daylatedollarshort
Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2013
- Messages
- 9,358
While your math is undoubtedly accurate, it's naive.
DW and I spend a multiple of $39k annually, living modestly in suburban Chicago. We would not have RE'd if doing so meant living on $39k.
I have no problem with your desire for you and your spouse to live on (pay taxes, provide housing, food, entertainment, medical care, clothing, gifts to the grandkids, etc.) $39k. We just chose another path.
The 39K isn't from my budget. As I noted in my post, it is from the "consumer expenditure survey from 2011, average annual expenses for 65+ households of 1.7 members are $39K."
The Consumer Expenditure Survey is from the Department of Labor. Here is the link to the table by age of household -
http://www.bls.gov/cex/2011/Standard/sage.pdf
If you want to call the Consumer Expenditure Survey numbers naive, I guess that is your choice. Usually people do not assign human qualities to numbers from tables.
From the DOL web site -
The Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) program consists of two surveys, the Quarterly Interview Survey and the Diary Survey, that provide information on the buying habits of American consumers, including data on their expenditures, income, and consumer unit (families and single consumers) characteristics. The survey data are collected for the Bureau of Labor Statistics by the U.S. Census Bureau.
The CE is important because it is the only Federal survey to provide information on the complete range of consumers' expenditures and incomes, as well as the characteristics of those consumers. It is used by economic policymakers examining the impact of policy changes on economic groups, by businesses and academic researchers studying consumers' spending habits and trends, by other Federal agencies, and, perhaps most importantly, to regularly revise the Consumer Price Index market basket of goods and services and their relative importance.
Last edited: