S&P 500 historical price data

Here are some resources for data on S&P 500 price history:

This article S&P 500 Price Growth : 1927 - Aug 2008 some nice charts showing growth of the S&P versus constant growth rates. Note the price charts don't include the dividends.

Yahoo Finance has index listings for S&P500 with historical data going back to 1950.

The article The S&P 500 at Your Fingertips from Political Calculations has a nice handy calculator that lets you compare the growth of the S&P between two specified dates. It will give you the annualized rates of change with or without dividend reinvestment between two dates.

Or you can just go straight to Standard and Poors and find numbers there. They have such info as Annual Price Appreciation from 1980 or S&P 500 Historical Average Price to Earnings Ratio. plus data on dividends.

Comparing 1972 spending to 2005 spending

How much have our spending habits changed in the past 35 years? I decided to look back to 1970's and compare to this decade. I used consumer spending report for 1972-1973 and then compared that to consumer spending in 2005.

First of all lets look at the numbers and how much we spent in the '70's. Total average household income in the period was $11,419. In the table below I list the spending in major categories and the % of income that category represents.

	1972-1973
	Spending	% income
Food	$ 1,596	14.0%
Alcohol	$ 110	1.0%
Housing	$ 2,551	22.3%
Apparel & service	$ 647	5.7%
Transportatin	$ 1,597	14.0%
Healthcare	$ 528	4.6%
Entertainment	$ 708	6.2%
Personal care & serv	$ 165	1.4%
Read and educat	$ 153	1.3%
Tobacco	$ 130	1.1%
Misc	$ 86	0.8%
Cash contribution	$ 508	4.4%
Personal insur, pens	$ 734	6.4%

Now lets look at the spending in the same categories for 2005. The household income was $58,712. The table for 2005 is below:

	Spending	% income
Food	$ 5,931	10.1%
Alcohol	$ 426	0.7%
Housing	$ 15,167	25.8%
Apparel & service	$ 1,886	3.2%
Transportatin	$ 8,344	14.2%
Healthcare	$ 2,664	4.5%
Entertainment	$ 2,388	4.1%
Personal care & serv	$ 541	0.9%
Read and educat	$ 1,066	1.8%
Tobacco	$ 319	0.5%
Misc	$ 808	1.4%
Cash contribution	$ 1,663	2.8%
Personal insur, pens	$ 5,204	8.9%

Graphically we can compare the spending for the 1970's to 2005 by looking at how the pie is split up:




You'll likely notice that some of the % values have changed a fair amount.

Major spending categories that have decreased from the 1970's:

Food	-3.9%
Apparel & service	-2.5%
Entertainment	-2.1%
Cash contribution	-1.6%
Tobacco	-0.6%
Personal care & serv	-0.5%
Alcohol	-0.2%

One major reason for decreases in many of these categories is that the average household had 3 people in the 70's and only 2.5 people in 2005. So while in the 70's you were buying food, clothing, entertainment,etc for 3 people in the 2000's you would only be buying those things for 2.5 people on average. Also, inflation has been low for many of these items. Food and apparel have not seen high inflation since the 1970's. Looking closer at food prices, they have not increased as fast as wages. If you look at the old statistical abstract and dig into the 1970's they have specific food prices listed, you can compare to the Food prices for 2006.

Here are some basic food prices for 1970 and 2006 and the % increase:

	1970	2006	% increase
hamburger 1lb	$ 0.66	$ 2.26	242%
flour 1lb	$ 0.12	$ 0.32	171%
eggs 1dz	$ 0.61	$ 1.54	151%
milk 1 gallon	$ 1.32	$ 3.00	127%
potatoes 1lb	$ 0.09	$ 0.52	478%
bananas 1lb	$ 0.16	$ 0.50	214%
tomatoes 1lb	$ 0.42	$ 1.64	290%
coffee 1lb	$ 0.91	$ 3.11	242%

So while wages increased +400% in the time period, most of these food prices increased +150-300%.

Spending Categories that have increased from the 1970's to today:

Housing	3.5%
Personal insur, pens	2.4%
Misc	0.6%
Read and educat	0.5%
Transportatin	0.2%

Housing costs have increased as a direct reflection of housing expenses. Keep in mind though that size of the average home has increased over the decades. Personal insurance and pensions have gone up due to the decline in business pension funds. More people put money into 401k's and IRAs now compared to in the 70's when most employers had pension funds as part of compensation.

Transportation as a % of income spending has not increased significant however the average household now has 2 cars whereas in the 70's there were only 1.25 cars per home. So while we're spending about the same on transportation as a % we're driving more cars.

Interestingly we have not had a significant change in spending on healthcare as a % of income per household. This may be a reflection of fewer people in households and the fact that a larger % of Americans are uninsured.

Spending on vices has decreased. IN the 70's we spent 2.1% of our income on alcohol and tobacco but by 2005 that had decreased to 1.2%. Part of that is decrease in the amount of smokers in the country. In the 60's and 70's about 40% of the adult population smoked but by 2006 the rate dropped to 20.6%. Also it appears that alcohol consumption has dropped about 10% from 1970 to 2006.


Additional References:
Vehicle data
Census Statistical Abstracts 1951-1994

Free breakfast tomorrow at Denny's

Denny's is giving away a free breakfast tomorrow between the hours 6am - 2pm. Its only on Tuesday February 3rd. They had a commercial about it during the Super Bowl in case you missed that.

I'm guessing that they will be pretty crowded and it doesn't say anything about free beverage. But hey, its free food so who's to complain.

A few Frugal learnings from Vegas vacation

My wife and I recently went to Las Vegas for a short vacation. I'm always looking for a good deal in Vegas. In my mind, vacations are meant to be fun so I don't mind spending money on a trip. Why spend the airfare and hotel costs to travel somewhere fun and then sit in the room and play cards? However, theres nothing wrong with saving as much as you can doing the fun things you want to do on your vacation.

Below are the some cost saving ideas that I picked up in my most recent trip.


1) AAA discounts

I never think of asking if there's a AAA discount on goods or services but it can pay to do so.

We decided to see the Titanic : The Artifact Exhibition at the Luxor. Normal price tickets were $27 each but with our AAA card we got the tickets for $24.60. So we saved nearly $5 just by showing our AAA card. Not a bad side benefit at all.

I looked at the AAA site and I found a few more discounts in Vegas:

Blue Man Group: Save up to $40 on select tickets. Also, save 10% on merchandise at the Blue Man Group Retail Store in Las Vegas.

Hard Rock Cafe: Save 10% on food, non-alcoholic beverages and merchandise at all U.S., and select Canadian and international locations.

Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters: Save 10% on all Grand Canyon South Rim Tour Departures. Save 25% on Las Vegas Night Flights and 20% on all Las Vegas Grand Canyon Departures.

2) Excalibur had a 2-for-1 deal in their Buffet.
The deal is only good for the hours of 2pm-6pm and there was a pretty long line at 1:55pm waiting. But this is a hard to beat buffet deal. Their dinner buffet is $18 per adult so two people can eat for $18. Not bad.

3) A taxi may be better than monorail for short trips for 2 or more people
Normally I take the monorail up and down the strip since a single $5 ticket seems like a bargain compared to a taxi. However a couple times we had to go a few hotels up and down the strip. For these short trips I figured a taxi shouldn't cost us more than the $10 in monorail tickets for two people and the taxi would save us a lot of walking. Turns out I was right. We were going about 1 or 1.5 mi. down the strip between 2 major casino hotels. The taxi ticket cost us just about $10 each way. And it was a LOT faster and easier than the monorail. The more people you have then the more economical taxi's are over the monorail. If we shared a trip with our friends then a trip for 4 two ways would be $20 or $5 per person and monorail tickets 2 ways would run $40. On the other hand if it was just one person traveling then the monorail would generally be the cheapest travel option for anything but the shortest trips.

4) Watch out for extra hotel fees
I booked a mid week stay via Orbitz in a 3 star strip hotel for about $51 a night. I as proud of the decent deal I'd found. But then when we got to the hotel they charged me an extra $1 fee plus a $7 'resort fee' to add another $8 to the bill. I'm used to and now accept the misc. $1-2 fee that hotels sometimes tack on for phone usage or 'energy' surcharge or whatever other random fee they decide to come up with to pad the bill. But a $8 charge is beyond what I'm happy to accept. Unfortunately at the time it was too late. When I got home I was going to give Orbitz a piece of my mind for not alerting me to this. I looked at the receipt from Orbitz and the $7 fee was spelled out right there. It was my mistake to not notice the fee in advance. The moral of the story is to watch for extra charges from hotels added at check in or check out.

5) Taxis may or may not be cheaper than rental car
Normally I do not get a rental car in Vegas. Usually I take a taxi from the airport to the strip and back and then take a few more taxi rides during my visit and use the monorail. Depending on how much travel you plan to do and how much the rental car rates are its possible that either renting a car or using taxis may be cheaper. On this past trip we went in January and rental car rates were dirt cheap due to it being off season. I could have gotten a rental for under $30 a day. What I would do is think about how much traveling you'll be doing during your trip and then add up expected taxi charges and compare to renting a car. Say for example you'll be there 4 days and plan to go to Fremont street one night and then take another side trip. You'd be looking at round trip from the airport, round trip strip to Fremont and round trip strip to off strip location. If each of those trips is approximately $20 each way in taxi fares then you'd come to a total of $120 in taxi charges. If your rental car is less than $30 a day it may be cheaper to go with the rental but if the rental is more then taxis would be cheaper.