Michigan has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 12.6%, and its economy is looking pretty bleak at the moment due to the plight of the auto industry.

I was listening to my usual radio station today, and I heard one of the public service announcements that they’ve been letting various companies use. This one happened to be for a car dealership. The gist of the announcement was asking people to purchase a new car to get our MI economy moving again. It would provide jobs to the dealership employees as well as the employees that manufactured the car.

I had to stop and think when I heard this commercial. Of course I know many people whose jobs are affected by the slump in the auto industry, and I feel really bad for them. But, should people really go out and make an unplanned automobile purchase just to help the economy? I would argue, “No”. Isn’t spending beyond our means one of the reasons we’re in this economic mess?

So, I started thinking about whether we should spend just for the sake of helping out the economy in general. We haven’t really changed our spending habits much due to the economy, since we’ve always tried to spend within our means and save for an item before we purchase it. In fact, years ago, a friend of mine thought it was weird that we were saving for a new roof for our house before we had it done rather than just taking out a loan.

In fact, we still have about $1300 of our $1800 2008 stimulus rebate left in our money market account. The only reason we spent the $500 was we had a car repair that we used it for. We do plan on using it someday for a Disney vacation, but we want to wait until our boys are old enough to remember it rather than just to stimulate the economy.

What do you think? How do you feel about spending to stimulate the economy? Have your spending habits changed since the downturn? For more frugal ideas, please visit Being Frugal.