Forget the numbers for a moment. Whether you're rich or poor, buying a home or crashing with your parents, happily employed or frustrated and searching for work, you've probably spent a lot of time over the past year thinking about money -- how you spend, how you save and the question that nags us all: "Where did it all go?"
Bundle introduced its Everybody's Money feature in January to give Americans the data and the context necessary to answer that question and to (hopefully) motivate them to do something about it. Now, we're proud to introduce the first-ever Bundle Report, a breakdown of how America spent during all of 2009.
The report shows how much the average American U.S. household spent last year: $37,782, not counting mortgage or rent payments (which are not included in the Bundle data). Divided into six categories, that's 23% of the daily budget spent on shopping, 21% on health and family, 17.5% on food and drink, 17% on home-related expenses, 14.5% on getting around (gas and auto expenses), and 7% on travel and leisure.
How Austin outspends everyone else
To the list of things that are bigger in Texas, please add: spenders. According to Bundle's first "How America Spends" report, the top-spending Americans lived in Austin in 2009. Households in the Texas capital averaged $67,076 in overall household expenses (excluding mortgage and rent, which are not included in Bundle's breakdown).Austin's annual spending is 77% higher than the national average of $37,782. Households in Scottsdale, Ariz., ranked No. 2, spending $64,687 on average for 2009.
Bundle's data excludes spending on mortgage and rent, which explains why New York City doesn't top the list and why the top 25 includes relatively affluent towns with low housing costs. (Ditto for Los Angeles, with its sprawling geography and socio-economic diversity. That city is No. 42 with $39,422 spent in 2009, 4.3% higher than the national average.)
More importantly, the data reveals how spending persists, across circumstances. A lower cost of housing often means that people spend more on food, restaurants and travel. It's why residents of Fresno, Calif., spend more on shopping, gas and auto expenses than their northern neighbors in San Francisco. In other words, you can move to a cheaper city, but you won't necessarily spend less.
| Who's spending, who isn't | |
|---|---|
Top 5 | Bottom 5 |
Continued: How does your spending stack up?
