--- title: Infographic: How Much American Consumers Spend In Real Time description: Spoiler alert: it's a whole lot canonical: https://time.com/2901341/this-is-how-much-money-americans-are-spending-every-second/ author: Samantha Grossman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-19T16:56:24.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:10:56.523Z og:title: This Is How Much Money Americans Are Spending Every Second og:description: Every minute, consumers buy 5,741 Starbucks drinks and 245,473 servings of Coke og:url: https://time.com/2901341/this-is-how-much-money-americans-are-spending-every-second/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This Is How Much Money Americans Are Spending Every Second twitter:description: Every minute, consumers buy 5,741 Starbucks drinks and 245,473 servings of Coke twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # This Is How Much Money Americans Are Spending Every Second by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Jun 19, 2014 4:56 PM UTC by [Samantha Grossman](https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/) ## Samantha Grossman Jun 19, 2014 4:56 PM UTC Americans love to spend. We know this. But just how much are they spending every second of every day, and on what exactly? The folks over at Retale, a location-based app that aggregates weekly retail circulars, created a [real-time graphic](http://www.retale.com/info/retail-in-real-time/) to visualize the answers to these questions. Watch the numbers tick swiftly upward, as more and more money is spent on everything from coffee to firearms to pet food to lottery tickets to doughnuts. Via [retale.com](http://www.retale.com/info/retail-in-real-time/) References are listed below the graphic. Of course, keep in mind that these numbers are ultimately an estimate. And if the graphic looks familiar, that’s because it was inspired by the popular [Internet in Real-Time](http://pennystocks.la/internet-in-real-time/) chart. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/2901341/this-is-how-much-money-americans-are-spending-every-second/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/2901341/this-is-how-much-money-americans-are-spending-every-second/"},"headline":"This Is How Much Money Americans Are Spending Every Second","datePublished":"2014-06-19T16:56:24.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:10:56.523Z","description":"Spoiler alert: it's a whole lot","url":"https://time.com/2901341/this-is-how-much-money-americans-are-spending-every-second/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Economy","Money","Retail","U.S.","Business topic","Spending","consumer"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Samantha Grossman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/samantha-grossman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/2901341/this-is-how-much-money-americans-are-spending-every-second/","name":"This Is How Much Money Americans Are Spending Every Second"}}]}] ```