Are you a Gen Zer paying your individual hire for the primary time? A millennial shopping for extra groceries than ever after having a second child? A boomer getting set to benefit from the finer issues in retirement?
Our quiz can present you in case your spending appears to be like like that of your friends, or in case your pockets belongs to a different technology.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes shopper expenditure information that signifies how much Americans spend on every little thing from housing to cellphones.
We turned to AI to create a quiz utilizing a number of spending classes from the BLS, permitting customers to study who they actually spend like. Is somebody born in 1990 spending like a “Basic Millennial” or extra thought-about to have “Boomer Tendencies”? How about somebody born in 1975: Are they “Fiscally Youthful” as a result of they spend extra like Gen Z than Gen X?
Put in your finest guess for the way a lot you spend on housing, pets, leisure, and extra within the quiz beneath, and the outcomes will present you the way you stack as much as averages for every technology. See extra about our methodology here, and skim on beneath the quiz to study extra about how generations spend their cash.
Primarily based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics information, Gen Xers had the best common pre-tax revenue and common expenditures in 2024, adopted by millennials. Like their older friends who’re growing old in place, a excessive share of Gen Xers are homeowners. The assorted generations are in several life levels, so it is smart they’ve totally different common incomes and spending; Many Gen Zers are getting their careers off the bottom, and plenty of boomers are kicking off their retirement years amid the “silver tsunami.”
“In contrast to Millennials who’re nonetheless constructing wealth, or Child Boomers who could also be scaling again in retirement, Gen Xers are of their peak incomes years,” Empower, a monetary companies firm, wrote.
Shelter, together with hire, mortgage funds, upkeep, and different prices, accounts for a big share of spending relative to different classes, no matter technology. Gen X spends essentially the most at $19,048 a yr. Gen Z spends a mean of $2,697 on utilities, fuels, and public companies, about half of what Gen X spends, at $5,641.
The BLS information suggests Gen Zers are saving much less of their revenue than most of their older friends. Different information exhibits how their debt looks. Experian information from June 2025 confirmed 72.2% of Gen Zers had bank card balances, lower than the 82.9% for each boomers and the Silent technology. Simply 7.6% of Gen Zers had mortgage debt, whereas 53.6% of Gen Xers and 57% of boomers had the identical factor.
“A lot has been written about millennials being shut out of homeownership, with solely 37% of millennial shoppers at present paying down a mortgage—a smaller share than older generations. However these funds are sometimes larger than what extra seasoned owners are paying,” Experian mentioned. The Nationwide Affiliation of REALTORS discovered the median age of first-time consumers has inched as much as 40 years outdated.
