In this post I look at the stats from the 2015 central statistics office detailed household expenditure survey of about 7,000 households. I also look at a few other sources on average earnings after tax. Have a look and see how your earnings and spending compares.

Earnings

The  below chart from an OECD survey shows that as of 2017 the average Irish person earns 32,536€ net or 43,000€ gross and pays 15.4% tax and 4% in social security (PRSI). This should bring the 2 person take home to 65,072€ (or 86,000€ gross).

This is pretty close to another average from the Central Stats Offices Yearbook of Ireland 2016 which states the average gross wage of 45,075€ for 2015.

Spending

In summary, the average Irish household spends 3,350€/month or 40,198€/year. This means that if you were a married couple jointly assessed in 2015 making the average salary of 43,000€/year gross each then you’d have 65,072€ net earnings leaving about 25,000€ to spare/year based on the average spending below. Or if you had nothing to spare you’d each be earning a little over 23,000€ gross each in order to spend the below.

And in chart form:

Compared to America

A lot of the blogs and books I read on financial freedom detail what the average American family spends so to provide a little contrast: An average American family spends 61% on Housing, Transport and Food, where here in Ireland it’s surprisingly 50% (11% less). They also spend about 11,000€ more per year in total than the average Irish family.

According to the OECD chart above, the US average take-home was 2,685€ less per person compared to the Irish take home or 5,370€/family, meaning they either carry a lot of debt to spend 51,000€/year (which wouldn’t be surprising) or Irish households are saving more, or some combination of the two.

Detailed breakdown

And here is the detailed breakdown of the spending for the average urban home. The stats go into even further detail but I think this gives enough to compare against for most people. Keep in mind these are averages so the housing for example would include people who had only a few years left on their mortgage etc bringing the average down to 719€/month and baby nappies down to 5€/month on average (as most homes in the survey did not have that expense at all).

How our expenses compared

A year or so ago I tried to fit my expense categories into these to see how my household spending compared and I wasn’t far off the total. We spent 37,000€ that year.

We spent more on some categories:

• 6,200€ more on mortgage as we just bought
• 2,400€ more on food/toiletries/pet food
• 1,100€ more on gifts
• 1,000€ more on petrol
• 1,000€ more on holidays
• 900€ more on medical

and less on others:

• 2,100 less on car payment
• 1,000€ less on clothing and footwear
• 300€ less on electricity

and smaller differences on a number of other categories.

Once I’ve been on maternity leave for a year I will do this exercise again and see how we’ve managed to cut back and where.

How do your expenses compare?