Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Economists are trained to look at incentives for what people do, and of course, we look at economic incentives. So when we look at debt and savings, we say, 'Have there been incentives to go into debt and have there been disincentives to save?' And the answer is - if you look over the last say six or seven or eight years - you would say, yes. There were big incentives to go into debt because going into debt was cheap. If you look back at 2003, 2004, 2005, we had generation-low interest rates, interest rates were never that low in 25 or 30 years. So it made sense for people to take advantage of those interest rates and take on debt. On the savings side, people were not taking money out of their paychecks and saving it, but what was happening is our assets were going up in value. Stock market was going up, housing values were going up and, in essence, those assets were doing the saving for us. So it made very good sense economically that people were not saving out of their paycheck, and people were going into debt. Now those factors have all changed. Debt is more expensive, stock market, housing markets are not going up like they used to. So many economists are expecting - again, not immediately, but down the road - that savings will come back in style."