After analyzing data from the 2017 Consumer Expenditures Survey (CEX) by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), nearly 35.9% of US households spent more than they earned. This is the most recently available data from the BLS. Overall, 46 million out of 129 million US households are estimated to have had expenditures that exceeded their after tax income (table below).
Large Improvements since 2015
Comparing these results to the previously reported ones for 2015’s CEX survey where I reported 38.5% spending more than income, the percentage American households saving has improved significantly. Almost 2.5 million fewer households are spending more than they earn, which is a huge improvement. In addition households tended to save more than in 2015, as the $0-$10k group dropped by 1.4 million households, with large increases in households saving larger amounts of income. One of the largest shifts appears in the decline of household who spent more than $150k than they earned. Shockingly, this category decreased 54%! I suspect that the losses of this size were primarily due to investments and housing losses, and values for both of those assets have increased significantly in the past few years.
# of Households by Savings 2017
The graph below is interactive and show the number of households who are estimated to have saved within a certain amount of income in 2017.
The original Consumer Expenditures Survey considers retirement contributions as an expense, so the savings rate will be slightly higher if you were to adjust these numbers to account for that. Previously, I reported adjusted numbers from the 2015 data, but they trended very similarly to the un-adjusted values.
Source Data and Methodology
These results are calculated using the 2017 Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Consumer Expenditures Survey (CEX) microdata. I used the pre-exported summary tables to aggregate these values. This is a slight change from the previous report where I used the SAS import. The final numbers seemed to track very closely to 2015’s data, so I don’t believe this adjustment made a huge difference. The microdata contains household level data that is weighted by the BLS on a variety of measures to make the sampled population representative for the whole population. Granted, the smaller you slice and dice the data, the less representative it gets.
Annual Savings Amounts Table
Households 2017: 35.9% of US households spent more than they earned in 2017. This was calculated using the CEX total annual expenditure by household. One thing to note is that the CEX lumps all retirement contributions (401k, pensions, TSP) into expenditures. Household annual savings calculated as : [Estimated Pre-Tax Income] – [Estimated Taxes] – [Estimated Expenditures]. I have adjusted this to add back in contributions to pensions and 401ks so that they do not count as spending. For me personally, I would not consider my 401k contributions as an expense. Social Security is still counted as an expense.
| ANNUAL SAVINGS | HOUSEHOLDS (2017) | HOUSEHOLDS (2015) | % Change |
| <-$150k | 864,543 | 1,867,628 | -54% |
| -$150k to -$140k | 138,558 | 242,359 | -43% |
| -$140k to -$130k | 47,988 | 303,275 | -84% |
| -$130k to -$120k | 269,581 | 363,365 | -26% |
| -$120k to -$110k | 312,160 | 411,577 | -24% |
| -$110k to -$10k0 | 476,362 | 513,501 | -7% |
| -$10k0 to -$90k | 419,197 | 477,909 | -12% |
| -$90k to -$80k | 603,319 | 581,473 | 4% |
| -$80k to -$70k | 619,058 | 646,504 | -4% |
| -$70k to -$60k | 839,521 | 932,389 | -10% |
| -$60k to -$50k | 1,166,458 | 1,215,488 | -4% |
| -$50k to -$40k | 1,640,628 | 1,833,831 | -11% |
| -$40k to -$30k | 3,053,661 | 2,888,244 | 6% |
| -$30k to -$20k | 5,155,602 | 5,229,834 | -1% |
| -$20k to -$10k | 9,945,276 | 9,421,512 | 6% |
| -$10k to $0 | 20,929,701 | 21,187,798 | -1% |
| $0-$10k | 25,439,006 | 26,860,088 | -5% |
| $10k to $20k | 17,318,481 | 17,137,557 | 1% |
| $20k to $30k | 11,672,699 | 11,312,717 | 3% |
| $30k to $40k | 7,991,685 | 7,590,525 | 5% |
| $40k to $50k | 6,102,965 | 4,965,180 | 23% |
| $50k to $60k | 3,785,373 | 3,342,971 | 13% |
| $60k to $70k | 2,304,070 | 2,250,973 | 2% |
| $70k to $80k | 1,620,960 | 1,584,928 | 2% |
| $80k to $90k | 1,550,191 | 1,064,559 | 46% |
| $90k to $100k | 1,032,460 | 830,612 | 24% |
| $100k-$110k | 792,750 | 659,814 | 20% |
| $110k to $120k | 879,661 | 618,322 | 42% |
| $120k to $130k | 539,349 | 484,008 | 11% |
| $130k to $140k | 387,455 | 347,594 | 11% |
| $140k to $150k | 424,410 | 217,597 | 95% |
| >$150k | 1,077,366 | 1,053,230 | 2% |
Related Topics
Savings Rate Ranking : This uses the adjusted savings rate calculation listed above using 2015 data to compare savings as a percentage of income.
Net Worth Ranking by Age : Compare your net worth against similar ages to get a percentile rank for your net worth.
Income Ranking by Age : Compare your income against similar ages to get a percentile rank for your income.
thanks for updating. does savings include dividend/interest income, capital gains? what about 401k employer matches?
Thanks.
Dividend, realized capital gains and interest income are included. Employer contributions look like they’re rolled in as income to the household that is then ‘spent’ into investments.
so does that mean contributions from employer are included? (confused when you say ‘spent into investments thanks again for this great post!