Spending with Age

Fun set of graphs that show how our spending pattern changes with age for a variety of categories. The one that stood out for me was the spend on women's dresses. The peak arrives at around fifty. Perhaps this is the time when women are able to afford (and feel like they deserve) to spend on items of clothing that are expensive and are not flavor of the month street fashion. That is the only explanation that seems to make sense.

Surely younger women have a lot more clothes in volume than their older counterparts. If the woman is a lazy and reluctant shopper like me, then by the time they hit their forties, it becomes quite an undertaking to find non-work clothes that are age-appropriate, elegant, versatile and interesting. When you try to bring all that together, the price point no longer makes sense. So when I see that graph I am thinking about women who don't mind spending what it takes to acquire a nice wardrobe for a fifty year old.

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