U.S. News: Well-Off Earners Embrace Frugality

“Well-heeled shoppers love a deal.

 

Americans with six-figure salaries are increasingly visiting Walmart for prebiotic soda and Dollar Tree for wrapping paper. They are buying $1 boxes of pasta at discount grocer Lidl and cheese at Aldi.

 

The shift down-market is driven by the fact that even the financially comfortable are acutely aware of how much more expensive everything is today. Discounters are successfully appealing to these sticker-shocked customers through improved digital offerings and aggressive expansions into well-off neighborhoods.

 

While affluent Americans are getting thriftier on essentials, they are still spending on extras like wellness and travel. Shoppers in households earning $150,000 or more spent 2% less at grocery stores in the first quarter compared with a year earlier and 15% more at consignment stores, according to Consumer Edge, which tracks credit- and debit-card spending data. At the same time, the group spent more at luxury jewelry stores and movie theaters.

 

"These consumers are saying, 'I don't really like buying laundry detergent and shower gels, they're not terribly exciting. How can I save some money on those so there's more money to spend on things I enjoy like dining out or apparel?'" said Neil Saunders, managing director at GlobalData, another firm that tracks spending.

 

Joshua Halliburton, a 33-year-old who works in information security, started getting fed up with the prices at the Whole Foods near his apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y. When an Aldi opened across the street from his home in November, he was so excited for a cheaper grocery option that he attended the grand opening.

 

He now visits the discount chain nearly every day for household staples. He is willing to wait in long checkout lines for lower prices. Meanwhile, he has continued to spend on travel, taking trips to California and Japan in the past year.

 

"Paying four dollars for a tub of yogurt feels right," he said. "Ten dollars for a tub of Chobani just doesn't make sense." Some friends are now trekking from different parts of the borough to shop at the store.

 

Consumer prices are about 25% above where they were five years ago, and affordability is a top concern for people of all income levels. Even though the rate of inflation is far below its 2022 peak, prices aren't going down, and certain household staples such as gasoline, coffee and beef have risen markedly in the past year.

 

Spending by the affluent is powering the economy, helping overall consumer spending hold up. Consumer spending was up 2.5% in February from a year earlier when adjusted for inflation, according to the latest Commerce Department numbers.

 

Affluent people have long loved Costco, which sells gold bars and vacation packages alongside cut-rate 3-pound tubs of coffee. These customers are now discovering retailers such as Walmart and Dollar Tree that were once firmly the province of lower-income shoppers. These retailers are aggressively courting better-off customers at the same time that their traditional customers are cutting back because of inflation.

 

Walmart's chief executive said earlier this year that most of the retailer's market share gains were with households earning more than $100,000 a year.

 

Megan Bleil, who lives outside of Washington, D.C., and advises wealthy families, spends about $1,000 a quarter at Walmart buying items such as paper towels, cat food and snacks for her elderly parents, who live in Ohio.

 

The 51-year-old, who earns between $150,000 and $200,000 a year, isn't trying to cut back on spending overall. When a friend visited this month, she spent more than $250 to treat her and her kids to indoor skydiving lessons. "I do try and do fun stuff," she said.

 

About 60% of all new households shopping at Dollar Tree earned more than $100,000, the retailer said in December. The company is courting these customers with a wider selection of higher-priced items -- think $5 -- and stores in more affluent areas like Plano, Texas, where the retailer opened its 9,000th store in North America last year.

 

When CEO Mike Creedon visited that new store, he noticed Range Rovers in the parking lot. "That's a customer we never had," he said in an interview last year.

 

Paul Apyan, 73, grew up modestly with parents who were wary of debt, and he kept that frugal mindset when he became an orthopaedic surgeon in Chattanooga, Tenn. More discount retailers have opened in his area in the past decade, and he now buys rotisserie chicken from Costco and toothpaste and body wash from Dollar General. When he shops at the regular grocery store, he compares sizes of a product to see which is cheaper per ounce.

 

Even though Apyan has built up his investment portfolio and a collection of classic cars, he has no plans to spend more freely on essentials. "Why would I do that?" he said.

 

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Shift Seen in High-Income Buying

 

A sizable minority of well-off shoppers have always been frugal, perhaps because they grew up modestly and kept those habits when they ascended into the upper middle class. Now their peers are swelling those ranks.

 

In 2025, 27.5% of high-income shoppers shopped at discount retailers, up from 19.8% in 2021, according to GlobalData, which uses surveys and card data in its analysis. The firm considers a three-person household earning above $156,000 to be high income.

 

"It's a shift that's here to stay," said Ali Furman, PwC's head of U.S. consumer markets. AI tools are making it easier for people to shop around for the lowest prices, she said.” [1]

 

1. U.S. News: Well-Off Earners Embrace Frugality. Ensign, Rachel Louise.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 18 Apr 2026: A2.