More Guns and Safes but Less Pregnancies

Some of you will remember my blogging about Microtrends and Kinney Zalesne’s participation in the Silverlink Think Different event.  (Kinney is one of the author’s of the book – Microtrends.)  Well, the authors of the book are now writing a weekly column for the Wall Street Journal.

The first one is about the new Mattress Stuffers.  As we saw recently with people over-subscribing to treasury bills at 0% interest, there is a demand for safe places to put their money.  People have lost faith in a lot of the institutions that our economy is built on – housing, automotive, banking, government.  Purchases of guns are up this year.  Purchases of safes are up this year.

“refraining from having kids is the ultimate consumer pull-back”

As part of this consumer pullback, they predict that there will be a dip in pregnancies nine months from now.  We are certainly entering a new age that will shape this generation much like the Depression shaped my parents generation.  Expectations will be reset.  The way people invest will change.  People’s view of money (e.g., cash versus credit) will change.

I have already seen thrifty being “cool” versus extravagence being “cool”.  It won’t happen in this first wave of change, but I do think this is a good thing for preventative health.  People will be more interested in planning forward and making smart decisions that pay off long term versus figuring they can fix it retrospectively with money.