Infographic: 5 Ways Falling Oil Prices Impact the Economy

I keep hearing pundits try to explain why lower pump prices haven't turned directly into consumer spending.

My crazy theory, and IANAE, is that it's because consumers are now finally trying to fix their balance sheets, like banks and corporations have been doing for the last few years.

People are just now starting to dig out, fix their retirements or emergency funds.

And maybe this is a totally spurious correlation, but look at inflation-adjusted home prices over the last 100 years, and compare it to per capita savings over the last 100 years. You'll see some similar inverted pivots. Real home prices start to tick up in the mid-70s, after a few decades decline, and per capita savings reverses, suddenly starts dropping. Maybe people were leaning heavy on their real estate as savings while it was appreciating, and they're now reevaluating that, trying to build up a lot of cash as well.

(On the other hand, a lot of other things affected savings rates at that time, like the rise of preapproved simple credit, so I might be way off.)

tl;dr Money saved from lower pump prices is going right into savings. Might lead to higher consumer spending down the line, we'll see.