The timing of monthly bill payments could explain the pattern we observe, if the timing happens to coincide with payday for most households. To the extent that the timing of bill payments is non-discretionary, this explanation implies that the decline in spending cannot be used to infer household preferences for timing of consumption. Column (3) allows us to reject this explanation, however, showing that the decline is still strong and significant when the sample used for estimation excludes bill payments, mortgage contributions, and other payments with plausibly non-discretionary timing (one crucial monthly payment, rent, is already excluded from the all goods category in the survey, for reasons of.
