The adults were nestled all snug in their beds while visions of discounts danced in their heads.

From Marketplace, I'm Sabri Beneshore in for David Brancaccio.

Black Friday and holiday discounting in general is a delicate dance between how much consumers are willing or able to spend

and how much retailers are willing or able to discount.

Some years the discounting is deeper. This is expected to be one of those years. Drew Mattis is

managing director and chief market strategist at MetLife Investment Management and is here to talk

about that. Hi, Drew. Good morning. The engine behind Black Friday spending, well, behind consumer

spending in general, is of of course, consumers' incomes.

And, you know, we've all been dealing with inflation.

So how are incomes and spending shaping up as we enter this holiday shopping season?

Well, it's interesting.

The most recent data we had actually showed a pretty solid gain in income.

But then instead of diverting it to

spending, they actually put more into savings in the United States. And then what they did put

into spending pretty much just match the rate of inflation for the month. And so in real terms,

i.e. the number of things you're buying, that was effectively flat versus the previous

month, which does hold some concern, I think, for the upcoming shopping season.

We hear so much about how the holiday shopping season starts earlier and earlier, discounts appear

earlier and earlier. Is Black Friday? Is it as real as it used to be? Well, I think this year might be even more real. I think

if you have a consumer who's putting money away and trying to boost their savings a bit and they're

facing a high inflationary environment or a higher inflation environment, you know, they're going to be

looking for sales. They're going to be looking for discounts. They're going to be looking for any sort of opportunity to save money so that they can make

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