How Consumers Made Ends Meet During the COVID-19 Pandemic
07 Dec ’21
To gauge how the unprecedented economic downturn and related surge in unemployment affected individual households as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, this latest research brief focused on the strategies respondents used to help make ends meet based on data from the Consumer Finance Institute’s COVID-19 Survey of Consumers.
As part of the Consumer Finance Institute’s ninth COVID-19 Survey of Consumers conducted in July 2021, respondents were given a list of potential strategies they might have used to help them make monthly payments on bills and debts at some point during the pandemic.
The survey results indicated that younger and lower-earning respondents were more likely to have used one of the strategies and had to use a wider variety of strategies to help make ends meet. About half (46.3 percent) of all consumers said they paid some of their monthly bills or debt payments by using their stimulus payments, but this rate rose as high as 62.0 percent for lower earners. Cutting discretionary spending was the second most-often cited option for making ends meet. It was used by 28.5 percent of all respondents, and 34.4 percent of lower earners. Additionally, while borrowing in general to make payments was not reported by many respondents, they were more likely to borrow from friends and family than from traditional lenders; 16.6 percent tapped their social network to borrow funds versus 10.5 percent who reported seeking more traditional loans.
