Hi Glasses Guy! Thanks for your comments.

I totally agree that it’s all these little things, especially when they are subscription or recurring costs, that end up as a huge financial hit. I have friends like that too, though, and I think they just are generally happy to pay for personal time (or don’t realize the cost).

The way I calculated the average savings per household is the difference between after-tax income and total expenditures. You make a good point, though – 401k savings and pensions are pre-tax so they wouldn’t be included. If we assume an average of 5% contributed to that, we’d have to add something like $3,000 to that balance. So even better!

I also posted this comment above and will re-post here:

The savings vary widely by income level. Households making below ~$70,000 spend more than they make, on average. The median household income in this country is $61k. That’s why we see a lot of articles that half of Americans aren’t saving at all. After going through all this data I’m not surprised by that – living is expensive! Depending on location, you could easily spend $50k on necessities.

Thanks for reading!

Keeping up withe Jones is part of it for sure! I actually did a separate post on this exact topic: https://moneylemma.substack.com/p/are-americans-getting-richer

The housing market is another interesting point. It seems like it goes up every year…

I was surprised as well! But you might guess though that the savings vary widely by income level.

Households making below ~$70,000 spend more than they make, on average. The median household income in this country is $61k. That’s why we see a lot of articles that half of Americans aren’t saving at all. After going through all this data I’m not surprised by that – living is expensive! Depending on location, you could easily spend $50k on necessities.

Households in your bracket – $150k to $200k – save about $35k per year on average.

Also on eating out – spending more on that is the trend, so maybe you are ahead fo the curve! Check out this chart from the USDA: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId=90505

haha, you beat me to it! I excluded fish from the table because if I didn’t, I would have so many categories the chart would look terrible. So fish not included on a technicality. For everyone else reading – fish is $145 per household and the biggest sub-category within that is fresh fish ($76)

I agree – I feel like I didn’t even scratch the surface of this data. It’s amazing how many different ways they cut it and what can be gleamed.

Thanks Katie! Great question on travel. Travel spending is spread across a few of these buckets. Here’s some more detail:

Within food there is a category for “meals while traveling” that was $420.

And the housing number does include owned vacation homes ($260 per household) & lodging on out-of-town trips ($620).

Included in transportation is gasoline while traveling ($120) and car rentals ($60) and airline fares ($500).

There are also a few line items within entertainment and miscellenaous that (example – recreation while out of town) that add up to about $200.

The data is so granular that there are even more line items, but these are the big ones. If we add all those up, we get an just over $2,000 per household.

I agree with you on electronics – an iPhone is $2,000! Even if you keep it 5 years, a lot of people are averaging $400 just from that. TVs are similar. It makes me wonder if the survey classifies some newer products as miscellaneous that we might consider electronics. They’ve been doing this survey since the 1970s and it’s the government, so my guess is they are slow to incorporate new technology. They even still have a line item for phonographs in there (it is literally less than 1 penny per person)

Thanks Adam! I had fun pulling it all out and also missed a lot. I totally agree with Joel – it sounds like you are in a good position, nothing to be guilty about!

The other thing about the numbers is that there’s a lot of layers to it. For example, if you break it up by income brackets it looks very different. I did some of that here – https://moneylemma.substack.com/p/the-notorious-1-who-are-they

Question about the $8451 Americans average in savings. Does this include 401K contributions and company match? If so, it still feels like a pretty disappointing number. Assuming that this is all saved in a 401K and there is a 50% company match, 1/3 of this saving may be coming from the company. Still savings and still good, but I am sure way under what most people could do if they truly understood the numbers. Also sad because this data shows most people don’t even come close to maxing out a 401K and also may be leaving money on the table with the company match.

Thanks for writing articles like this that help people see how they can take control of their finances and be successful!

I think the problem today for some families and people is keeping up with Joneses, and the biggest two categories are “cars” and “housing”. I see that in your spending for the categories above. Very interesting and good take!

My household income varies because I make commissions but I’m usually between 140k and 180k so I’m lucky and we are overspend on eating out and kids travel sports which are related. We are crazy busy which makes it easier to justify eating out. If my income changed and I found myself needing to cut spending those are the first two categories I would look at.