Money to Burn: Celebrity Mega-Spenders Live Large

Nov. 21, 2007 Special to ABCNEWS.com — -- Troubled pop star Britney Spears spends an average of $16,000 a month on clothes. She spends about $4,758 on eating out, $10,250 on utility bills and $17,000 on automotive and other transportation costs. The clincher: She spends an average of $102,000 a month on "entertainment, gifts and vacation," according to court filings in her child custody battle with ex-husband Kevin Federline.

But hey, it's par for the course if you're a fabulously wealthy entertainer. And that's especially so as we move into the holidays. Don't count on spotting Britney or her pop-star brethren camping out in front of Wal-Mart for a Black Friday sale after Thanksgiving. Think auction houses and Rodeo Drive emporiums.

What are they buying? How much are they spending? To find out, we turned to wealth-research firm Prince & Associates of Redding, Conn., which recently polled 92 business managers representing 288 actors and musicians to quiz them about their clients' shopping plans for the holiday season.

Click here to see the celebrity megaspenders at our partner site, Forbes.com.

The celebrities were at least 25 years old and had a minimum net worth of $10 million. The survey asked how much they were planning to spend from Thanksgiving through the second week of January in a select number of categories. The responses didn't specify whether the celebrities were spending money on gifts or themselves.

Once someone has a net worth of more than $10 million, "that's the point over which people feel free to spend," says private-wealth specialist and Prince managing partner Hannah Grove. "There's very little, barring major catastrophe, that would cause them to curtail their spending."

Spears fits the bill. She spends an average of $241,020 a month, nearly five times the $48,398 that the average U.S. household spent in all of 2006, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average household in the European Union, where per-capita consumption was about 45% lower, spent even less.

U.S. consumers plan to spend an average of $816.69 on holiday-related shopping this year and another $106.67 on purchases for themselves, according to a survey conducted by BIGresearch on behalf of the National Retail Federation.