What are you spending your money on?

According to Deloitte's 23rd Annual Holiday Survey of retail spending and trends, 59% of consumers expect to reduce their spending this holiday season. Higher food prices (73%) and higher energy prices (69%) were the top two reasons for spending less, outpacing the economy (61%) and job uncertainty (18%).
A record number of consumers say they are pessimistic about the economy. Over half of the respondents (53%) say they expect the economy to weaken next year, the highest in more than 10 years of asking this question, compared with 43% last year.

Categories in which spending is likely to be down the most from last year are

Home improvements
Home/holiday furnishings
Non-gift clothing
Socializing away from home
Charitable donations
Entertaining at home

Consumers also said they would buy fewer gifts this year, 21.5 gifts on average compared with 23.1 gifts last year, and they will spend an average of $532 on gifts this holiday season, down 6.5%.

For the complete summary, and links to more data from Deloitte, please visit here.

More from The Center for Media Research

Success: Is it all rainbows?

This is a question and answer thread of mine from LinkedIn.com - I thought it was very interesting... it is backward like an email:

Hello Sudarshan,

What would success be with out failure. When people think about success they think about what the person had to do to become successful. What did they have to learn. What did they have to accomplish to become successful. The positive is that the person became successful and that they didn't quit before that happend. That would be a shame. The rainbow comes after the rain. The fact that the person went out and was able to succeed or fail is a success by itself don't you think? Doing nothing is failure, and you never hear about those people.

Bret

On 10/7/08 9:04 AM, Sudarshan Balakrishnan wrote:
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Bret

Thank you for the reply. Any kindle your brain a bit - please provide me an answer that would be positive. Failure / hurdles / mistake is not the focus of the question. Frank's answer was a close one. Cant we talk of success without talking failure / mistake / hurdle - think and reply once again.

If you wish to connect, feel free to invite me at SudarshanBalakrishnan@in.com

regards..

On 10/7/08 7:59 AM, BRET WADE (thewadeteam@gmail.com) wrote:
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I don’t know of any. For that matter if any one claims to have never maid a mistake then they have never done any thing. We learn how to do things right by doing things wrong. I would normally choose to learn by others blunders but it doesn’t turn out that way most times. I have 2 kids, 18 and 11. I try to tell them about some mistakes I’ve made hoping that they don’t make the same ones but I think they would much rather find out for them selves.

Question Details:
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Do you know of any leader who was always successful right from the start to end?