Five months into what would become known as ''The Great Recession,'' John and Jane Doe made news because they finally had started squirreling away more than mere pennies.
A headline in the May 19, 2008, issue of Crain's declared: ''Some Americans bucking trend of saving very little.'' The collective consumer, many in the finance sector agreed, had behaved recklessly for years. It had been hard to convince people to limit how much they spent on credit and to sock away more of their wages.
Now, with a public chastened by the worst economic slump since the 1930s, saving little is the trend no more. Consider the following:
* From June 2007 to June 2010, the total dollars invested in Huntington Bank consumer savings and money market accounts in Greater Cleveland more than doubled, region president Daniel Walsh said.
* In one year, between August 2009 and August 2010, the number of new savings accounts opened at Fifth Third Bank in Northeast Ohio climbed 46%, regional president Todd F. Clossin said.
* And nationwide, after more than two decades of heading south, the personal savings rate, a measure of how much after-tax income is saved, is trending upward. The most recent federal data revealed the average American saved 5.9% of his or her income in July, down slightly from June but up four percentage points from 1.8% in July 2007; not long before the recession began.
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