Introducing Average J
Average J is our hypothetical example of the average American. When citing relevant statistics about how Americans behave financially, we’ll refer to Average J as the characterization of that data.
Not long after we started writing for the website we found that we were frequently looking up statistics for how Americans use money.
Using phrases like, “the average American spends…,” or “the average American’s income is…”, over and over again got rather tiresome.
We also try to use storytelling in our posts to make the topics more relatable for readers.
Eventually, we realized it would be a lot easier to just create a fictional character that would be understood as the substitutionary manifestation of every statistical average for American finance.
This character would have the average savings rate, tax liabilities, number of homes, number of cars, number of kids, college education expenses, cost of a car, and on and on.
So, Average J was born.
Not so Average J
We’ll get more into Average J’s bio below, but before we do we wanted to highlight one notable stat where Average J is actually Median J.
Because average income is skewed so heavily by those in our country who make loads of money each year, the median is a more accurate measure of what a normal American is seeing.
Consider the data from 2021. In that year, the average income in the United States was $97,962 while the median income was $69,717. That’s nearly a $28,000 difference.
Given such a broad gap, we feel like using average doesn’t really paint a fair picture of what normal Americans are seeing as income.
Furthermore, the process for making financial decisions changes a bit when there’s an additional $28,000 of income on the table.
Also, from time to time we will make Average J single/married, young/old, retired/working, rich/poor, for the sake of making a point in a post. When we do this, we will note that we are straying a bit from actual statistical averages and explain why.
Average J in 2023:
Now that we’ve explained who Average J is, let’s look further into Average J’s life. We will update these numbers as we can, but some may be a little dated.
Average Persons in Household: 2.6
Median Household Income: $78,075
Median Individual Income: $44,225
Average Federal Income Tax Rate: 14.6% (Most households fall into the 22% bracket)
Average Federal Income Tax Paid: $20,663
Average Retirement Savings Balance: $141,542 (this varies depending on who you ask, but is generally between $95,000 and $150,000)
Retirement Savings Rate (as % of income): 7%
Retirement Age: 61
Average Home Value: $348,079
Average Mortgage Balance: $231,464
Average New Car Value: $42,736
Average Monthly Car Loan Payment: $667/New, $488/Used
Average Cost of College Attendance: $35,551/year
Average Student Loan Debt: $37,787
