Federal Reserve FEDS Notes·Oct 9, 2026, 10:00 AM ET

Measuring Spending in the Survey of Consumer Finances

The 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF) introduced new questions to measure total annual & vacation spending, filling a historical gap in data for high-income & wealthy households.
Benchmarking against the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CE) & Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) confirms that SCF spending aggregates align closely with external data while capturing the full economic spectrum.
Spending is less concentrated than income or wealth, with the top 1 percent of spenders accounting for 9 percent of total spending compared to 19 percent for income & 32 percent for wealth.
High-income families have average spending levels that exceed peaks in other surveys & surpass projections based on extrapolating lower-income data trends.
Discretionary spending on items like vacations & new cars rises as a share of the budget with income, whereas spending on necessities like food at home falls as a share of the budget.
Joint analysis reveals that 31 percent of the wealthiest 1 percent also rank in the top 1 percent for both income & spending, though a meaningful share of top spenders fall outside top income & wealth brackets.
Qualitative data indicates that while some lower-income families report deteriorating financial well-being & spending decreases, higher-income families are not disproportionately increasing spending, partially challenging the "K-shaped" recovery narrative.
Aggregate total spending in the 2025 SCF was $6.58 trillion, slightly below the $7.02 trillion aggregate reported in the 2024 CE.
The SCF allows for the first unified observation of spending, income, & wealth distributions within a single representative dataset.
Future SCF waves will enable more direct measurement of spending dynamics & inequality trends over time.