Summary: Today I want to show you some charts, I found very interesting, to compare what an average person pays in total to a broader average and to see if the ways we spend our money are normal or does not.
Each of us track his or her expenses and manage it as well. We also compare it with others to see what sort of spending ranges we held as a population of relatively money-savvy citizens.
Yesterday I came across to the the Planet Money blog which has put together a couple of interesting charts representing how an average American consumer spends their paycheck. The results are pretty interesting for a money saving like me.
As you can see, Americans spend about one percent(o.9%) on alcohol, and another one percent on pets. Also, they spend 8.6% of their income on groceries, and spend another 5.7% of their income on dining out.
Although the 15% of our expenses is spent on food compared to 40% 60 years, other spend has risen more(e.g. the largest expenditure of the average household is housing) than enough to compensate for that even in real terms.
One year ago, The visualeconomics.creditloan.com also shown a nice dataviz of US consumer spending as of April 2009. So you can make a comparison on how people spent is money 4 years ago than today.
The average consumer spends on physical necessity, food, an average of $6,133 per year.
People are plowing more money than ever into housing. This is an average of $16,920 spent on housing. The second largest expenditure for the average consumer is transportation, with an average of $8.758.
Another large expenditure is healthcare. The average consumer spends $2,853 on healthcare each year.
The statistic on the size of homes is most shocking to me. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the average new home was 2349 square feet in 2004, up from 1695 square feet in 1974 — and just under 1000 square feet in 1950.
Let me know if you like to compare your spending to others, and what are your favorite sources for comparing numbers.
