Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2: Here's a thought experiment. Would you rather have more time
Speaker 2: or more money? Generally speaking, I value time law. It's
Speaker 2: like you can accumulate money, but you cannot accumulate more time.
Speaker 1: I do think that time continues to be more valuable
Speaker 1: for me because I do have so little of it.
Speaker 1: I think more money would help me with the immediate
Speaker 1: basic needs. I think in the scheme of life, though,
Speaker 1: you can't overseave the importance of time.
Speaker 2: With people, time has always been money, but recently, consumer
Speaker 2: goods makers and retailers are trying to sell people more
Speaker 2: things that can give back their precious minutes and hours.
Speaker 3: We've been seeing this emergence of products and services that
Speaker 3: have come up in recent years that aim to help
Speaker 3: people save time.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg's Jawon King says these time saving products and services
Speaker 2: often come at a premium price, and consumers they're paying.
Speaker 3: Walmart, for example, they have, you know, a loyalty program
Speaker 3: or a paid membership program called Walmart Plus, and they
Speaker 3: offer an add on service called in Home where if
Speaker 3: you pay extra, you know, forty dollars a year on
Speaker 3: top of the one hundred dollars for the membership. You
Speaker 3: can get someone to come inside your home and unpack
Speaker 3: the groceries for you.
Speaker 2: Wow, they go into your refrigerator and put things on
Speaker 2: your shelves.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like you can you know, leave detailed instructions on
Speaker 3: how you want your order to be delivered and they'll
Speaker 3: have employees do that for you.
Speaker 2: Frigidnaire is selling a seventeen hundred dollars pizza oven that
Speaker 2: promises to cook restaurant quality pies in two minutes. LG
Speaker 2: has come out with a high tech closet that costs
Speaker 2: upwards of fourteen hundred dollars and will steam your clothes
Speaker 2: for you. And at home depots annual showcase the Spring
Speaker 2: where store managers get to preview the coming year's biggest products.
Speaker 2: Devices that make chores easier were all the rage.
Speaker 3: Like a plant terranium that you just have to water
Speaker 3: like once a month or maybe once every two months.
Speaker 3: Like quick cleaners where the heads rotate four hundred times
Speaker 3: a minute so it helps you clean faster.
Speaker 2: These companies are all tapping into something real. Inflation remains
Speaker 2: a concern. The labor market is showing signs of weakness,
Speaker 2: but people are tired. People like Lauren Ledux, a therapist
Speaker 2: who lives in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: I will buy the service that allows me to be
Speaker 1: comfortably settled into my life. I'm going to buy the
Speaker 1: dice in hair dryer, even though it's stupid expensive, because
Speaker 1: it's going to give me that extra twenty minutes in
Speaker 1: the morning that I otherwise wouldn't have.
Speaker 2: Even as many shoppers are cutting back on non essentials,
Speaker 2: others are willing to spend a little more to make
Speaker 2: their lives easy.
Speaker 3: We've been writing for a few of years now about
Speaker 3: how resilient consumers are despite all of these macroeconomic forces,
Speaker 3: and we're starting to see them kind of behave differently
Speaker 3: and think differently when it comes to saving their time
Speaker 3: as well.
Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News today on the show Buying Back Your Time,
Speaker 2: paying the adulting tax, the Nope, not doing it fee,
Speaker 2: the growing number of American consumers who are willing to
Speaker 2: spend more to save time even in today's uncertain economy,
Speaker 2: and the companies that are taking notice. To paraphrase Benjamin Franklin,
Speaker 2: there are only a few things that are certain in
Speaker 2: this life. Death taxes and having to do your laundry.
Speaker 2: It's a chore that many of us would rather spend
Speaker 2: less time doing, and that's why as companies try to
Speaker 2: market new time saving tools. Bloomberg's Jawon King says one
Speaker 2: GE appliance has been particularly popular.
Speaker 3: The washer dryer combo units, where people can just throw
Speaker 3: in their load of laundry and they don't have to
Speaker 3: transfer anything after the washing is done. You just put
Speaker 3: it in and you leave it, and after two hours
Speaker 3: or so, it's done. That costs about two thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: That's a significant premium over a basic washer and dryer,
Speaker 2: but it's a premium that Ge was betting people would
Speaker 2: be willing to pay. The origin story of this machine
Speaker 2: is pretty interesting. Jay One says. At first, Ge wanted
Speaker 2: to design a more energy efficient dryer that could help
Speaker 2: people spend less on their energy bills. But executives realized
Speaker 2: that people would pay to save time, so the company
Speaker 2: changed course. Instead, it focused on redeveloping the combo unit.
Speaker 2: A common complain of combo machines has long been that
Speaker 2: they just don't dry very well.
Speaker 3: To make it more targeted for the US consumer, I mean,
Speaker 3: they've done work like making the machine's a little bit bigger.
Speaker 3: You don't need the extra venting for it, and you
Speaker 3: just kind of put it on and forget about it.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean the consumers I talked to, they
Speaker 3: haven't complained about the drying difficulties and.
Speaker 2: The machine has been a hit. Ge has sold ten
Speaker 2: times more than forecast, even after it increased production in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty three. Products that promise to streamline annoying tasks
Speaker 2: aren't new. That's why we have self cleaning ovens, two
Speaker 2: in one shampoo and conditioner. Even the combo washer dryer
Speaker 2: has been around for a while, and gig economy apps
Speaker 2: like Instacart and door Dash and task Grabit have been
Speaker 2: selling convenience for more than a decade now. But Jaywan
Speaker 2: says there's a growing body of market research suggesting that
Speaker 2: the convenience economy is poised to out.
Speaker 3: There was a twenty twenty four survey from Morgan Stanley
Speaker 3: and it showed that people on average are willing to
Speaker 3: pay about five percent more if it means that things
Speaker 3: are going to be more convenient for them.
Speaker 2: Five percent might not sound like a lot, but Jaywan
Speaker 2: says even that small premium can be meaningful to companies.
Speaker 3: In this market where companies are juggling and navigating through
Speaker 3: a lot of different forces, whether it's tariffs or higher costs,
Speaker 3: or the cautious consumer, you know, the challenges within the
Speaker 3: job market. So I think people are trying to figure
Speaker 3: out different areas of growth and different avenues of growth,
Speaker 3: and this is presenting to be one of them.
Speaker 2: That's so interesting. It feels almost counterintuitive. Right people are
Speaker 2: stressed about money, they're seeing cracks in the labor market,
Speaker 2: they're scarred by inflation, and yet they're willing to spend
Speaker 2: more money on products that promise a certain amount of
Speaker 2: time savings exactly.
Speaker 3: And that's you know, one of the initial things that
Speaker 3: sort of sparked our interest, which is that people are
Speaker 3: trying to save money in every way they can. Like
Speaker 3: we hear all the time from consumers about their buying
Speaker 3: chicken instead of buying beef because it's cheaper and they
Speaker 3: want to save money. But at the same time, here
Speaker 3: we are seeing people pay up you know, extra however
Speaker 3: many dollars to get something that they want in that moment. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think it's kind of intuitive and pretty interesting.
Speaker 2: After the break, we talked to a behavioral economist about
Speaker 2: why certain consumers are so willing to pay the time
Speaker 2: saving tax, and what it says about the US is
Speaker 2: increasingly bifurcated economy.
Speaker 4: So people have always cared about saving time.
Speaker 2: That's Dallas Matitsky. He studies judgment and decision making with
Speaker 2: a particular focus on the ways people think about and
Speaker 2: value time and money, and he teaches at the University
Speaker 2: of Pennsylvania's Warton School. He says, as more products and
Speaker 2: services offer ways to buy back time, it's becoming more
Speaker 2: normal for people to use them.
Speaker 4: What the gig economy is doing is it makes it
Speaker 4: much easier to turn money into time on demand. Now
Speaker 4: with a few taps, you can get a ride if
Speaker 4: grocery is delivered, or you can even hire someone to
Speaker 4: assembly of furniture. So that means that consumers are constantly
Speaker 4: seeing opportunities to buy back time. So instead of time
Speaker 4: saving products being a luxury that are built into everyday's
Speaker 4: apps and platforms, it's probably more accurate to say that
Speaker 4: the gig economy amplifies or normalizes these choices. It doesn't
Speaker 4: create a desire to save time. It just makes time
Speaker 4: saving options much more accessible and feasible.
Speaker 2: And there was another turning point, a moment when this
Speaker 2: trend started to accelerate.
Speaker 4: I feel like the pandemic made people think about how
Speaker 4: much valuable the time is. I think something happened during
Speaker 4: a pandemic that people, a lot of people decided to
Speaker 4: change a course of action of the pandemic, spend more
Speaker 4: time with the loved ones, with family, with friends.
Speaker 1: I'd rather have something done quickly and write the first
Speaker 1: time if that means that I'm going to be doing
Speaker 1: something more meaningful later with people that I love.
Speaker 2: That's Lauren Ledux, the therapist who loves her dice and
Speaker 2: hair dryer.
Speaker 1: And I think that's also a product of COVID, because
Speaker 1: so many of us experienced loss. If not like the
Speaker 1: loss of a loved one, we experienced like loss of
Speaker 1: time because we weren't spending time together. We were quarantined,
Speaker 1: we were away from each other.
Speaker 2: Now, several years out from the worst of the COVID pandemic,
Speaker 2: the economy looks a little different. Inflation is still above
Speaker 2: the fed's two percent target. The job market looks like
Speaker 2: it's cooling. Consumer set has been at one of the
Speaker 2: lowest points on record, though higher income consumers are still
Speaker 2: spending so I asked Bloomberg's Jaywon king how paying for
Speaker 2: time or convenience fits in with all that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we've seen the bifurcated economy this year for sure,
Speaker 3: where the lower income consumers they are pulling back and
Speaker 3: the higher income consumers they continue to spend. The spending
Speaker 3: power that's been really resilient from the higher income consumer,
Speaker 3: I think also speaks to this idea that we're talking
Speaker 3: about where higher income consumers generally do have more comfort
Speaker 3: and do have more cushion to pay up a little
Speaker 3: bit more for convenience in time.
Speaker 2: Jaywan says, young people and people making over six figures
Speaker 2: are especially likely to spend money to save time. But
Speaker 2: you also spoke with people who make a wide range
Speaker 2: of incomes and there are those who need to budget
Speaker 2: really carefully who are still willing to pay a premium
Speaker 2: for time saving products.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're really seeing it all across the board.
Speaker 3: And there might be you know, variation in the demographic
Speaker 3: based on the products or services. So if it's additional
Speaker 3: five dollars or additional thousand dollars, we might see some
Speaker 3: differences there. But in terms of this willingness to spend
Speaker 3: and sometimes pay more for convenience is happening all across
Speaker 3: the board. The fact that people consider time to be
Speaker 3: more important today than they did even in twenty one
Speaker 3: twenty two, I think speaks to this growing sort of
Speaker 3: fatigue that everyone is feeling about having to be so
Speaker 3: cautious about watching for price increases, having to be so
Speaker 3: cautious about saving money, constantly reading news about corporate layoffs
Speaker 3: across different sectors. The list kind of goes on and on,
Speaker 3: and so, as you know, exhaustion sort of builds up,
Speaker 3: and some people who still have score tissue from experiencing
Speaker 3: inflation in twenty one twenty two, they feel like they
Speaker 3: can and deserve to splurge here and there if it
Speaker 3: means that they're going to feel a little bit better
Speaker 3: about their stress and their daily lives.
Speaker 4: I feel like that the fact that people are willing
Speaker 4: to pay more for a convenience, it can either reflect
Speaker 4: that higher incomes or more disposable money, which becomes more
Speaker 4: acceptable to save an hour. But at the same time,
Speaker 4: it can also reflect that people feel more time pressured
Speaker 4: or overloaded.
Speaker 2: Wharton's gals Matitski again.
Speaker 4: If you'l day inspact spending money to avoid one extra
Speaker 4: shore can feel less like a luxury and more like
Speaker 4: a necessity. So the way I see it is it
Speaker 4: is less as an indicator of clear economic indicator and
Speaker 4: always a window into how people balancing these very real
Speaker 4: trade offs between time and money.
Speaker 2: As for Lauren, spending on convenience feels worth it so
Speaker 2: she can use the time she gets more meaningfully.
Speaker 1: I do think that there is something to that piece
Speaker 1: of it that feels poignant in this sort of like
Speaker 1: ready made consumer culture that at times feels a little
Speaker 1: bit ethically blurry because it can feel really mindless. But
Speaker 1: then I when I, like as a psychotherapist, was really
Speaker 1: intrigued by the sociology of things, I'm also like, well,
Speaker 1: why do we do that? It's not because we're all
Speaker 1: just blind spenders who don't care what we have at
Speaker 1: the end of the day. It's that there's less available
Speaker 1: to us within this economy, and so how do we
Speaker 1: maximize the most out of our time given what we have.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.
Speaker 2: To get more from the Big Take and unlimited access
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Speaker 2: dot com slash Podcast offer, thanks for listening. We'll be
Speaker 2: back tomorrow