Do Hungarians spend all their extra money as soon as they get it?

According to hvg.hu, statistics show that this year Hungarians made – and spent more money. But life is not always orientated by numbers.

A bus driver working in a Hungarian town told us that he makes exactly 40 forints more now than last year. He explains: in their company, cafeteria counts now as part of the payment, so the amount of money that is referred to his account did not change. Therefore he is not planning on a bigger Christmas shopping than last year. A pedagogue claimed that she and her husband’s wage overall increased by 20,000 HUF compared to last year. She said it is not a significant change for them because they have three children.

The teacher and the bus driver did not spend much money before the holidays because of the reasons they have explained, but taking into consideration the data of the Central Statistics Office, Hungarian salaries increased significantly compared to last year or even last months.

All in all, net wages are 12.8% higher than this time last year, so, considering also inflation, we can spend 10.4% more this year, than this time last year.

There is a little time left until Christmas, but experts claimed in the middle of November that retail exchange turnover in December can reach 1050 billion HUF. The exchange of manufactured goods increased by 9.7%. The consumption of alimentary goods increases more slowly, by 1.5% compared to last October. The most popular products are mobile phones, but more semi-durable goods and clothes are sold, too. There is now a social group that, after having paid their bills, spend more freely on other goods.

Many shops’ traffic has grown, but many of them were closed down.

Customers now look for quality products, and some shops were forced to raise their prices.

According to an entrepreneur in the countryside, wholesale raises the prices all the time, so they also need to raise prices in their shops, and add the price gap, too, in order to make a profit. He added that the Central Statistics Office also counts online shopping, which does not mean any income for shops, and he believes that many shops will close in the future, consequently.

While Hungarians spend more and more, they can also save more and more money. Altogether almost 800 billion HUF worth securities were bought between the last quarter of 2016 and 2017, 510 billion HUF of which are long-term savings. At the same time, 63% of Hungarians do not have the money to make ends meet for a month in case their income would stop. More people are buying bonds, too. Another interesting aspect is that more than 4,000 billion HUF of cash is kept in the households, which increases year by year.

Source: hvg.hu