Housing eats up paychecks
| • | Chart: Consumer spending patterns, 1998-1999 |
By Susan Hooper
Advertiser Staff Writer
Paying for housing takes the average working person in Honolulu nearly three hours a day, figures from the federal government show.
To be precise, the housing debt eats up two hours and 48 minutes of every eight-hour workday, according to information from a recent study of consumer spending patterns by the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Paying for food takes another hour and 12 minutes, and transportation costs consume 61 minutes of work time.
For Honolulu workers who punch in at 9 a.m. and get an hour lunch break, that leaves the time after 3:01 p.m. to pay for personal insurance and pensions (54 minutes), health care (25 minutes), apparel and services (23 minutes) and education costs (12 minutes).
Earning the wherewithal for other consumer needs — including liquor, cigarettes, entertainment and personal- care products — takes another hour and six minutes of every workday. Barring unforeseen delays, that puts the Honolulu wage slave out the door at 6:01 p.m.
The federal study shows that housing and food costs in Honolulu consume a greater share of the average after-tax paycheck than is the case nationally, said Nancy Treadwell, regional economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics' San Francisco office.
"Your shelter expense is a lot higher than the nation's," she said. "Food is the second-largest expenditure category in Honolulu, whereas for the nation it's transportation."
Honolulu's education costs, which would include private-school tuition, also are significantly above the national average, she said.
Treadwell's office compared average annual consumer spending patterns in Honolulu with those nationwide and in several West Coast cities. The data comes from 1998-1999, the latest years for which information is available.
The Advertiser divided the workday based on the findings of that study, federal average annual pay information for Hawai'i and state and federal income-tax information from the Hawai'i Department of Taxation. The workday divisions are based on after-tax income.
Todd Ogasawara, 43, an East Honolulu software engineer, said he and his wife spend a sizable portion of their income on their three-bedroom townhouse.
"Between the mortgage and the maintenance fees, you're talking a significant chunk of change, and for some people that would be their entire salary," he said.
Tuition for their 6-year-old daughter's private school takes another bite out of the family income, he said.
Ogasawara was born on O'ahu but has lived on the Mainland. He said he thinks that while prices of many consumer goods in Hawai'i have dropped to Mainland levels over the past several years, some Hawai'i food costs are still above Mainland averages. But that matters less to him than Hawai'i's higher housing costs.
"Even though it costs me $6 to buy a box of cereal here versus $4 on the Mainland, a $2 difference on a box of cereal is not as important to me as a $100,000 difference in a comparable home," he said. "Compounded across time, that adds up to hundreds of thousands of dollars more."
Reach Susan Hooper at shooper@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8064.
