What people in your Neighbourhood spend (Australian version)

[deborah]

There is a post about a US app that tells you what people in your neighbourhood spend. http://peoplelikeu.com.au/ is similar for Australia. You answer a few questions, and get  how much people "like you" spend on various things - and what shops they frequent...

Quite interesting - although in a lot of ways they are not people like me - for instance what they spend!

[happy]

I found it a bit weird. And I'm definitely not like "them". The only red light for me was groceries - people like me spend $1138pm,  and I'm spending just under $900. Thought I should be doing better than that.  Otherwise there's whole categories I skip.

[MsRichLife]

That was a bit of fun. Apparently there are less than 10 people like me. People like me spend:

Food and Drink $1049: We spend about that on food and drink (we are working on it),
Shopping $1041!!!! $322 on fashion. Seriously?
House & Home $3667
Day to Day $862
Entertainment $255

[deborah]

Did you have a look at where they shop?

[HappierAtHome]

Mine was outrageous - thousands on travel a month, apparently? I do have a lot of FIFO who use my suburb as their home base, so that might explain part of it...

When I looked at where they shop, it's all pretty cheap and/or blokey places. So that would fit.

[MsRichLife]

Did you have a look at where they shop?

The only place I recognised was Myers. I'm not much of a shopper :)

[happy]

That was a bit of fun. Apparently there are less than 10 people like me. People like me spend:

Yes there are less than 10 people like me too! And since the category is "families", being a single parent obviously I'm unique.

[DrowsyBee]

Apparently, there are 40 people like me. A comparison for the month of September.

Food and Drink:
PLU - $370
Me - $300

Travel:
PLU - $562
Me - $0 (although, last year the monthly spend was $1,666 p/m, due to living overseas)

Shopping:
PLU - $272
Me - $75

House and Home:
PLU - $1,881
Me - $600

Day to Day:
PLU - $627
Me - $265

Entertainment:
PLU - $140
Me - $20

There is one major flaw in regards to this, I think. It doesn't tell me how much everyone else saves! Although, since I have roughly the same income and see what the average person like me, or the average person in Australia spends...then I'm guessing the answer is not a lot, haha.

[alsoknownasDean]

Haha, oh dear.

I've done the calculations for me, and my planned monthly expenses are about 62% of what they've calculated (really it's probably closer to 70%, a lot of mine are up in the air as I've just moved).

Worse still, I've added up the costs they have provided, and found that for those at the bottom of the income range selected, these costs would be higher than their after-tax income!

[steveo]

I spend a lot more on certain categories but I think its a false impression. I think we spend more on food and drink and we hardly go out. We spend a lot more on our mortgage however we are aiming to have it paid off by next year. We spent a fair bit less though on everything else.

[agent_clone]

As I am the lower end of income for my bracket I wanted to compare against the one below me.  Interestingly the average mortgage amount for the bracket I'm in is lower than the one for the lower bracket.  I'm not sure if this is the fact that people have a larger deposit, or that there is a smaller sample size.  Or simply the fact that perhaps people on higher incomies don't get NAB home loans.

I do think that the results are probably skewed somewhat.  For example at somewhere like a department store (e.g. Myer, Big W, etc) there are a variety of things that you can and do buy there.  For somewhere like JB HiFi I purchase things like DVD's rather than something for the home such as a TV.  This means that for me JB HiFi should be in the entertainment budget rather than for the home.