refund. so that natural boost that a lot of people rely on this time of year may not necessarily be there sadly enough to make you want to delay filing taxes. but here are some stats for you. according to an american express survey, 19% of taxpayers say they will be owing money this year, up from 13% last year. analysts say this might be a good sign, a sign that the economy is improving. people are earning more, therefore, they owe more. the bad news is that the average tax refund was $2700 last year. huge amount that people will be saying good-bye to. of those expecting a refund, 37% say they plan to use to pay down debt or bills. others plan to save the money. 28% say they plan to intend tsp money on themselves, family, home improvements, that kind of thing. the fact that most people are saving their refunds or using to pay down debt shows there is still a recession mentality in the air and that people have learned valuable lessons since 2009.
election, how does the bhous want to get americans out of the recession mentality, where it s all about saving. obviously it s not a recession. but you re right about the mentality piece of it. it s not unusual in a recovery at this point, especially a sluggish one where people are having doubts about confidence. you see corporations sitting on big piles of cash. the micro stuff. is your employer hiring or p r% firing? as long as they are moving in the right direction and you re seeing your employer hire people, feel more confident, they spend more. that leads you to a direct link to the right track. wrong track numbers the politicians care about so much. their consultants say are a good indicator of where elections go. so you want to see those numbers moving, but in the white house s
polling standpoint is that to turn around that recession mentality of the voter to a growth mentality, to be able to get the consumer confidence up, you basically have to have six solid months of nothing but good economic news before they reach that point. that window has closed. one of the things that was right in terms of what the obama administration tried to do coming out of the state of the union message was saying that we re only going to talk about jobs and the economy, and then they talked about health care for 2 1/2 months, now they have the storm, they have the stock market, they have all these other things that are occurring, that is all going to muddy this up that much more, including what happens with the supreme court today. even if it goes well, it could get in the way of this economic message. it gets in the way of the economic message because it s not that focused on nothing but the economy. when you look at the economic numbers there was some more bad news in the