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How The Poor, The Middle Class, And The Rich Spend Their Money

How do Americans spend their money? And how do budgets change across the income spectrum?

The graph below answers these questions. It shows average household spending patterns for U.S. households in three income categories — one just below the poverty line, one at the middle of the income distribution and one at the top of the distribution. Both the similarities and the differences are striking.

Everyone devotes a huge chunk of their budget to housing, for example. Poor, middle class and rich families spend similar shares of their budgets on clothing and shoes, and on food outside the home. But, the rich own their homes (wealth) and the poor pay rent (lost money). And the same proportional food expenditures at the different income brackets represents excellent vs. poor nutrition.

But poor families spend a much larger share of their budget on basic necessities such as food at home, utilities and health care. Rich families are able to devote a much bigger chunk of their spending to education, and a much, much bigger share to saving for retirement. (The retirement line includes contributions to Social Security and to private retirement plans, by the way.)

Finally, the rich spend a far greater proportion of their income on education than do the poor, representing, again, an investment in greater, future income for their families.

The figures in the graph come from the Consumer Expenditure Survey, which has tons of data on spending patterns in the U.S.