Australians lose one third of spending every week

Tuesday January 12, 2010

While many of us claim to be sticking to a budget, latest survey results show that we simply fall behind when it comes to monitoring our spending habits.

A Visa survey of different nationalities spending and saving habits has revealed that Australians lose up to one third of their weekly allocated expenditure, in spite of the fact that over half of the population are trying to keep within a budget.

The Visa surveyed over 1,000 Australians as part of a wider international survey of 12,000 adults, with the results showing that Australians have one of the highest proportional rates of unaccountable cash spending.

In actual figures, Australians spent $176 total per person per week with $59 of that amount left unaccounted for. This adds up to $3,068 being spent every year that Australians cannot remember being spent.

"The figure is more than double the international average in the survey which shows a cash spend of $120 per week with $24 not accounted for," Visa said in a statement.

When it came to the nationalities that watch their expenditure best, it was the Japanese and Americans that recorded the highest results with the Japanese recording only a 7 per cent loss in cash expenses while Americans were at 9 per cent.

The Visa survey also found that an individual's gender tending to impact on where overspending would occur with women more likely (50 per cent of Australian women in fact) to overspend when shopping for food and groceries while 44 per cent of men lost track of their funds when socialising or drinking.

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