If you were to pick a dominant theme in Canadian personal finance, you could do a lot worse than debt.to buy houses and other stuff. We might be better at it than hockey, maple syrup production and snow shovelling.
Ms. Duncan’s surprise at the share of people who see themselves as savers first is based on a few data points the Financial Resilience Institute has gathered. For example, 37 per cent of the population had a negative or zero household savings rate as of June, 2023. But the Canadian openness to spending predates today’s financial difficulties. While it has plateaued lately, the ratio of household debt to disposable income has soared since the 1990s and most recently hit 180.5 per cent. This means there was almost $1.81 in debt for every dollar of household after-tax income.
The savings rate in Canada is not too bad by our standards at 5.1 per cent, according to the latest Statistics Canada tally. The savings rate five years ago was practically nothing. It soared during the pandemic and has been easing off since then.