AP Poll: Shoppers cut back for holidays

WASHINGTON (AP) — If it makes you feel any better, you’re not the only one keeping tight reins on holiday shopping.

Fifty-three percent say they expect to spend less on holiday gifts than they did last year, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll released Wednesday. An additional 40 percent say they will spend about the same.

Taken together, that means nearly everybody is restraining the usual year-end urge to splurge on presents. And that is the shopping period that in typical years provides retailers with a huge chunk of their annual sales.

The poll results vividly illustrates how bad economic news feeds on itself. Rising unemployment and tight credit are leading people to spend less, further weakening the economy.

Helen Yi, 26, an insurance agent from Waddell, Ariz., outside Phoenix, says she and her husband, a police officer, are doing well financially.

But they are cutting back holiday spending anyway, from perhaps $2,000 last year to about half that amount.

“It’s because of everything I hear on the news that the economy is going downhill,” said Yi. “I’m afraid my income in the future might go down, so I’m saving more. It puts fear in my mind.”

Predictably, lower income people are more likely to say they are trimming their holiday gift purchases.

But people earning more are hardly embarking on shopping sprees. Sixty-one percent of those earning less than $50,000 a year say they are cutting back, but so are 47 percent of those making at least $50,000.

The survey found that 7 percent expect to spend more on holiday gifts. That includes April Woods, 51, a homemaker from Akron, Ohio.

She says she always has more friends and neighbors she wants to give presents to, and her husband’s income as a delivery-truck driver allows her to do it if they watch their spending during the year.

She said she expects to spend about $2,200 on clothes, video games, baked goods and other gifts for family and friends this season, compared with $1,800 a year ago.

“I try to save all year so I can do Christmas right,” Woods said.