What keeps us from saving?

The numbers are daunting.

Americans outspent their disposable income to the tune of $19.1 billion in November. Fewer than two-thirds of adults say they saved any money in the past year. And North Carolinians are below average when it comes to building their nest eggs.

"We've never been a country of great savers, but [20 years ago] we did save about 10 percent of our personal income," said Peter Morici, an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland.

In 1984, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported that Americans saved 10.8 percent of their disposable income. By 1994, it was 4.8 percent, and by 2004 just 1.8 percent. Based on federal numbers through the end of November, it's likely the personal savings rate will be slightly less than zero in 2005.

The U.S. savings rate is among the lowest in the industrialized world, according to the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which fosters collaboration among market economies. Net savings rates in 2004 were 11.8 percent in France, 11.5 percent in Italy, 10.5 percent in Germany, 6.9 percent in Japan and 5.1 percent in Korea.

Americans know they should be doing more. According to Bank of America, 76 percent of more than 2,000 consumers surveyed agreed they don't save as much as they should.

People who live in the Triangle do better than the national average at saving, but North Carolina as a whole ranks 31st among the 50 states, according to AG Edwards' "Nest Egg Index." The Triangle ranked 78th out of 200 metropolitan statistical areas in the report, which considered factors including retirement plan participation, personal debt levels and home ownership.

James F. Smith, an economist at UNC-Chapel Hill, doesn't think the situation is as dire as it looks, but he said the trend is clear.

"I don't care how you measure the savings rate, what you'll find is it has pretty much gone steadily down over the past 50 years," he said.

The further removed Americans are from the Great Depression, the worse they are at saving, Smith said. People who can remember the nation's economic collapse in the 1930s tend to have higher savings rates, he said. Not so with the next generation.

"Somehow or another, the Depression generation didn't train their kids, the baby boomers, in the importance of savings," Smith said.

1. OUR CULTURE TELLS US TO BUY, BUY, BUY.

People are bombarded with messages to spend money on the latest, greatest and newest products, rather than to save.

"How often have you heard somebody, some company, some advertisement say you owe it to yourself?" said Bill Dix, president of Fortune Management in Durham. "The demand that we create for ourselves, whether it's advertising or peer pressure or whatever, it's just hard to resist."

What's more, businesses, states and local governments depend on consumer spending, Smith said.

"It's the American way -- shop 'til you drop. If everybody started saving more, the first thing you'd hear is all the retailers complaining like mad," he said. "Right behind them would be the state and local governments saying, 'What's happened to our sales tax revenue?' "

2. WE'RE INVESTING IN OUR HOMES AND IN THE STOCK MARKET.

Though the federal numbers show decreasing saving rates, they don't take into account investments in real estate. According to the methodology of the Bureau of Economic Analysis, mortgage payments count as expenditures, not savings.

"If you split out [real estate] investment from consumption, the savings rate would be positive," Smith said.