Saskatchewan people are pretty good at saving for a rainy day. It probably comes from our proximity to agriculture where rain is liquid gold.
StatsCan has just released the final numbers on the country’s economic performance last year and one of the metrics they looked at was savings rates.
It is an important measure for a couple reasons. First, it is the cushion people have to handle downturns. Second, it is the source of capital for lending and growth.
And we’re pretty good at it. In 2023, we were sitting at 7.4-percent. In other words, we saved seven-and-a-half percent of our income. That was second in Canada among the provinces but lower than 2022 when we surpassed 10-percent making us the biggest savers in the nation. In 2021 we were closer to eight percent but COVID made us all savers and we were 5th in the country.
This is doubly good because home equity is considered as savings so as residential prices rose in places like Toronto or Vancouver, household savings rose along with it and we still out did them.
