Your Money
By DAMON DARLIN
You probably spend more on entertainment than you do on groceries, clothing or gasoline.
If you don't believe it, take a few minutes to total your monthly costs, starting with the services that have you locked in: basic cable television, and any premium channels, like HBO or Showtime; Netflix to rent videos; TiVo for digital recording; your high-speed Internet connection; and perhaps, satellite radio and streaming music like Yahoo Music. You are already up to about $200 a month, or $2,400 a year.
Don't forget your iTunes music and video downloads, plus magazines, movie rentals, movie tickets, live shows and sporting events.
Add in your cellphone and any of its video, data and premium content.
The average American spends more on entertainment than on gasoline, household furnishings and clothing and nearly the same amount as spent on dining out, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Among the affluent, the 20 percent of households with more than $77,000 a year in pretax income, more money is spent on entertainment
- $4,516 a year - than on health care, utilities, clothing or food eaten at home.
The average income of households in that quintile is a little more than $127,000. Because they account for a disproportionate share of spending in the economy, they are the group that trend watchers and marketers focus on. (From the unexplained fact department: People in the western part of the country spend about 20 percent more on entertainment than the national average, the government statisticians also show.)
Over the last 10 years, outlays for entertainment outpaced overall expenditures. Spending on health care and education, which almost doubled in that period, grew faster.