Читать книгу Retirement Planning For Dummies - Matthew Krantz - Страница 38

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides useful spending data. The data, which is typically released in September, compiles household spending for the previous 12 months. You can find the most up-to-date numbers on the BLS site at www.bls.gov/cex/tables.htm.

It’s amazing how much detail the BLS provides. Curious about how much Americans spend on booze, pork, wireless service, or stamps? The BLS knows.

You can look at the data in many ways, but Table 2-2 is a good place to start. In the second col you see what the typical consumer unit, or household, spends. A typical consumer unit shown in the table looks like the following:

 The head of the household is 51 years old.

 The household contains 2.5 people.

 The household has an average of 1.3 wage earners and 1.9 cars.

I realize no household has 2.5 people or 1.3 wage earners, or drives 1.9 cars. These are averages of the 130.8 million households that the BLS studies.

Before your eyes start to glaze over looking at all this data, consider the following highlights for the “All Adults” column:

 Spending consumes 93 percent of after-tax income. This benchmark is important. If your income is 20 percent greater than the average, is your spending 20 percent greater? Is it more? If you’re spending more than 93 percent of after-tax income, find out why.

 Housing costs burn a big hole in budgets. Shelter, as the BLS calls it, accounts for 19 percent of people’s annual spending. That amount includes only mortgage or rent. Then add utilities, which make up 6.5 percent of spending.

 Little remains for savings. The typical American’s budget is stretched thin. If you subtract total spending from after-tax income, only $4,808 after-tax dollars remain.

TABLE 2-2 Typical American Budget

Item	Average Annual Amount (% of Spending)
	All Adults	65-Year-Olds
Income before taxes	$76,335	$50,118
After-tax income	$65,623	$45,463
Total spending	$60,815	$50,178
Food at home	$4,445 (7.3%)	$3,906 (7.8%)
Dining out	$3,424 (5.6%)	$2,607 (5.3%)
Shelter (includes rent or mortgage)	$11,807 (19.4%)	$9,213 (17.3%)
Utilities	$3,956 (6.5%)	$3,714 (7.4%)
Apparel	$1,850 (3.0%)	$1,134 (2.3%)
Transportation	$9,735 (16.0%)	$7,472 (14.9%)
Healthcare	$4,924 (8.1%)	$6,700 (13.4%)
Entertainment	$3,379 (5.6%)	$3,003 (6.0%)
Personal care	$764 (1.3%)	$681 (1.4%)
Education	$1,505 (6.1%)	$388 (0.8%)
Insurance	$6,904 (11.4%)	$3,185 (6.3)

BLS Table 1300. Annual expenditure means, shares, standard errors, and coefficients of variation, Consumer Expenditure Survey, 3rd quarter 2017 through 2nd quarter 2018 (www.bls.gov/cex/22018/midyear/age.pdf).