Today’s track: Smooth — Santana feat. Rob Thomas
I don’t drink. And somewhere along the way, almost everybody around me stopped too.
Nobody announced it. There was no intervention, no dry-January pact that stuck. I just looked up one day and realized the people in my life mostly… don’t drink anymore. It’s been this interesting phenomenon I couldn’t quite explain.
And it’s not like the energy disappeared. It just went somewhere else. My circle got weirdly dialed in on coffee. Some picked up pickleball. Some walk. A couple swapped the beer for weed. Everything that used to go to the bar tab found a new home.
Then Gallup explained it for me: Americans are drinking less than at any point since 1939. My circle isn’t unusual. My circle is the stat.
It crossed my scroll last night with two other stats.
The first: 41% of Americans say they’re worried about affording groceries over the next few months. In April, that number was 24%. Four months to almost double.
The second one’s the kicker. Real disposable income growth has now trailed spending growth for twenty-four consecutive months — the longest streak in data going back to the 1960s. The old record was about twenty-three months, set in the late ‘70s. The savings rate is down to 2.7%. Credit card debt jumped $21 billion last quarter, to $1.26 trillion.
Those two stats are the same story. The drinking stat isn’t.
Groceries and credit cards are the story of people spending like it’s 2021 on 2026 paychecks. The gap between what’s coming in and what’s going out has to get funded by something — and for two straight years, it’s been savings first, plastic second.
Credit card debt is what it costs to pretend nothing changed.
But the drinking stat is the opposite story. That’s millions of people quietly adjusting — some for money, some for health, some because the trade just stopped being worth it. And look at the year it points back to: 1939. The last time the country drank this little, it was climbing out of the Depression. People had learned the difference between a want and a need the hard way, and the bar tab was the first thing to go.
Some people are pretending. Some people are adjusting. Same economy. Different frame.
Einstein said life is like riding a bicycle — to keep your balance, you must keep moving. Debt is trying to stand still on the bicycle. You can do it for a while. You’ll pay interest for the privilege.
Here’s where it lands in my world: a stretched consumer shows up in housing before almost anywhere else. I wrote last week about the two markets hiding inside one — showings under $200K down 24.5%, showings over $600K up 41.5%. That’s this exact squeeze, mapped onto Louisville streets.
And stretched consumers make motivated sellers. Somebody carrying $18K on cards at 24% doesn’t need top dollar — they need out. That’s not a tragedy to exploit. That’s a problem to solve, and solving it well is the whole job.
So here’s your weekend homework. Rates are still high. Inventory is still climbing. We’re sitting at 4,121 active listings this morning — when I started in 2013, eighteen hundred to twenty-two hundred was the range. Take an hour and watch a few YouTube videos on seller financing — see if it’s something that might interest you. There are a lot of people out there who need solutions, and the ones who learn how to build them are going to eat well the next few years.
And if you’ve been thinking about taking on a bigger project — a flip, a heavy rehab — now’s the window. Buy it now, fix it up through the winter, and it’s ready right when the spring market wakes up. I’m seeing interest pick up already — we’ve had four closings over the last few weeks.
Football’s back this weekend, and the whole country is about to spend three days on the couch. Take the commercials. Pick one thing you’ve been meaning to learn — seller financing, flips, whatever’s been sitting on your list — and give it the ad breaks and halftime. That’s a free hour a game, and nobody’s using it.
And while you’re at it, run the audit my whole circle apparently ran without telling each other. What’s one habit you could drop and never miss? What’s one you could add that would still be paying you a year from now? Drop one. Add one. Stack the little wins. Nothing I’ve built came from one big swing — it all just stacked.
The economy is not going to hold still while anybody catches their breath. It never has.
Keep pedaling.
📊 Wednesday’s poll: Cards or Cats? “Wildcats, till I die” ran away with it — 40.9% (9 of 22). Cardinals faithful, 22.7%. And a dead tie at the bottom: tailgate food and the birds, 18.2% each. Louisville just handed the Cats a win. I’ll take it.
Today’s poll — vote now, results in Monday’s issue:
How does your drinking compare to five years ago?
🏆 Want today’s Top Five? Every morning I screen the whole Louisville MLS and rank the five best deals — and the five most ripe for a lowball, with the number I’d offer on each. I can’t blast other agents’ listings to a list (rules are rules), but I can send them to you personally. Reply “FIVE” and they’re yours.
Warmly,
Rob Bergeron
Owner–Realtor at Award-Winning Winner Realty
Winner Realty | OffMarket.deals | Property Partner Data Company
Schedule time to discuss your goals, bottlenecks, or whatever’s on your mind — book me here.
PS: If you’re planning on listing anything this year, now is the time. We need to get stuff sold going into winter. Hit reply with the address and bed/bath count and I’ll get comps back to you ASAP.
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