This article appeared in Street Fight. Read it in full here.
The good news is that almost one-third of American adults are debt-free. The less good news is that inflation is on the uptick, and they’re worried about healthcare costs, and poor leadership and government fraud—with 42% of respondents giving equal weight to each issue.
Nevertheless, according to Resonate’s Spring 2025 Outlook Consumer Trends Report, U.S. consumers are optimistic about their personal finances. Some 51.5% of respondents to the Resonate survey is a slight improvement in how much consumers feel better about finances.
“That might be because the number of Americans who say they have no debt is at its highest since November 2023,” according to the report. “As of the start of 2025, 30.3% of U.S. adults are debt free, as opposed to just 26.8% in the summer and fall of last year.”
As we get ready to enter spring, the usual holidays are on people’s minds—Mother’s Day and Easter—and respondents both indicated a heavy preference for giving flowers for the former and spending time at home with family for the latter.
The majority of consumers (24%) said they’d buy flowers for the occasion. Jewelry is the second least popular gift for mom—less than 8% of shoppers said they would give this as a gift. What’s the least popular? A spa day. Only 7% said they would give this as a gift.
Then there’s the travel sector, which surprisingly also drew responses from homebodies. Even with the extra expendable income of being debt-free, 40% of shoppers said they do not plan to travel this summer. For those who do travel, 21% are keeping expenses tight—to below $1,000.
If they’re not traveling or spending a lot when they do, what could consumers be up to in the summer months? Two words: Home improvement.
Resonate CMO Ericka McCoy gave more insight to some of the findings, including consumer concerns about the current leadership of the U.S. government.
Why is the percentage of consumers (30%) who are debt-free so high? Was that surprising to you? If so, why or why not?
Consumers have been feeling better about finances – in fact, our Winter 2025 Consumer Trends Report showed that not only did more of the 73% of consumers who were in debt feel like they were managing it better, but people were feeling more optimistic about their personal finances and the economy.
We know that under the Biden administration, more than $183.6 billion in student loans were waived for more than five million Americans, which likely contributed to a higher number of debt-free consumers. Additionally, in late 2024, banks lowered credit limits and increased credit score requirements for credit cards, while also increasing credit card interest rates. These guardrails curbed, and in some cases, prevented high levels of consumer spending.
To what do you attribute the concerns about leadership in the U.S. government? Is there more data to flesh out here?
There has been a slight decrease in consumer concern about leadership in the U.S. government – our Winter 2025 Consumer Trends Report showed that 47% of Americans were concerned compared to only 42% in this report. Timing is likely playing a role here: The last time we took the pulse of Americans was right before the election. This pulse is right after the holidays but before Trump formally took office. During this time, there has been quite a bit of uncertainty, such as the creation of DOGE and cabinet appointments, leaving consumers concerned about government corruption.
The travel sector is concerning. Is there comparative data about how much consumers planned to travel in 2024? Is the 2025 percent higher or lower? If higher, why do you think it’s higher even with less debt. If lower, why do you think it’s lower?
Resonate has observed a decrease in discretionary spending over the last few years, and travel is one category where we have recently seen a more acute impact. In Resonate’s 2024 Summer Consumer Trends Report, 46.9% of consumers reported they were spending less on travel. Our latest report dives deeper into this, finding that more than 21% want to keep their travel budget below $1,000. Because Resonate Consumer Trend data is connected to 250 million U.S. consumer profiles, Resonate clients can dive deeper into which consumers are cutting back on travel and which categories of travel (luxury, adventure, sustainable, entertainment) will see the biggest impact.
Alternatively, categories that have been suppressed are now starting to resume growth. Consumers are focused on home improvements and major household purchases, budget line items they previously postponed or canceled while they were working on managing their debt.
What was the methodology for this report?
Resonate AI-powered data has the most updated, comprehensive consumer intelligence available today: 15,000+ attributes scaled to 250 million individual profiles, easily accessible in our marketer-friendly Resonate Elements data sets. On a continuous basis, we ask consumers how they feel about recent events and that data is added to rAI our AI-data engine that was generated to create this report. For this report, we collected data from November 25, 2024 through January 6, 2025.
