March Sees Decline In Consumer Confidence But Rise In Spending

Discover has released its March 2013 U.S. Spending Monitor, and consumers suffered from a slight drop in confidence in the third month of the year.

Consumers are less optimistic both about the economy in general and their personal finances, and more people think economic conditions are getting worse.

On an interesting note, such sentiments don’t seem to be affecting, as consumers actually plan to spend more on discretionary and major purchases in April than they did in March. What else did Discover’s March report find? We take a look in this PYMNTS Data Point.

General Sentiment 

The percentage of consumers who rated the economy as “good” dropped from 15.3 percent in February to 14.3 percent in March, while those who rated it as “fair” increased from 32.3 to 34.1. Similarly, just 25.8 percent cited their personal finances as “good” in March, compared to 28.1 percent in February. Those who responded “fair” increased from 38.3 percent in February to 39.6, while those who answered “poor” jumped from 22.5 percent to 23.2 percent.

Impact On Spending

Interestingly, despite the slightly more negative sentiment, consumers actually claimed to spend a bit more in March than in February. For March, 38.6 percent of consumers indicated they were spending more than in the previous month, compared to 36.7 percent who spent more in February than January. Just 18.4 percent indicated they were spending less, compared to 19.9 percent the month before. Those who responded that they were spending the same amount remained essentially unchanged at just south of 42 percent.

April’s Outlook

Consumers indicated that they may spend more in April as well. For discretionary personal expenses, 10.7 percent said they would increase their spending in April, while just 7.4 indicated they’d do so for March. Fewer people indicated that they would spend either the less or same in April as they did in March. Similarly, 13.1 percent said they would spend more on major personal purchases in April, while just 10.8 said the same about March. Just 45.6 percent said they’d spend less, compared to 47.3 percent a month earlier.

To see more March stats, read the entire Discover U.S. Spending Report here.