Are you still going shopping?

New data released by Statistics SA has shown that the retail trade has dropped off in the first three months of 2009 by 2.9 percent in real terms. The drop off comparing March 2009 to March 2008 is a staggering 5.3 percent lower. This means that less folk have got the cash to go shopping. So if you want to be able to still go out to the shops now and again, what should you do?

• Plan a budget
• Compare your credit cards 
• Only get what you need

These figures are a bit of a shocker and plainly show that there is just not as much money floating around as this time last year. The numbers show a drop if held to constant prices from 2008, which means that if you take out the effect of inflation then people are buying less than before. These sort of figures suggest that the economy is contracting raising fears of a recession. In conjunction with these numbers manufacturing output was also down indicating that fewer goods are being made, which shows us that even less is expected to be sold in the next few months.

If you put together retail sales and manufacturing output this makes up a sizable portion of our Gross Domestic Product or GDP, somewhere in the region of a third. So we can surmise that a third portion of our economy is already in decline. So if you really do need to spend make sure that your budget is up to date, shop around and compare your credit cards to make sure you are getting the absolute best interest rate and best value card. We can expect the economy to falter further so don't splash out just yet, in fact put some money away and it will come in really handy when the economic outlook starts to improve again.