American households spent an average of $81,905 in 2025, up 4.3% from $78,527 in 2024, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says. The agency’s Consumer Expenditures release, published Oct. 29, counts spending by “consumer units,” a category that covers families, single people living on their own and people sharing a home who split their bills. That works out to about $6,825 a month.
The question for most readers is how their own bills compare. Housing took the biggest share, at $27,790 a year, or about $2,316 a month. Anyone planning a household budget for next year, in retirement or before it, can set their own monthly and yearly bills against these averages to see which categories run high.
Stay ahead of government payment news: Miss an enrollment or claim deadline and the money can be gone. Join the Retirement Money Brief and we’ll send you our 2026 Government Check Reality Tracker as a welcome gift.
Get the Brief + the check tracker →
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Where did the $81,905 go?
Housing accounted for 33.9% of the total, the BLS says, and the five categories above add up to $68,560 of the $81,905. Transportation came to $13,492, or 16.5% of spending. Food cost $10,633, or 13.0%, personal insurance and pensions $10,175, or 12.4%, and health care $6,470, or 7.9%.
The remaining $13,345 covers everything else, from clothing and entertainment to education and charitable gifts. Dividing each category by twelve makes those numbers much easier to compare with a monthly statement. In monthly terms, the average household spent about $1,124 on transportation, about $886 on food, about $848 on personal insurance and pensions and about $539 on health care.
Which costs grew fastest in 2025?
Housing grew fastest of the big categories, up 5.8% from 2024, and the BLS calls that increase statistically significant. Food rose 4.6%, also significant, and health care rose 4.4%. Personal insurance and pensions rose 3.9%, while transportation was nearly flat at 1.3%.
In dollars, the increases add up quickly. A 5.8% rise in housing means roughly $1,500 more a year than in 2024, a 4.6% rise in food means roughly $470 more, and a 4.4% rise in health care roughly $270 more. Those dollar figures are worked out from the BLS percentages and totals, so they are approximate, but they show that housing alone accounted for nearly half of the $3,378 increase in total spending.
The overall 4.3% increase in spending outpaced consumer prices. The BLS reports that the consumer price index for all urban consumers rose 2.6% in 2025 on an annual-average basis, with a footnote that the average uses 11 months of data because the October 2025 index was not collected during the federal funding lapse. Average spending rose by $3,378, from $78,527 to $81,905, so the typical household’s outlays grew by more than the price index alone would explain.
Did income keep up with the spending?
It did. Average income before taxes rose 6.4% to $110,847, from $104,207 in 2024, according to the same release. Spending at $81,905 was about 74% of that pre-tax income, and the gap has to cover income taxes and any saving. The release does not report how much households saved. Income grew by $6,640 over the year, about twice the $3,378 increase in spending, so pre-tax income gained more in dollars than outlays did.
The average hides a wide spread. The BLS reports income before taxes by fifth of households: $18,125 for the lowest fifth, $46,080 for the second, $78,584 for the third, $126,349 for the fourth and $286,188 for the highest. A household in the middle of that range had pre-tax income below the $81,905 average spending figure, which is a reminder that the average is pulled upward by high earners.
What does the average leave out?
The BLS figure is a mean across all consumer units, from a single young renter to a family of five to a retired couple, and it says nothing about any one of them. A retired couple living on Social Security and a pension has different bills from a household with two earners and children, and the biggest categories shift with age, location and whether a mortgage has been paid off.
Monthly income helps put the spread in view. The lowest fifth of households had average pre-tax income of $18,125 a year, or about $1,510 a month, while the highest fifth averaged $286,188, or about $23,849 a month. The all-household average of $110,847 sits above the middle fifth’s $78,584, because the highest fifth pulls the mean up.
How current are these numbers for 2026 budgets?
They describe 2025, and prices have moved since. The BLS says consumer prices rose 3.7% over the 12 months through September 2026, faster than the 2.6% average gain for 2025. A household that spent the national average last year would need to spend more this year to buy the same things, if prices keep rising at the recent pace. At 3.7%, the $81,905 average would grow by about $3,030 over a year, before any change in what households buy.
The BLS home page lists the release as “Consumer unit expenditures in 2025 are $81,905; a 4.3-percent increase from 2024,” and the release itself carries the full set of averages for readers who want a closer comparison. Budgets built on averages are a starting point, since no single household matches the average in every category.
Spending more than $6,800 a month, or less? Where does your budget land?
The averages show that housing, food and health care all rose faster than prices in 2025, and a household that does not track its own bills has no way to see which one is growing. A budget that is off by a few hundred dollars a month adds up to thousands over a year.
Retirement Money Spreadsheets includes a Retirement Budget that lists every bill, monthly and yearly. It comes with yellow boxes for your numbers, with the math already done, and large-print versions of all four workbooks, which open in Excel, Google Sheets or Apple Numbers.
Get the retirement budget spreadsheet to compare your bills with the 2025 averages →
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
