File:Estimated Average Annual Household Expenditures by Age, 2013.jpg

English: This image is excerpted from a U.S. GAO report:

www.gao.gov/products/GAO-16-242

RETIREMENT SECURITY: Better Information on Income Replacement Rates Needed to Help Workers Plan for Retirement.

Notes: Age groupings are based on the age of the reference person, or the person who rents or owns the home, for the consumer unit. There may be adults in the in the consumer unit who are older or younger than the reference person. A consumer unit can comprise (1) all members of a household related by blood, marriage, or other legal arrangement, (2) a person living alone or sharing a household but who is financially independent, or (3) two or more persons living together who make joint expenditures. For the purposes of this report, we refer to consumer units as households. We did not adjust spending levels for household size. The "other" category of spending includes expenditures for reading, tobacco, alcoholic beverages, education, cash contributions, personal care, and miscellaneous expenses. The "personal insurance and pensions category" includes deductions for government and railroad retirement, private pensions, and Social Security. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics officials, the private pensions category includes defined benefit, defined contribution, and individual retirement accounts. Housing expenditures include expenses such as rent, utilities, and mortgage interest payments, but do not include payments on mortgage principal. For more information on mortgage principal, see appendix II. For more information on Consumer Expenditure Survey expenditure categories and treatment of taxes, see appendix I. For average total spending, 95 percent confidence intervals are less than +/-9 percent of the estimate itself for all age groups.