current consumption
I am a new user of ESP+ and am trying to get comfortable with the current consumption figure presented in the main report. The current consumption number calculated by ESP+ felt low, as the monthly average of current consumption works out to be less than my monthly credit card bill, through which we run the majority of our “consumption-type” spending. When I reviewed my past 12 months bank statements to come up with my own current consumption estimate, my review reinforced my gut feeling: my estimate of current consumption is close to double that shown in the main report. (In estimating consumption I backed out housing related expense, but may have missed a few minor tax payments.) Any thoughts as to what could cause my number to be off by this large amount? Am I comparing things that are not comparable?
RSS
(from the tutorial) Consumption refers here to all living expenses apart from housing expenses, special expenditures, contributions to a reserve fund, taxes, contributions to retirement accounts, and life insurance premium payments, all of which are treated as “off-the-top” expenditures that have to be made when they come due.
I would suggest that you review your data changing some of those entries and see how the consumption number is affected to understand it better.
Or, if you are looking at the "current" report rather than the Annual report, we note that the following: Current consumption is calculated as the household’s current total income minus the sum of its current saving, its current special expenditures, its current taxes, its current life insurance premiums (assuming your household purchases the amounts of life insurance recommended), and its current housing expenditures.
I find the Current year report to be something like an accounting pretzel and in the end I don't learn much by looking at it. I would go straight to the annual report and look at consumption (or living standard) in that report.