WHEN MATTRESSES ARE BETTER BANKS
Interest rates are always a concern, especially when it comes to your money. As long as the financial institution is paying you a reasonable interest rate for the use of your money, then everyone is happy. However, if that interest rate ever becomes extremely low, then you must reevaluate matters. That is what consumers in Japan are doing right now.
This past January, the Bank of Japan announced interest rates in the negative. Should that carry through to the rates on consumer accounts, then your mattress starts to look better than the bank. That is exactly what some Japanese consumers are now doing (Kevin Buckland, Shigeki Nozawa, and Kazumi Miura. “Japanese Choose the Mattress Over Banks” Bloomberg Businessweek , 6/6/16–6/12/16, pp. 12–13):
“ When the Bank of Japan unexpectedly announced negative interest rate policies in January, the first thing Tomomi Sato did was withdraw a 10th of the money in her bank account to keep it safe at home. ” (p. 12)
Hey, inflation is something that we must always watch. Nevertheless, it’s better than deflation most days. Here’s hoping we don’t have to make our mattresses do double duty.
