Where does your money go?
The brains in the US government think they know where our money is going.
ht toVisual Economics via The Common Room for the image
Strangely enough, they neglected to include taxes. We could naively assume that income taxes were the difference between pre-tax income ($63,091) and expenditures ($49,638). This would be about 27% - but do Americans really live within their means on average? Doubtful.
There are some other categories missing, too. What about credit card payments? Savings? Childcare? Nonetheless, it presents an interesting look into the average American bank account.
If an annual income of just over $63K sounds generous to you, take into account that the graph above seems to consider a consumer unit to be a household, not an individual. With 1.3 wage earners in each household, annual average income per worker would be more like $48,531. Also take into account that a few super-high earners will throw off the average considerably. Does that help you not to feel like you're getting the short end of the stick?
Moving along...
MORE GRAPHS
Compare graphs and figures for other years:
If we go back far enough, we'll see that food used to make up a far larger portion of the family budget. Cable and cell phones were not considered life necessities. Few or none had vehicles or even utility bills.
GRAPH YOUR OWN EXPENSES
Want to see how your own expenses break down? Make a quick and easy pie chart here. To keep it simple, just enter your best guess at monthly expenses for as many categories as you choose to create. When you're done creating categories, add up everything you've got so far. How much of your monthly income is left? Make one more called "misc" or "other" and enter the difference. This should give you a quick snapshot of your spending patterns.
Here's mine, quick 'n' dirty:
Like the feds, I didn't include taxes. My pie chart doesn't show income tax, social security, medicare/medicaid, gas tax, sales tax, property tax...you get the idea.
I was surprised to see that in spite of the fact that we live 50 miles from town and drive the ultimate gas hog to haul our large family, our transportation expenditures are surprisingly low. Our gas expense is very average - I guess this is because we spend most of our time at home, leaving the house primarily for church and a weekly grocery trip. Our cost is also kept down by the fact that we drive older vehicles with no monthly payments. I didn't include the cost of repairs and maintenance which would certainly bring us closer to the national average, but I'm still pleased to see that our need for a 15 passenger van doesn't have the disproportionate impact upon our budget that one would have assumed.
I was also pleased to learn that our grocery expenses are roughly average when you consider that it includes our clothes, pets, household, etc. Since we're feeding 11 people and countless pets, I think this is an area in which it would be easy to spend far more.
I was a little surprised at home much we spend on insurance, though I don't think we can (or should) do much to cut back. It includes auto, home, life, and dental. Instead of traditional health insurance, we are members of Samaritan Ministries. We love it, and wouldn't consider giving it up!
I was not at all surprised that our housing cost is so low. We bought raw land and built our own house, so we have a lot of sweat equity. We have a modest home with an even more modest mortgage. Our electric bill is currently very low because we're not using a/c and we line dry all of our laundry. We hope to install a woodburning stove before winter to keep the bill low year 'round.
The other loan category is not related to our current home - it's what's left of our 7 year stupid tax.
BUDGETING
Guess what? You just created a snapshot of your current budget. Do you like how it looks? Did you find any surprises? What would you like to change?
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2 Responses to “Where does your money go?”
August 26th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Have you tried http://www.mint.com? I love it and its free! It ties in with your bank account and it shows where every dime goes.
Sadly, in one month I realized we spent $420 just going out to lunches on the weekends!
September 7th, 2009 at 10:37 am
You need a big pie piece, say oh about 65% that says Gummint Theives!
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