Keep in mind that zero Americans were actually surveyed to arrive at this figure. The methodology was simply <i>extrapolate from price indexes of things we think people pay for</i>.<p><a href="https://www.onemainfinancial.com/personal-loans/where-america-spends-big-money" rel="nofollow">https://www.onemainfinancial.com/personal-loans/where-americ...</a>
> Our greatest ongoing financial priority is our home, with the average cost of a single-family house totaling $428,700,” the study states. “Americans tend to change residences every 15 years, pushing the average amount borrowed on housing to a staggering $1.5 million in a lifetime.”<p>Why are they counting homes like that? If I sell and buy my investments in my 401k, they don't count it twice.
I don't know why this would be unbelievable or "whopping." $3.3M over 60 years of adult life (age 20 to 80) is $55k/year. That's pretty close to the median American income.
I feel like there are some really good core principles that could be extracted from this. There's a really strong tendency to overstate the importance of repeated expenses and understate the absolutely critical nature of strategic expenses.<p>The financial world is littered with bad advice in this area.<p>Maybe it is time for something like a new motley fool to encourage appropriate foolishness.
It would be interesting to try to estimate what each person's demand triggers in government or corporate spend. For instance a new public swimming centre with say a 30 year lifetime might cost $10M. If they get 100 000 visits per year by on average 10 000 people, then each person effectively caused a spend of $33 capital each year.
I would be more interested in the median.<p>Also note that, as a back of the envelope calculation, $15/hour x 40hour/week x 52week/year x 40years = $1.248M.
Not sure that the 1% (or 0.1%) isn't skewing the average. Would love to see what the <i>median</i> American spends over their lifetime.<p>What I'm saying is that the 400 billionaires in the Fortune 400 are likely pulling the average up.