Personal Finance

How Money is Spent by Different Income Groups

Published

5 years ago

February 25, 2018

Jeff Desjardins

How Money is Spent by Different Income Groups

If you started making twice the amount of money that you do today, how would your spending habits change?

Consider if the tables were turned, and you instead were reduced to half of your current income. Where would you likely make cuts to spending?

The reality is that the money you have coming in has big implications on how expenses get prioritized – and so it’s interesting to see how people in different income brackets allocate what they have.

Visualizing Spending

Today’s series of graphics come to us from data visualization expert Nathan Yau at FlowingData, and they show how money is being spent by different income groups.

It uses data from the 2016 Consumer Expenditure Survey, an annual survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, embedded words in the graphics come from Yau, as he makes observations on the data.

To Buy or Rent a House?

How do income groups differ in spending for housing?

Housing expenditures

Housing Expenses

How is money spent on utilities, furniture, and other household expenses?

Household expenditures

Food Expenses

Do income groups spend more eating at home, or eating out?

Food expenditures

Travel and Transportation

The cost of vehicles, gas, and other travel expenses.

Transportation expenditures

Health Expenditures

What about money spent on health insurance, services, or drugs?

Health expenditures

Pensions and Social Security

Lastly, the money going to retirement, pension, social security, and insurance plans.

Pensions expenditures

For more data analysis, as well as many other great visualizations on income, we highly recommend checking out FlowingData.

Related Topics:income spending household groups expenditures

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Healthcare

Ranked: The Best U.S. States for Retirement

Getting ready for retirement? See which states score the highest in terms of affordability, quality of life, and health care.

Published

1 month ago

May 1, 2023

Marcus Lu

Ranked: The Best U.S. States for Retirement

What is the most important aspect of retirement planning?

If you said finances, you’re probably right. But have you ever thought about where the best place is to retire? Being strategic about location can make a big impact on your quality of life, and perhaps help your savings go just a bit further.

To help break it down, we’ve visualized data from personal finance platform, WalletHub, which ranked the best U.S. states for retirement as of 2023.

Data and Methodology

WalletHub ranked each state using 47 metrics across three dimensions.

Affordability (7 metrics worth 40 points)
Quality of Life (22 metrics worth 30 points)
Health Care (18 metrics worth 30 points)

Here are some examples of what each dimension measures:

Affordability: Cost of living and taxation
Quality of Life: Quality of elder-abuse protections and crime rates
Health Care: Number of health professionals per capita and life expectancy

Visit the source for the full list of metrics.

The final scores (visualized as the bars in the infographic above) represent each state’s weighted average across all metrics. See below for more comprehensive results.

Rank	State	Score	Affordability (rank)	Quality of Life (rank)	Health Care (rank)
1	Virginia	57.6	16	11	11
2T	Florida	57.4	9	4	28
2T	Colorado	57.4	14	27	5
4	Wyoming	55.6	5	9	38
5	Delaware	55.5	6	33	18
6	New Hampshire	55.0	31	5	7
7	South Dakota	53.6	25	30	9
8	Minnesota	53.5	40	2	1
9	Idaho	53.2	15	17	31
10	North Dakota	53.0	22	25	20
11	Utah	52.7	20	24	26
12	North Carolina	52.6	12	23	35
13	Missouri	52.4	17	28	32
14	Pennsylvania	52.3	36	3	12
15T	Montana	52.1	24	15	29
15T	South Carolina	52.1	4	38	39
17	Massachusetts	51.9	47	1	2
18	California	51.6	32	19	10
19	Alaska	51.3	26	36	8
20	Arizona	51.1	18	35	25
21	Wisconsin	50.9	34	14	17
22	Alabama	50.7	1	44	50
23	Ohio	49.8	27	8	37
24	Hawaii	49.7	38	29	4
25	Nebraska	49.3	37	16	15
26	Iowa	48.9	35	12	24
27	Georgia	48.6	7	40	42
28	Michigan	48.0	29	18	36
29T	Maine	47.5	43	6	13
29T	New Mexico	47.5	21	46	30
31	Indiana	47.3	23	31	40
32T	Nevada	47.2	11	42	41
32T	Tennessee	47.2	2	48	45
34T	Vermont	47.1	48	7	6
34T	Connecticut	47.1	44	26	3
36	Kansas	46.8	30	32	33
37	West Virginia	46.4	3	43	49
38	Oregon	46.1	41	21	21
39	Texas	45.9	28	37	34
40	Rhode Island	45.0	39	39	14
41	Arkansas	44.7	8	49	44
42	Maryland	44.6	46	20	19
43	Washington	44.5	45	13	23
44	Illinois	44.3	42	22	27
45	Louisiana	43.9	13	45	47
46	New York	43.7	50	10	16
47	Oklahoma	43.6	19	47	43
48	Mississippi	40.8	10	50	48
49	New Jersey	40.2	49	34	22
50	Kentucky	38.8	33	41	46

According to this methodology, Virginia is currently the best state for retirement. Although the Southeastern state does not excel in any one dimension, it scores consistently well across all three to create a very balanced retirement profile.

This gives it a slight advantage over second place Florida, which excels in quality of life and affordability, but falls further behind in terms of health care. Third-placed Colorado is a mirror of Florida, offering excellent health care but a lower quality of life in comparison.

How to Interpret These Results

It’s important to remember that this ranking is purely based on data and the methodology above, and may not be tailored to your individual preferences.

For example, if you believe that health services will be very important during retirement, you may rank Minnesota (#1 in terms of health care) much higher than eighth place.

You may notice that prioritizing one dimension will often come at a trade-off in others. Looking at Minnesota once more, we can see that the state is also one of America’s most expensive.

Looking to retire outside of the U.S.? Check out this graphic on the top 25 countries to retire in.