How americans spend their money..

Cool graphs - shows the technology expectation creep very well - also, look at the differences spent on the different categories - the relative amount is about the same except in housing, taxes and transportation - taxes are HUGE! Thanks for posting.
 
Wow - check out the growth in cell phone proliferation!

Looks like the graph of my desire to retire ;)
 
More color tv's than stoves, but more refrigerators than color tv's. Got to keep the beer cold I guess. :D
 
I wonder if you can glean any investment information from the bottom graph. Looks like some areas of growth are maxed out and the market is saturated and might only feed on replacements.

Another thing of interest is the durable goods (long lived) vs the disposable goods. More people spending on things that will only be usable for a few short years, computers, cellphones and vcr's.
 
Isn't it saying, everyone has everything.
 
looks like we are about to have an intersection of dishwashers and the internet

Yes, but at only ~63%? I am shocked. Even my apartment (before I bought my house) had a tiny cheap dishwasher.
 
Neat graphs. Makes me feel wealthy since we have most of the "toys". The house I bought in '85 after the divorce didn't have a dishwasher in it - intending at the time to remain a hard-core bachelor, I don't think I even noticed. A few years after getting married 2nd time wife wanted a dishwasher (What for? She was doing a fine job!) but it would have required about a $6K min. kitchen overhaul so we never got around to it. But the new house has one.
 
Looks like the "Highest 5th" spends a LOT more on housing, cars, taxes, and financial flows..........not too surprising, I think they are the "keeping up with the Joneses" folks........:)
 
A few years after getting married 2nd time wife wanted a dishwasher (What for? She was doing a fine job!) but it would have required about a $6K min. kitchen overhaul so we never got around to it. But the new house has one.

You could have got a nice rolling dishwasher for much LESS than $6000...........:D
 
Great post!

Interesting to note:

Less automobile and clothes washer penetration immediately after WWII than before. Guess that metal was needed for tanks and bombs!

Surprising to note low penetration of some categories when I was born (geezer here - 1947): automobiles - 52%, clothes washers - 18%, telephones - 56%, electricity - 90%, etc. I guess those stories I tell my son about having to walk 47 miles to school, in the snow, uphill both ways, contain more truth than either of us thought!
 
Great post!

Interesting to note:

Less automobile and clothes washer penetration immediately after WWII than before. Guess that metal was needed for tanks and bombs!

Surprising to note low penetration of some categories when I was born (geezer here - 1947): automobiles - 52%, clothes washers - 18%, telephones - 56%, electricity - 90%, etc. I guess those stories I tell my son about having to walk 47 miles to school, in the snow, uphill both ways, contain more truth than either of us thought!

Funny story about that, when my Dad used to tell us how we walked MILES to school in the snow, etc, uphill both ways, one day we visited his hometown. I saw a one-room schoolhouse, and asked him about it. "Yup", that's where I went to school", he said.

Later I noted based on the car odometer that the schoolhouse was THREE TENTHS of ONE MILE from the farm he grew up on, but at the risk of getting hit I deferred comment..........:eek::D
 
Funny story about that, when my Dad used to tell us how we walked MILES to school in the snow, etc, uphill both ways, one day we visited his hometown. I saw a one-room schoolhouse, and asked him about it. "Yup", that's where I went to school", he said.

Later I noted based on the car odometer that the schoolhouse was THREE TENTHS of ONE MILE from the farm he grew up on, but at the risk of getting hit I deferred comment..........:eek::D

Maybe he was including the miles he had to walk to the barn to milk the cows before school... :p

2Cor521
 
Maybe he was including the miles he had to walk to the barn to milk the cows before school... :p

2Cor521

Could be, but the barn was about 200 feet from the farmhouse...........:D
 
Yes, but at only ~63%? I am shocked. Even my apartment (before I bought my house) had a tiny cheap dishwasher.

I'm 66 and I have never had a dishwasher. Just as well, years ago a zen roshi taught me that satori is found by giving full concentraion and awareness to mundane tasks.

So not only have I saved money by not buying and maintaining dishwashers, I have moved myself along spiritually, maybe. :)

Ha
 
Cool graphs - shows the technology expectation creep very well - also, look at the differences spent on the different categories - the relative amount is about the same except in housing, taxes and transportation - taxes are HUGE! Thanks for posting.
President Barack will help us poor victims of affluenza by making that tax column even higher, so we won't have to bother any longer with those pesky financial flows, or live in those nice houses.

Ha
 
I read that dishwasher is the top thing that people want in a new house.

We had a rolling dishwasher for a few years, and it worked quite well -- like having a movable butcher block island.
 
Funny story about that, when my Dad used to tell us how we walked MILES to school in the snow, etc, uphill both ways, one day we visited his hometown. I saw a one-room schoolhouse, and asked him about it. "Yup", that's where I went to school", he said.

Later I noted based on the car odometer that the schoolhouse was THREE TENTHS of ONE MILE from the farm he grew up on, but at the risk of getting hit I deferred comment..........:eek::D
I measured the distances I had to walk about 3 times out of any month. One school was 4.7 miles (one way), and to catch the bus for another school was 8.3 miles (one way). I was born in 1964. So, I actually have the right to say I walked uphill both ways and sometimes in the snow (although the rain was much more of a pain in the *ss. ;)
 
Oh, and we have a diswasher in our house that gets used every single day.
We have 4 younger kids, and because the water (and dryer in it) get so hot, the bacteria have little to no chance on surviving.

It seems the only time they get sick, is because they didn wash their darned hands! :mad:

But, love them I do! :angel:
 
You could have got a nice rolling dishwasher for much LESS than $6000...........:D

Yes, we discussed that, but rejected the idea because of the storage issue - where to put it? My mother had one in her house and it was a PITA because it was always in the way. When it wore out she didn't replace it, and the 3 kids had moved out by then.

At the time I didn't know about the ones made for RV's that are very compact. One of those would have fit where three drawers were.
 
I thought it was interesting that A/C peaked at under 90% but then remembered that we have friends in Denver in a nice expensive new house, without A/C.
 
Well, I just checked, and it was about half a mile to my bus-stop -- big hill, heavy trombone, lots of snow.
 

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Well, I just checked, and it was about half a mile to my bus-stop -- big hill, heavy trombone, lots of snow.
Further analysis indicates that apparently it really is uphill both ways...

I enjoyed high-school marching band, but one of the big factors in quitting was having the sundown bus drop me off a mile further from our house and at the bottom of a huge hill. Yes, it would usually be snowing too. I didn't enjoy it that much.
 
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