Where does the money go?

There’s no denying the fact that Americans love to spend money. The bigger, faster, sleeker, and shinier something is, the better – and in all likelihood more expensive – it is. This line of thinking is what leads so many people into the kind of unnecessary debt that is serious enough to scare off creditors and sometimes even employers.

The nation’s economic crisis has changed how Americans think about and handle money, according to a report today in the Chicago Sun-Times. The newspaper cited an Aug. 31 survey by Peter D. Hart Associates for Citibank that shows that 57 percent of Americans believe that the economic realities of the nation have changed forever. That’s up from 51 percent in the same survey conducted a year ago.

The national phone survey was conducted within the United States by TNS on behalf of ING DIRECT USA from June 22 to June 26, 2011 and included 1,000 adults age 18+. No estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

The average consumer has a budget that is split into a large number of monthly and yearly spending. The average consumer spends $49,638 a year on a range of necessary and desired expenditures. These expenditures come out of an annual household income of $63,091 per year on average, before taxes. The average consumer owns 1.9 vehicles, and 67 percent of them are homeowners with loans. Households average 2.5 people and 1.3 earners reside in each. The largest expenditure of the average household is housing. This takes up an average 34.1 percent of the yearly budget of households.

Insurance and pensions are important financial considerations and they cost the average consumer $5,336 per year. This is a total of 10.8 percent of the annual budget. $5,027 f this, 10.1 percent of the yearly budget, is spent on social security and pension contributions. In addition, the average consumer pays an average of $309 each year, making up 0.6 of the annual budget.

This average consumer unit spent $49,648 in 2007.

Average food spending was $6133, of which $3465 was spent on meals at home. Based on this data, one can conclude that the average consumer unit spends roughly $300 per month on meals prepared at home and roughly $225 per month on meals away from home.

How do your spending habits compare to those of the “average” American? I’m especially curious to hear how much GRS readers spend on books. The average of $118 per year doesn’t buy a lot of reading material. On the other hand, maybe people are using their public libraries!

Below is data of how American’s spent their paychecks!