Budgeting Benchmarks

I found these numbers online the other night (for the life of me I can’t remember where) that show national averages for budgeted numbers. Here they are:

Housing 32.9
Transportation 19.1
Food 14.1
Apparel 4.0
Healthcare 5.9
Entertainment 5.0
Personal Care 1.3
Reading 0.3
Education 1.9
Tobacco 0.7
Miscellaneous 1.5
Cash Contributions 3.4
Personal Ins and Pensions 9.9

For any of you who end up using these numbers for your budget I warn you to keep one thing in mind. If you do what the average person does, you are going to be average. So you have to ask yourself, “Do I want to settle for being average or do I want to be better than average?” Remember, the great men and women of history are not remembered for being average. They are remembered for going above and beyond what others did.