Household Surplus Lab: What’s Left After Essentials, 2000–2026

This simulator needs JavaScript to calculate and draw the charts. The methodology and sources further down are readable without it.
Skip to results

Household Surplus Lab
BLS data 2000–2024 · projected to 2026◐ System

What’s left, and what it becomes.
How much do households have left after paying for the essentials, and what would it grow into if they invested it? Built on 25 years of U.S. government survey data (2000–2024). Change the assumptions and watch the answer move.

Reset
Save as image
Export CSV
Copy scenario link

1 · Set the rulesUse the numbered controls to choose the income groups, what counts as income, which costs are essential, and whether to add childcare.
2 · Read Fig. 1What each group has left each year after essentials. Below the dark $0 line, essentials cost more than the income coming in.
3 · Read Figs. 2–3What that surplus grows to if a share is invested, and where U.S. wealth actually sits. Hover or tap ? for definitions.

Adjust settings

SettingsShow results

Try a scenarioAfter tax & benefitsTop 1% vs everyone (estimated)Family, 2 kids in childcareIn 2024 dollars?

Population groups?

Split the distribution into

Quintiles · 20% each
Quartiles · 25% each
Deciles · 10% each
Bottom 90% vs top 10%
Bottom 95% vs top 5%
Bottom 99% vs top 1%
Bottom 50% · middle 40% · top 10%
Custom top share vs rest

Top share?1%

Show amounts?
Per householdPer person

Income concept
After tax?Subtract estimated personal taxes.
Include benefits & transfers?Social Security, pensions, SNAP, SSI, unemployment, veterans’ benefits and support payments, as reported to BLS.

Essential spending?

Food at home
Housing
Transportation
Healthcare
Insurance & pensions
Education

Edit expense amounts…Edited

Children & childcare?

Children in paid childcare?0

Price per child per year · 2024 dollars?

Prices vary a lot: infant care at a center costs far more, after-school care far less.

InflationNominal dollars
What these dollars mean?

Show dollars as?

Nominal dollars
Real 2000 dollars · CPI-U
Real dollars · custom base year
Assumed constant inflation

Base year?

Assumed annual inflation?2.5%

Investing10% of surplus · S&P 500
About this what-if?

Share of each year’s surplus invested?10%

Portfolio return?

Historical S&P 500 total return
Assumed annual return

Assumed return?8.0%

AdvancedTax method · what-if benefits · minimum tax

How taxes are estimated?

CBO federal rates (consistent)
BLS, pre-2013 adjusted
BLS 2013–15 rate, all years
BLS as published

Benefit amount (what-if)?100%

Minimum tax?

Off
Simple minimum income tax (what-if)
U.S.-style AMT (income-based)

Minimum rate?20%

Exemption · 2024 dollars?

Adjusted to other years with CPI-U.

Where do you fit?
Enter your household’s yearly income before taxes to see roughly where it sits in 2024. Nothing you type leaves this page or goes into the scenario link.
Household income before taxes · 2024 dollars?
People in household123456 or more

Lowest group · left in 2024?——
Highest group · left in 2024?——
Top portfolio · 2024?—10% of positive surplus
Portfolio gap?—Largest ÷ smallest portfolio

An illustrative model, not tax or investment advice.

Fig. 1Money left after essentials?Yearly pre-tax income excluding benefits, minus essential costs. Per person.
Nominal $QuintilesPer personEstimated groups

Show?Money left after essentialsIncomeHappiness plateau line?
Show 2025–2026 projection?

Show the numbers

Fig. 2What investing it adds up to?Portfolio balance from investing part of each year’s surplus since 2000.
S&P 50010% investedEstimated groups

Show as?Portfolio valueContributions vs. growthReturn stacked on yearly surplusReturn stacked on yearly income

Show the numbers

Figs. 1–2 follow yearly cash flow. Fig. 3 turns to what households actually own.

Fig. 3Where the wealth is?
Federal Reserve dataPer household

Show?Share of all household wealthCumulative wealth by percentileAverage net worth per householdGroup by?Wealth · top 0.1% to bottom 50%Income · top 1% to lowest 20%

Show the numbers

Fig. 4 · settings
Wealth tax what-if
Show?Revenue, all householdsTax per household
Group by?Wealth · top 0.1% to bottom 50%Income · top 1% to lowest 20%
Wealth tax design?Flat (Warren/Sanders-style)Minimum (Zucman-style)
Rate on net worth?2.0%
Applies above · 2024 dollars?
Tax already paid, % of wealth?0.3%

Fig. 4What if we taxed wealth??
What-ifTotals, all households

Published estimates for Warren’s design (2% above $50 million, 3% above $1 billion): Saez & Zucman put it at about $250 billion a year (2021 score, 2023–2032), Penn Wharton at $2.1–2.7 trillion over ten years, and the Tax Foundation at $2.6 trillion over ten years before behavioral effects. Critics such as Summers & Sarin (2019) argued real collections would be far lower. No official congressional score exists. This chart uses one flat rate on group averages, so treat it as a rough cross-check, not a forecast.

Show the numbers

Method and definitions

What is real data, and what is a what-if
Real data. Every year from 2000 to 2024 uses that year’s published BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey table, which ranks U.S. households into five income groups (quintiles). From it come income before and after taxes, the income cut-offs between groups, household size, spending on six categories (including education), and benefit income. For the five quintiles, the model reproduces BLS’s averages exactly.
What-ifs. Anything finer than quintiles (deciles, the top 1%, custom splits) is estimated from a smooth income curve inside each quintile. Childcare, benefit amounts other than 100%, expense edits, the minimum tax, investing and the wealth taxes in Fig. 3 are scenarios you control. Fig. 3’s net worth itself is measured data from the Federal Reserve.
Breaks in the dataBefore 2004, BLS income figures cover only households that fully reported their income; from 2004 BLS fills in missing income. From 2013, BLS estimates taxes with a tax model instead of asking households, which is why BLS after-tax income for the top group dips that year. By default this site uses CBO’s consistent federal income tax rates instead, so the dip disappears. To compare, turn on “After tax” and choose a method under Advanced. BLS doesn’t publish the top group’s 2023 public assistance figure, so 2022’s is used. BLS also published no after-tax income for 2024, because it didn’t update its tax model that year; the BLS-based tax methods use each group’s 2023 tax rate for 2024.
Projections · 2025–2026BLS hasn’t published household data for these years yet. They start from 2024 and grow every income and cost with consumer prices (CPI-U), so they show what happens if everything simply kept pace with inflation. The 2025 price average covers 11 months because BLS published no October 2025 index; 2026 covers January–August. The 2026 S&P 500 return is year to date through September 14. Projected years are shaded and dashed.
Known limitationsBLS’s Consumer Expenditure Survey is known to under-report income compared with national accounts, and low-income households often report spending more than their income (through savings, debt, family help or unreported income). Figures are group averages, not medians, and each income group mixes ages and household types, including retirees and students. Per-person amounts use a simple headcount, and CBO rates cover federal income tax only. Treat the results as rough, comparative illustrations. Groups are snapshots, not the same people over time. Each year’s lowest 20% is whoever ranks lowest that year, and households move between groups as they age, change jobs, retire or change household size. Studies that follow the same people find real movement between groups over a decade, but also strong persistence from one generation to the next, so the gaps here describe positions in the distribution, not a fixed set of households.
An outside checkThe Federal Reserve’s survey of household economic well-being found that 63% of U.S. adults would cover a $400 emergency expense with cash or its equivalent in 2024 (the same as in 2023), leaving more than a third who couldn’t. That fits this site’s finding that lower-income groups have little or nothing left after essentials, though the survey measures adults, not households, and savings as well as income.

Definitions

Left after essentials (the “surplus”). Income under your settings minus the essential costs you selected, including childcare and any custom expense. Use “Edit expense amounts” to change the BLS figures.
Benefits & transfers. Social Security and pensions; public assistance, SSI and SNAP; unemployment, workers’ compensation and veterans’ benefits; regular support payments such as child support.
Education. BLS’s education spending: tuition, fees, textbooks, supplies and equipment for schools and colleges. It excludes student-loan payments and doesn’t count tax-funded public schooling. Off by default.
Happiness plateau line. $75,000 of yearly household income in 2008–09 dollars (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010), adjusted with CPI-U for each year: about $110,000 in 2024. A 2023 reanalysis found this plateau only for the least happy 15–20% of people, at about $100,000; for most people happiness keeps rising with income. It is a rough reference, not a threshold for any individual.
Childcare. Children × price per child, adjusted to each year with the day care and preschool price index.
Per person. The group’s average amount divided by its average household size, plus any children added.
Minimum tax. A tax on income, not wealth (under Advanced). “Simple” is a what-if rate above an exemption. “U.S.-style AMT” uses each year’s married-filing-jointly AMT exemption, phase-out and 26%/28% rates, with no deductions or filing status, so it is a rough group-level estimate.
Where the wealth is (Fig. 3). Household net worth from the Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts, by wealth or by income group, 2000–2025. Wealth taxes there are what-ifs: flat charges the rate on net worth above a threshold; the Zucman-style minimum requires covered households to pay at least the rate × total net worth, counting taxes already paid. They are applied to each group’s average, ignore avoidance, and use no official revenue score, so treat them as rough orders of magnitude.
Investing. Returns accrue on the prior balance; the year’s contribution is added at year-end. A shortfall contributes $0. No taxes, fees or withdrawals: it’s a portfolio built only from this surplus, not a measure of anyone’s actual wealth.

Read the full methodology: every source, formula and limitation in one place.
Sources: BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey quintile tables, 2000–2024 ·
CBO, The Distribution of Household Income, 2022 ·
Kahneman & Deaton (2010), PNAS ·
Killingsworth, Kahneman & Mellers (2023), PNAS ·
Federal Reserve Distributional Financial Accounts ·
Federal Reserve SHED 2024 ·
Zucman (2024), G20 report on minimum taxation of the super-rich ·
Sen. Warren, Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act (2024) ·
IRS Form 6251 (AMT) ·
BLS CPI-U ·
BLS CPI: day care and preschool ·
Child Care Aware of America, 2023 price of care ·
S&P 500 total returns (S&P Dow Jones Indices).
Disclaimer: This site is for illustration purposes only. It was 100% AI-generated from the sources above, and its math and figures have not been independently checked by a human.
An illustrative model, not tax or investment advice. BLS, CBO and CPI data are U.S. government works in the public domain. Childcare price from Child Care Aware of America, used with attribution.
Version 1.0 · Data through BLS CE 2024, CPI August 2026 and S&P 500 to September 14, 2026 · Last updated September 15, 2026 · No cookies. Anonymous, privacy-friendly visit counts via Cloudflare Web Analytics; fonts load from Google Fonts.
Made by Patrick Glenn by way of Claude and ChatGPT. Code under the MIT License; text and charts under CC BY 4.0.

Expense amountsEvery amount starts as what households in that income group actually spent, according to BLS. Change anything to test your own assumptions. The charts update as you type, and edits are saved in the scenario link.
×

Scale a whole category
Raises or lowers a category for every group and every year. 100% is BLS as published. Scaling applies on top of any single-year edits below.

Edit a single year
Average yearly spending per household, in that year’s dollars. The small grey figure is the original amount (BLS, or the projection from 2024); highlighted boxes have been changed. Clear a box to restore it. Changes to 2024 carry into the 2025–2026 projections.
Year

Add your own expense
A flat yearly cost for every household, such as phone and internet or student loans. Enter it in 2024 dollars; other years are adjusted with CPI-U.

Name
Per household per year · 2024 $

Reset all to BLS
Childcare is set in the sidebar, under 04.
Done

The Household Surplus Lab is an illustrative economic simulation designed to analyze the residual wealth households possess after covering essential expenses and to explore the potential growth of that surplus through investment over time. The model is constructed using twenty-five years of U.S. government survey data spanning 2000 to 2024, allowing users to experiment with various assumptions regarding income distribution, essential costs, and investment behavior.

The simulation operates by allowing users to define the parameters of the household experience. This involves setting rules for income groups, determining which costs are considered essential (such as food, housing, healthcare, and education), and optionally including costs related to childcare. Users can adjust these settings, modify expense amounts based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures, incorporate inflation rates, and define investment strategies, such as allocating a share of the surplus to the S&P 500 with an assumed annual return. The model allows for complex controls, such as splitting the population distribution into quintiles, quartiles, or deciles, and experimenting with different concepts for taxation, including minimum income taxes and wealth taxes.

The model generates several interconnected visualizations detailing the outcomes of these scenarios. One key output, illustrated in Figure 1, shows the amount of money remaining for each household after deducting essential costs from their income, projected for the years 2025 and 2026. Further analysis, shown in Figure 2, tracks the compounding effect of investing a portion of this yearly surplus, demonstrating how potential investments accumulate over time, factoring in assumed portfolio returns. Figure 3 illustrates the resulting distribution of household wealth, showing where wealth is concentrated across different income and wealth percentiles using Federal Reserve data.

The methodology hinges on distinguishing between real data and what-if scenarios. Real data is drawn directly from the BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey data, which provides established figures for income, spending, and benefits across income quintiles. What-if scenarios involve estimating finer distributions, such as deciles or the top one percent, which are derived from a smooth income curve within each quintile. Furthermore, the model addresses data breaks and estimation challenges, acknowledging that BLS income figures have evolved, and that estimates for future years (2025–2026) project growth based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U). Limitations of the model are explicitly stated, noting that figures represent group averages rather than individual experiences, and that the groups mix varied demographics, meaning the results describe distributional positions rather than fixed household realities.

The simulation also incorporates definitions for complex economic concepts, such as the happiness plateau reference point, which is anchored to historical income levels adjusted for inflation. The model allows exploration of policy implications, including hypothetical wealth taxes, assessing potential revenue across different wealth and income groups, and referencing external economic considerations regarding the taxation of the super-rich. The overall framework serves as a complex analytical tool to examine the relationship between necessary expenditures, disposable income, savings potential, and the distribution of wealth within the U.S. economy.