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Comment by madeuptempacct | Hacker News Reader

Average expenditure at 30: $45,000

That's strange to me - is everyone living on debt? Factor in median household income for a fam with Bachelors degrees: $68,728, which is $52,000ish net of tax.

How are people spending that much?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United...

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"Millennials spend huge amounts on rent, using up 45% of income made by age 30"

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/real-es...

"GenX adults spent only 41% of their income on rent by age 30"

Doesn't seem out of line with the previous generation?

The majority of individuals and households spend all of their money. That's the 'how'.

The more salient question is 'why'.

I'm guessing it's mean average, so probably being skewed by higher spenders. It's also household numbers, so even more skewed if you have two high income people living together vs two low income living together.

That may be the spending on education. That is mostly debt.

Where do you live? Here in Chicago that's a pretty reasonable amount of spending for my family of 2.

You're comparing average expenditure with people with a bachelor's degree - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_attainment_in_the_... indicates only about a quarter of people have that (it's a bit hard to read).

People are in debt yeah. I lucked out but I know a lot of people with student debt.

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