The Weekender: The Star-Spangled Receipt

Every July, America gathers around the grill, gazes at the sky and asks the same timeless question.

Can liberty be itemized?

The answer, increasingly, is yes. It comes with hot dogs, surge-priced airfare, a cooler that cost more than expected, and at least one uncle explaining that fireworks were better when they were dangerous. The Fourth of July has become the rare national holiday where patriotism, protein and payment rails all show up wearing flip-flops.

In the American household budget, Independence Day occupies a special niche. It is not a gift holiday, but it is absolutely a spending holiday. The National Retail Federation found that 87% of consumers plan to celebrate July 4 this year, with average food spending hitting a record $94.41 per person. For a four-person household, that’s about $378 in food before anyone buys bug spray, gas, sparklers or the emergency bag of ice that somehow costs $8.

Numerator put the broader shopping basket at $117 in average holiday purchases, or $468 for a family of four, and estimated nearly $22 billion in potential spending among adults in the United States, HomePage News reported June 26.

A June 24 Fox/WalletHub roundup gave the holiday its full red-white-and-blue receipt. Americans are expected to spend $9.4 billion on food, shell out more than $4 billion on beer and wine, eat roughly 150 million hot dogs, and travel in numbers big enough to make every interstate look like a Costco checkout line. Fireworks spending topped $2.95 billion in 2025, and 72.2 million people are expected to travel at least 50 miles from home for the holiday.

So how does this year compare?

Last year, consumers planned to spend $92.44 per person on food, or about $370 for a family of four, while total food spending was expected to be $8.9 billion, NBC affiliate WGAL reported in July 2025.

Five years ago, in 2021, expected food spending was $80.54 per person, or about $322 for four, and total national Independence Day expected food spending was $7.52 billion, according to MERIC.

Ten years ago, NRF’s 2016 survey projected the average household spending $71.34 on food for barbecues and picnics, and total food spending at $6.8 billion.

Twenty years ago, the clean comparable grocery data is harder to find, but ABC News captured the 2006 mood. A Fourth of July trip or party could “easily” top $1,000, once flights, gas, hotel, cocktails and assorted aquatic nonsense entered the chat. A record 40.7 million Americans were expected to travel that weekend.

Travel is where the holiday has really bulked up. AAA projected June 17 that 72.2 million Americans will travel this year, edging past 2025’s record, with 61.4 million driving, 5.85 million flying domestically, and 4.93 million using buses, trains or cruises.

Domestic round-trip airfare to top destinations is averaging about $830, AAA said, meaning a family of four is staring at roughly $3,320 in airfare alone before lodging, meals or the airport cinnamon roll purchased under emotional duress.

In 2021, by contrast, the post-pandemic rebound brought 47.7 million travelers, with more than 91% going by car, AAA found at the time.

In 2016, AAA estimated 43 million travelers would trek during the holiday, helped by cheap gas and the national delusion that leaving after lunch would beat traffic.

The menu, meanwhile, has not gone full Silicon Valley. Nobody is replacing hot dogs with lab-grown liberty foam. But the economics of the cookout have changed.

A classic 2026 cookout for 10 now costs $73.82, or $7.38 per person, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. It’s the highest nominal price since its summer cookout survey began in 2016. Beef, chicken, pork chops, hamburger buns, strawberries, pork and beans, cookies, and ice cream are all up; potato salad and chips are the patriotic deflation heroes.

Back in 2021, Progressive Grocer reported that the same Farm Bureau-style cookout cost about $59.50 for 10, or less than $6 per person, which now sounds less like a grocery bill and more like oral history.

The biggest change may be that July 4 has become a choose-your-own-checkout adventure. Stay home, and the family bill looks like a few hundred dollars of groceries and party supplies. Drive, and gasoline, snacks and lodging join the parade. Fly, and the bald eagle on the credit card starts sweating. Cruise, and the whole thing gets bundled into one tidy at-least-we-know-what-it-costs package, which AAA said is one reason cruises are powering the growth in non-car, non-air travel.

Still, America pays. We pay because July Fourth is less a holiday than a national operating ritual. We grill, gather, overspend slightly and look up. At 250 years old, the country remains gloriously consistent. It’s confident, hungry, traffic-prone and absolutely convinced that one more sparkler is not only affordable, but constitutionally necessary.