We stopped eating with a credit card

Recently released credit card spending data revealed that citizens have curbed various expenditures. The decline in items such as online shopping and food after the summer pointed out a slowdown in discretionary consumption.

Since August 28, credit card spending has decreased by approximately 60 billion lira weekly. Total credit card spending, which was 708 billion liras in the week of August 28, reached 648 billion liras in the week of October 9. Card expenditures decreased regularly for 4 weeks after August 28, dropping to 642 billion lira in the week of September 25. Then, expenditures, which reached 723 billion lira in the week of October 2, fell sharply in the last week. 30 billion lira of the falling spending resulted from the decrease in online shopping. While online expenditures were 216 billion lira on August 28, they decreased steadily in the following weeks and decreased to 192 billion lira in the week of September 25. Spending, which rose to 236 billion lira the next week, fell sharply and finally fell to 186 billion lira on October 9.

FOOD EXPENDITURE DECREASED BY 4 BILLION

It was also noteworthy that food expenditures decreased by 6 percent in the last month, from 45 billion lira to 41 billion lira per week. While food expenditure was 44 billion lira on August 28, it increased to 45 billion lira the next week and declined steadily thereafter.

Other decreases in card spending were seen as seasonally driven. While education expenditure, which was 47 billion lira per week during the opening period of schools, decreased to 15 billion lira, accommodation expenditure was 15 billion at the end of August, which coincides with the last period of summer, and was recorded as 9.6 billion in the week of October 9. Travel expenses also decreased by 21 percent, from 16 billion to 13 billion lira.

On the other hand, due to the seasonal transition, clothing and shoe expenditure increased by 29 percent with the support of the increase in prices and reached 43 billion from 33 billion. Grocery expenditures increased by 4 percent between the week of August 28 and October 9 and increased from 133 billion lira to 137 billion lira. Expenditures on markets and shopping malls climbed to 144 billion lira on September 18. If we take that date as a basis, grocery expenditures seem to have decreased by 7 billion lira recently.