Consumer Expenditures Survey

[Independent]

We occasionally have "What did you spend last year?" threads. The dialogue in those threads can be interesting, but I also like to see statistics. How do we compare to the "average US couple" of about our age?

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics gets thousands of people to fill out very detailed spending reports that should answer that question. These numbers impact all of us because they are the source of the weights used in CPI calculations. But, I've just got a curiosity question for the slice of the data that's "like us".

The BLS provides many sample tables here: Consumer Expenditure Survey
Unfortunately, none of them have exactly what I wanted. Fortunately, they also put the "micro-data" online. Anyone can download every answer to every question from every family. I used that data to put together a table that's closer to my interests. Maybe it's also interesting to other people here.

All the data here is for married couples, with no children at home, with both spouses over age 60:

CATEGORY	Owner _____	Renter ____	Both ___
Food at home	4,562	3,241	4,296
Food away from home	2,378	974	2,181
Mortgage interest	2,539	15	2,334
Mortgage principal	1,937	146	1,790
Property taxes	3,071	75	2,826
Homeowners insurance	611	6	562
House maint, repairs, flooring	1,806	9	1,662
Rent	61	11,620	950
Electricity	1,633	1,023	1,583
Heating fuels	740	223	697
Water, sewer, trash, …	660	189	622
Major appliances	283	101	266
Housekeeping services	874	300	826
Cleaning Supplies	359	183	330
Other housekeeping supplies	611	215	559
Furniture	429	222	411
Smal appl, misc HH eq & textiles__	1,265	535	1,165
Other lodging	652	243	617
Telephone services	1,245	1,049	1,227
Computer information services	356	206	343
Clothing	1,290	570	1,189
Cars, net purchase + lease	3,809	889	3,568
Vehicle finance charges	152	103	148
Car insurance	1,149	1,114	1,100
Gasoline and motor oil	2,346	1,459	2,277
Car maint & repairs	1,085	519	1,030
Car rental, prkng, tolls	260	232	256
Public transportation	17	82	22
Other vehicles	19	-	18
Health insurance	4,623	2,861	4,490
LTC insurance	322	77	303
Dental, Eyecare, Hearing Aids	862	400	825
Other medical	1,326	957	1,280
Personal services	56	30	54
Fees and admissions	646	148	601
Cable/Satellite services	848	579	826
Other AV equip & services	166	169	163
Pets, toys, hobbies, …	651	332	605
Other Ent supp, eqp, services	515	12	474
Personal care products	385	452	375
Personal care services	421	261	408
Reading	207	104	198
Education	162	214	162
Alcohol	478	282	442
Tobacco	172	305	182
Miscellaneous	770	290	724
Alimony and child support	39	5	36
Gifts to f & f, educational	475	133	449
Other gifts to f & f	2,769	736	2,589
Tax deductible contributions	2,549	758	2,409
Life and other pers insurance	743	325	711
Travel food and alcohol	630	143	594
Travel lodging	739	128	697
Travel gasoline	239	64	225
Travel public transportation	959	319	916
Travel other	177	22	165
TOTAL	58,128	35,649	55,758

I'd like to right-adjust the numbers in the columns, but don't know how. Any suggestion?

Note that only 33% of the owners had mortgages. So, those that did paid $7,617 in interest and $5,811 in principal.

 

[Independent]

Caveats:

Although the BLS does thousands of surveys each quarter, the data above comes from just a small slice of the total sample.

They do "interviews" for larger expenses, like rent, each quarter. In the interview, they ask the contributor to remember (or look up) spending for the prior three months.

They do "diaries" for smaller expenses like food. For the diaries, they ask the contributor to make detailed entries every day for two weeks for each individual expense (yes, that means each item on the grocery receipt is entered separately). They do one two-week period each quarter for each family.

The "owner" column above averaged 599 interviews per quarter, and 272 weekly diaries.
But, the "renter" column only averaged 54 interviews and 25 diaries.

The BLS says that owners outnumber renters by about 11 to 1 in this group of older couples.

So, I'm not really sure that renters spend more on tobacco than owners, it might be they just happened to hit some heavy smokers in the random drawing.

The main reason that I showed them separately is that I wanted to show the housing expenses for owners without having them averaged in with the renters.

Also, I've barely sampled all the extensive documentation on what actually gets into each of the rows above. It exists, but it is lengthy. This can impact comparisons. For example, our expense tracking puts everything that we sometimes buy at the "grocery store" into a single category. It contains food, and also paper towels, toothpaste, shampoo, laundry detergent, and even dryer sheets. So, if I want to compare our "supermarket" category to the BLS numbers, I need to combine their "Food at home", "Cleaning supplies", and "Personal care products" lines.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

The CES helped us to realize how much expense creep we had over the years. We've had great success using it as a benchmark to see where we could focus our cost cutting efforts.

 

[sengsational]

That's cool info! It would be great if every store receipt and every bill you got would break the expense down into those defined categories...I was thinking cramming the data into a qr code or something. That would make tracking by these small categories feasible. I might hit 6 categories in a trip to super walmart, so can't be bothered getting that detailed.

 

[Throwdownmyaceinthehole]

I was tracking pretty good until I hit the alcohol category, methinks I spend that much each month. Good thing the mortgage is paid off.

 

[Independent]

That's cool info! It would be great if every store receipt and every bill you got would break the expense down into those defined categories...I was thinking cramming the data into a qr code or something. That would make tracking by these small categories feasible. I might hit 6 categories in a trip to super walmart, so can't be bothered getting that detailed.

Yes, like I said, we can hit three categories on one trip to the grocery store. I added the BLS detail together rather than try to take ours apart when I compared.

But, it's interesting that we do carry detail for a lot of these. For example, if I look at my annual spending summary, I'll see separate totals for electricity, natural gas, and sewer/water.

(Of course, since I wrote the report, it probably reflects some of my breakdowns.)

 

[GrayHare]

interesting that renters spend more on smokes

 

[FANOFJESUS]

Is it cheaper to rent or do homeowners just spend more money?

 

[Independent]

Is it cheaper to rent or do homeowners just spend more money?

I expect that people with lower incomes rent.

 

[Independent]

interesting that renters spend more on smokes

Two possibilities:

1 - Lower income people are more likely to smoke. http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/21/american-smokers-and-income-charted/?_r=0
Assuming renters are, on average, lower income people, this may just reflect that relationship.

2 - Note that they only averaged 54 interviews from renters. If smoking is fairly rare, a random drawing might get a few "too many" smokers and give an unreliable result.