Retirees Aged 75+ Face a 50% Spending Surge as Housing Takes a Bigger Bite of Their Budgets

Retirement spending has changed sharply for America's oldest households. Americans aged 75 and over recorded a 50% rise in inflation-adjusted household spending between 1990 and 2024, while their housing spending increased by about 68%. The figures show how the cost of maintaining a household has changed over three decades.

Housing has become a particularly large part of spending, even as expenditure on some other categories has fallen. The 50% figure covers overall household spending. It does not mean housing alone rose by 50%. Transportation, healthcare, and other categories also contributed to the wider increase.

Housing Is the Biggest Contributor

Housing was the largest contributor to the increase in spending among Americans aged 65 and older. Average annual spending for this group reached $61,432 in 2024, compared with an inflation-adjusted $44,538 in 1990.

Housing accounted for $7,728 of that increase. Spending on the category rose from $14,465 to $22,193. The category includes shelter, mortgage interest, property taxes, insurance, utilities, paid household help, housekeeping supplies, and furnishings.

Housing Takes More of the Budget

The share of spending devoted to housing is higher among the oldest retirees. Households aged 75 and over allocated about 39% of their total spending to housing in 2024. The figure was 34% among households aged 65 to 74. Yet the oldest households did not spend more on housing in absolute terms.

Their housing expenditure was about $21,999 in 2024, compared with $22,329 for households aged 65 to 74. The larger share is partly linked to lower spending elsewhere. Older households spend less on areas such as transportation and apparel, leaving housing to account for more of their remaining expenditure.

The Oldest Group Saw a 68% Housing Increase

The change is particularly pronounced when compared with 1990. Households aged 75 and over spent about $13,130 on housing that year. By 2024, the inflation-adjusted figure had reached $21,999. That represents an increase of about 68%. For households aged 65 to 74, housing spending increased by about 44% over the same period. Across the wider US population, it increased by about 26%.

Other Costs Have Shifted

Housing was not the only major spending category to change. Inflation-adjusted transportation spending among households aged 65 and older rose by $2,616 between 1990 and 2024, reaching $9,538. Healthcare and personal insurance and pensions also contributed to higher overall spending.

Meanwhile, some categories recorded declines. Apparel and services spending fell from $1,844 in 1990 to $1,198 in 2024. Tobacco spending dropped by nearly 30% to $266, while reading spending fell from $329 to $120. These changes help explain why housing occupies a larger share of the budgets of older households.

The Spending Data Has Limits

The Consumer Expenditure Survey does not include people living in long-term care facilities. As a result, the figures do not capture spending patterns among retirees living in nursing homes or similar residential settings.

The data should therefore be read as a measure of the households covered by the survey, rather than a complete account of every cost faced by Americans aged 75 and over. Bureau of Labor Statistics data also shows that housing was the largest spending category for US households overall in 2024, accounting for 33.4% of average annual expenditure.

What Has Changed in Retirement

The figures show that spending does not fall evenly across every category as people move deeper into retirement. For households aged 75 and over, housing has increased substantially since 1990 and now represents a larger portion of total expenditure.

At the same time, spending on categories such as apparel and reading has fallen, while transportation and healthcare have contributed to higher costs. The data does not establish that housing caused the entire increase in retirement spending. It shows instead that housing has become an increasingly important component of household expenditure among older retirees.