The psychology of personal finance is so interesting. We don’t even think about how we spend money when we’re doing it but basically all of us would be mortified to see a printout of what we spend money on.
I meant in public - I’m well aware of what I spend. Too aware actually. It is a byproduct of when I was poor and living paycheck to paycheck for so long. You get used to tracking every dime and budgeting - it’s the only way to survive.
I have friends that don’t do this and honestly don’t know how they get by. Just assume they have massive amounts of debt.
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I don’t see any category for booze which is probably what makes their restaurant and groceries higher than normal.
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I totally disagree. I have been tracking my spending for nearly 10 years so I’m a bit more aware than most folks. My history in Mint goes back to January 2012 and I have some spreadsheets as old as 2011! I’ll try to post a screenshot of last year’s spending when I get a chance.
Just wanted to +1 what jmakin said about being poor and having to track it out of necessity. It is kind of funny though, since I’m making quite a bit more than I used to and I don’t really need to track spending, but I still do out of habit.
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Most people don’t drink much. Like half don’t drink at all, and another good chunk drink a couple drinks a week or month. 10% of the people drink 60% of the alcohol.
Holy shit what.
I think he’s low actually. It’s less than 10 and more than 60 I’m pretty sure.
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Y’all don’t understand how much top tier drinkers drink. Seen guys that live at a 0.40s level. Like they withdraw if they hit 0.30
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Lol they might not… I’ve known a few with a real problem.
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It’s crazy.
The 80th percentile drinks less than one drink a day. The next decile drinks about 2 drinks per day. The highest decile drinks about 10 drinks per day.
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I’ve been tracking my spending for a few years now (was a legacy from when my wife was a teacher and really needed to track every dollar).
Categories are as follows:
Eating Out
Groceries
Uber/Taxis
Travel
Bars
Home Goods
Clothing
Misc Shopping
CC Interest
Bills
Personal Care
Entertainment
Public Transit/Car Expenses
We each track individual discretionary expenses under this stuff and assume our joint expenses of Rent + Utilities every month.
My discretionary expenses in 2020 - Entertainment is 80% Golf related due to Covid and the other 20% was our cable bill which is about $200/mo. This is just what I put on my credit cards, not what my wife puts on hers so it’s tough to get the full picture. I do 90% of the grocery shopping and pay for all joint eating out because I have the Sapphire Reserve card for 3x Points.
For reference, we live in Chicago and pay $2,825/mo in rent plus about $200/mo in utilities.
|Eating Out| $ 5,731.63 |
|Groceries| $ 7,785.06 |
|Uber/Taxis| $ 247.75 |
|Travel| $ 2,102.62 |
|Bars| $ 1,067.16 |
|Home Goods| $ 1,380.06 |
|Clothing| $ 488.83 |
|Misc Shopping| $ 1,626.56 |
|CC Interest| $ 329.90 |
|Personal Care| $ 2,950.54 |
|Entertainment| $ 13,403.29 |
|Public Transit| $ 2,419.78 |
Not sure of methodology on that but really heavy drinkers are way above 10 per day. They’re usually mixing their own “drinks,” which contain like 3-4 shots of booze, and having at least 4-5 of those.
The stats were pretty shocking even before Covid but have probably gotten much worse during the pandemic.
This reminds me of the scene in Madmen where the alcoholic pours a drink for Sal and fills a glass to the top with straight liquor.
This part doesn’t surprise me.
It’s more that I didn’t think that the percentage of people putting down 8+ drinks a day was so high.
It feels like 30% of the work force drinks a 6 pack of beer a day. At least it feels that way in my life.
I really want to see the breakdown of that top decile, too. If the top 10% are averaging 10 drinks a day, what the fuck do the top 1% average?? Jesus I thought I was a heavy drinker but I’m like 80th percentile at best, gotta step up my game.
This is the real story I think.
I would post this stuff for you guys but I don’t think I’ll get around to compiling it. I don’t really care if others see what we spend money on. My wife’s spending would be harder to put together because she would think I’m a freak and very weird dude for doing it
And we would definitely be judged for our spending, some of you would probably have a field day