How this is worked out
What do people my age and income spend?
Type your age and income. See where the money goes.
Age of the head of the household. The person who owns or rents the home. Use the older partner if unsure.
Household income before tax, a year. All income: pay, business, pensions, Social Security, rent.
What your household spends in a year. Optional. Leave it at 0 if you do not know. Do not count income tax.
Where the money goes, in today’s dollars. Averages for a group, not what one household spends. Age and income are shown separately: the survey does not publish them crossed. Incomes are self-reported. “Personal insurance and pensions” includes Social Security tax and pension savings, which is why it falls after 65.
How spending changes after 55. Each card compares one age group with the group before it.
Total spending by age, in today’s dollars. Your age group is the strong bar. Spending does not include income tax.
How spending changes with age, in today’s dollars. These are averages for all households in each group at one time, not what one household spends as it ages. Older households grew up in other times and many own their homes outright, so a snapshot of 75-year-olds does not tell you exactly how your own spending will change.
Has spending at older ages changed over the years?. Total yearly spending per household, in 2024 dollars. The survey asks about 40,000 households a year. 2024 is the latest year.
Your answer in words. Households with a head aged 55 to 64 spend about US$89,788 a year in today’s dollars, 70% of their income before tax of US$128,501. Households with income of US$100,000 to US$149,999 spend about US$94,841.
Some choices came from your profile.
US inflation 3.4% (August 2026, US Bureau of Labor Statistics)
How every calculator on the site is built, and what changed and when, is on How it works.