Bringing back Thrift Week: Neo-liberalism and the rediscovery of thrift

•The paper examines and compares 19th-century and modern drives to promote savings.•It finds parallels between Victorian British and US Republican initiatives.•It argues that both blame poverty on moral failure, not economic disadvantage.•Modern promotion of savings seen as a neo-liberal strategy.

The paper examines and compares the movements for promoting working-class savings in the modern USA and in Great Britain in the 19th century. It explores the use of savings as a technology for managing individuals’ behaviour and motives and the nature of the government objectives which are served by these parallel projects.