprees, despite heavy discounting and promotions.

Early indications point to the worst holiday season for retailers since at least 1970, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. Major retailers are expected to report generally disappointing sales results for December this week.

In early December, msnbc.com profiled four people who had pledged to cut back on holiday spending. As the holidays drew to a close, we checked back with those readers to find out how things went.

Everything but the caroling
There were misgivings, temptations and even a bit of semi-serious name-calling, of the Scrooge variety. But in the end Bruce Bracken and his family stuck with their plan to severely curtail gift-giving and other holiday spending.

As a result, Bracken, of Draper, Utah, was able to end the season without what had become another holiday tradition: credit card debt.

It wasn’t easy, particularly as Christmas neared and the discounting grew steeper and more tempting. Bracken avoided opening newspaper ads and put his credit card in a drawer so he wouldn’t be enticed to break the family’s pledge not to exchange gifts among adult family members. (Bracken did buy gifts for his grandchildren.)

“It was just so new, so different than what everybody had been used to,” Bracken said. “But in the end, it was well received.”

Instead of shopping for gifts, the family went ice skating and rollerblading, visited Christmas light displays and attended holiday concerts. They spent more time and money on volunteer efforts, including a project to provide a little girl with a new bed and bedding for Christmas.

In another break from tradition, Bracken didn’t take the family out for a traditional Christmas meal, instead cooking at home. He said that alone saved him several hundred dollars.

The only thing Bracken couldn’t get his family to do was go caroling.

“My family convinced me that to do so would make other people miserable,” he said. “We have no singing talent in my family.”

Debt-free, and heading to Detroit
The only purchase of consequence Brian Moore has made in the last five months is a plane ticket to his native Michigan, where the car lover will be heading this month to check out the North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

Moore, an architectural drafter, is going home with a sense of accomplishment: After five months of very frugal living, the 22-year-old Portland, Ore., resident has paid off five credit cards — and destroyed four of them.

“Every single bill I have is paid up,” he said in an interview on New Year’s Eve. “Except for a car loan, I am 100 percent debt-free.”

It wasn’t so long ago that Moore routinely shopped for fun, rather than necessity. But the recession served as a wake-up call that he was overspending, and in August he pledged to cut back.

Even as the holidays grew near, Moore said he found that he just wasn’t that interested in giving up his newfound thriftiness.

“I just ignored everything, and it really didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would, because I was more determined to just get my debt paid off,” he said. “And I knew if I bought something I would probably have buyer’s guilt.”

Moore doesn’t plan to go back to his free-spending ways. Instead, he’s hoping to keep saving so he can afford a few road trips this summer.

“I think I’ve kind of learned to manage my money so well that I just don’t see a need to buy much stuff anymore,” he said. “I wouldn’t say that I’m cheap. I’m just wiser.”

'New Year's of no regrets'
Cristi Harris went into the holiday season vowing to cut her holiday shopping budget by 75 percent, because it seemed like the right thing to do given the weak economy.

In the end, she was able to spend about 50 percent less than she normally would — which turned out be a very good thing after her youngest son crashed their car on Christmas Eve.

He was fine, and she was able to more easily afford the car repairs.

“Because we hadn’t overspent, we could certainly fix it,” she said. “It was far less stressful than it would have been had we overindulged.”

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