Half of Americans 'lose' $2,000 in cash a year

Men tend to lose track of their spending on nights out while women's cash disappears during shopping trips.


NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- You heard about the growing problem of Americans not saving enough for retirement? Check this out.

Nearly half of respondents to a recent survey said they lose track of how they spend their pocket cash - on average, more than $2,000 a year.

The study, released this week, was commissioned by Visa in an effort to help make the case for debit cards as a good way to manage money.

"It's understandable that consumers would lose track of some cash over the course of a week, but we were surprised by how much cash goes unaccounted for at the end of a week - a dollar here and a dollar there definitely adds up," said Wayne Best, Visa's chief economist, in a statement.

The survey asked 2,036 respondents to estimate their "mystery spending," or money they couldn't keep track of. Of the respondents, 48 percent said they couldn't account for an average of $2,340 a year. At the extreme end of the spectrum were 7 percent who said they lost track of more than $100 per week, or $5,000 a year.

Respondents 34 and under are the biggest offenders.

Men in this group lost track of an average of $59 a week, or $3,078 per year, with 56 percent of them reporting that they blew the cash during a night out. Young women spent $52 in unaccounted-for cash a week, or $2,709 per year. And 67 percent blamed shopping trips. Top of page

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Most stock quote data provided by BATS. Market indices are shown in real time, except for the DJIA, which is delayed by two minutes. All times are ET. Disclaimer. Morningstar: © 2018 Morningstar, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Factset: FactSet Research Systems Inc. 2018. All rights reserved. Chicago Mercantile Association: Certain market data is the property of Chicago Mercantile Exchange Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved. Dow Jones: The Dow Jones branded indices are proprietary to and are calculated, distributed and marketed by DJI Opco, a subsidiary of S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC and have been licensed for use to S&P Opco, LLC and CNN. Standard & Poor's and S&P are registered trademarks of Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC and Dow Jones is a registered trademark of Dow Jones Trademark Holdings LLC. All content of the Dow Jones branded indices © S&P Dow Jones Indices LLC 2018 and/or its affiliates.