Households Earning $75,000 Eat Out Too Much To Save Any Money

Image courtesy of (Great Beyond)

Earlier this week, the news broke that Americans are, as a whole spending more on dining out than on groceries. In a related piece of news, a study from bank SunTrust says that a surprisingly large portion of American households that earn $75,000 per year live paycheck to paycheck because they’re spending too much money on “lifestyle expenses” to put any money away.

Publishing these survey results was part of the bank’s push to get customers to save more money: in their SunTrust savings accounts, naturally. They also asked customers about their retirement savings, and why they aren’t saving money toward their goals. That led to the statistic making headlines: 1/3 of participants with incomes of $75,000 or more say that they aren’t reaching their savings goals. Out of those people, 68% said that they were spending too much on dining out. Not just lifestyle factors in general: specifically, they chose dining out as the reason why they aren’t saving enough money.

In an even sadder statistic, most customers between ages between ages 43 and 54 (63%) said that they don’t think they’re saving enough money for a comfortable retirement.

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