How much money do we spend in our lifetime- it might sound a little odd at first but definitely an interesting question if you take some time to consider it.
According to necessity, we spend money on different occasions all the time. But these spendings are not unorganized, instead, they fall under a few specific categories.
All humans have fixed basic needs that they must fulfill to continue with their life properly. If we can determine the cost to fulfill these needs, we can create an outline of how much money we spend during our lifetime.
How To Determine the Amount of Money Spent in a Lifetime
The five basic needs of a human being- food, clothes, housing, healthcare, and education are where we spend most of our money. With that, there are a few other sectors that consume a big chunk of our income- such as gas.
To determine the amount of money spent in our lifetime, we need to determine the cost required by these sectors.
While education, healthcare, and clothing are necessary to lead our lives, it is quite hard to determine how much money these three sectors consume on a general scale.
It is because you cannot say definitively about someone’s education and healthcare spending if you do not know them. Also, the cost of clothing, healthcare, and education is pretty easy to add if we can determine the other factors.
So to have an overview of one’s total spending in a lifetime, we need to understand the cost of food, housing, and gas.
How Much Do We Spend on Food
Every country has a dietary staple that more or less everyone follows to some extent. So if we determine the price of how much one spends on food daily, we can easily find the average spending on food in a lifetime.
For a developed country like the US, an average person spends about $342.11 per month. Considering that the average life expectancy is 73 years globally, a person spends approximately $300,000 throughout his lifetime.
For a developing country like India, the cost of food is cheaper than that of a developed country. The monthly cost of food for 1 person is around INR 5,500 or USD 70.38. So a person living in India spends approximately USD 60, 808, which is almost 5 times less than the food costs in the USA.
It is quite visible from the numbers that the more developed country you live in, the higher your spending on food is.
How Much Do We Spend on Housing
Housing is a must to live a decent life. In the age of modern civilization, it is not the best way of life to be homeless or to lead a nomadic life. So housing plays a big role in our lifelong spending.
Similar to the spending on food, house rent also increases according to the economic state of the country you are living in. When considering the housing cost for an individual, the cost is calculated by the average monthly rent of 1 BHK.
A 1 BHK stands for one standard-sized bedroom, one hall, and one kitchen. If you are looking to rent a 1 BHK apartment in a developed country like the US, you have to spend an average of $1000 monthly on rent.
In a developing country like India, a 1 BHK apartment rent is around INR 12,000. This is the equivalent of $160. As a result, a resident in the USA pays a net amount of $876,000.
On the other hand, an Indian resident needs only an amount of $140,160 as his lifetime rent, almost 6.25 times less than the rent in the USA.
How Much Do We Spend on Gas
In modern days, gas has become one of our most needed products like electricity. Now we not only need gas for cooking, but also for transportation purposes.
Every financially stable person opts for buying a car for the convenience of moving around. Even though a car might seem like a one-time investment at first glance, it is not. To drive around in your car, you need to buy gas regularly.
An average US resident, a person is set to spend around $150-200 per month on gas for transportation purposes. So if we assume the average cost is $175, then a person living in the US is set to spend $113,400.
The price of gas in India is about INR 100/L. Anyone with a decent four-wheeler spends somewhere around INR 130,000 on gas annually, which is equivalent to $1,665 annually.
It means a resident of India spends $89,910 on gas throughout his lifetime. These numbers were made assuming that the car was bought at the age of 18 and is regularly driven for the rest of one’s life.
If we compare the difference in gas prices in a developed country and a developing country with the difference in food and housing costs in a developed country and a developing country, it is visible that gas has the least amount of disparity among these three.
Comparing Living Costs in A Developed and A Developing Country
If we sum up the above amount, a person spends around $1.3 million in a developed country and around $300,000 in a developing country. For clothing, a resident in a developing country like India spends almost $16,815 in his lifetime and a resident in a developed country like the US spends $141,035 in his lifetime.
The cost of healthcare and education can be ignored by depending on the government services. As a result, a resident in a developed country is set to spend around $1.45 million for his basic needs whereas a resident in a developing country is set to spend around $320,000 for a similar service throughout his lifetime.
By comparing the spending of an average person in a developing country and a developed country, we can realize that residents of a developed country spend more. In fact, the lifetime spending on basic needs of an Indian resident is way less than an average US citizen’s housing cost throughout his lifetime.
Conclusion
How much money we spend in our life depends highly on the economy of the country we are living in. The more developed the country we choose to live in, the higher the spending of our life will be.
To determine how much money we spend, we need to determine our spending to fulfill our basic needs.
Then, if we add spending on luxury items, we can easily understand how much money we spend in our lifetime.