How L.A. spends money

The average household in the U.S. spent $37,782 last year on stuff - travel, food and drink, travel, health, house and home, and so forth. But as you might expect, there were huge variances according to metro area. The top-spending locality was Austin, Texas, at $67,076 (this excludes mortgage and rent) L.A. winds up 42nd, at $39,422, a paltry 4.3 percent higher than the national average. What's the deal? Los Angeles has lots of rich people, of course, but it also has many more poor people. Kind of the same story in NYC, which ranked $37,435, but if you just include Manhattan, it's $59,602. Scottsdale, Arizona was No. 2, at $64,687. All the numbers come courtesy of research site Bundle.com), and are based on data compiled by Citi (one of its investors), as well as the U.S. government and third-party research. The numbers are sliced and diced any number of ways, and it's kind of fun to go through the categories - even if I'm not quite sure what it all means.