Americans are still spending on discretionary items, despite inflation, higher gas prices and the concern about affordability they share with researchers, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told NBC News.
“We watch what they do, not what they say,” Moynihan said in an interview, NBC News reported Sunday (June 14). He added, “they’re spending money and doing things.”
Bank of America’s data shows that spending on credit and debit cards was up 5% year over year in May and that consumers are still spending on things like vacations and going out to eat, Moynihan said.
At the same time, consumers are trading down as they contend with higher gas prices. Moynihan gave the example of higher end pet food: Despite a wave of advertising by premium pet food brands, consumers are buying “the next brand down” rather than higher end brands, according to the bank’s data.
The University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers’ preliminary results for June found consumer sentiment ticked up early in the month after dropping to a record low in May.
Both the June improvement and the May drop were driven by gas prices, according to the survey. Rising gas prices in April and May drove consumer sentiment down to the lowest levels in the 73-year history of the Index of Consumer Sentiment, while an easing of gas prices in early June led to a 9% improvement, per the survey.
Despite the improvement, consumer sentiment remained 13% below where it was in January and 19% below where it was in June 2025. Surveys of Consumers Director Joanne Hsu said consumers “remain focused on kitchen table issues.”
The latest edition of The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index, which was released May 26, found that gas prices and worries about war-related inflation cause consumer confidence to fall in May and that consumer’s write-in responses on factors influencing the economy had continued to “skew towards pessimism.”
In the Sunday report by NBC News, Moynihan said: “What they’re saying is they’re very upset and they’re worried about high prices, affordability. We have to watch that, because if it goes from ‘what they say versus what they do’ to what they’re doing, that’s a real problem for the U.S. economy.”
