Living Expenses Calculator
See what your cost of living adds up to across a week and a year, then hold it against the average Australian household. Enter your figures at whatever frequency suits you and we'll show your totals and how each category compares to the benchmark.
Benchmarks: ABS HES 2015-16 (indicative) · living-cost movement ABS SLCI Mar 2026 · reviewed 26 July 2026. Runs entirely in your browser on your own numbers — nothing is sent anywhere or stored.
Each box is pre-filled with a placeholder showing the ABS HES 2015-16 weekly benchmark — indicative, not current dollars. Type over it with your own figure.
| Annual spend | $0 |
| 2015-16 baseline (weekly) | $1,425 |
| vs the 2015-16 average | — |
A snapshot based on the figures you enter — everything is normalised to a weekly amount. Benchmarks are ABS HES 2015-16 (indicative, not current dollars). This is general information, not financial advice.
How This Calculator Works
The idea is simple: add up what you spend across the big categories of everyday life, put it on a weekly and yearly footing, and compare it to what a typical Australian household spends. You enter your figures at whatever frequency suits — weekly, fortnightly, monthly or annual — and every line is converted to a weekly amount behind the scenes so the totals and the comparison line up honestly.
The benchmark we compare you against is the average weekly household spend of $1,425 — about $74,100 a year — from the Australian Bureau of Statistics Household Expenditure Survey 2015-16 (cat. 6530.0, released 13 September 2017). Each input box is pre-filled with that survey's benchmark for the category, so you're never staring at a blank form — you can see straight away where your own spending runs above or below the old average.
How It's Calculated — a Worked Example
Say a household adds up its weekly spending like this: $560 on housing, $300 on food and groceries, $250 on transport, $180 on recreation, $120 on insurance and financial services, $95 on medical and health, $55 on communication and subscriptions, $60 on energy, $80 on clothing and personal care, $50 on education, and $150 on everything else. Those lines add up to $1,900 a week. Over a year that's:
$1,900 / week × 52 = $98,800 a year
Held against the 2015-16 benchmark, the gap is $1,900 − $1,425 = $475 a week, and $475 ÷ $1,425 = 33%. So this household is running about a third above the 2015-16 average. Type those same figures into the calculator above (leave the toggle on Weekly) and you'll get the same $1,900 weekly total, $98,800 a year, and "+33% vs the 2015-16 average" — plus a per-category breakdown showing housing is the line stretched furthest above its old benchmark of $279. That result is not a red flag: as the next section explains, a gap above the baseline is exactly what you'd expect a decade on.
Turning Weekly, Fortnightly and Annual Into One Number
To compare spending honestly, everything has to sit on the same clock. The calculator normalises every entry to a weekly figure: fortnightly amounts are halved, monthly amounts are multiplied by 12 and divided by 52, and annual amounts are divided by 52. That's why $1,000 a month of rent shows up as about $231 a week, not $250 — there are about 4.33 weeks in an average month, not four.
The Honest Bit: Why the Benchmark Is From 2015-16
We'll say this plainly, because it's the whole point of the page. The category benchmark you're being compared against is a decade old. The ABS Household Expenditure Survey — the only survey that breaks average household spending down category by category — was last run in 2015-16 and has not been re-run since. There is no newer per-household, per-category breakdown to use, so every benchmark figure on this page is labelled ABS HES 2015-16 — indicative, not current dollars, and we mean it.
What that means for your result: real 2026 costs are higher across the board, so a total that sits above the $1,425 baseline is expected, not a sign you're overspending. Rents, mortgage interest, groceries and energy have all moved a long way since 2015-16. Treat the comparison as a relative guide to where your money goes — which categories are stretched furthest above their old share — rather than a target to get back under.
| Category | ABS HES 2015-16 weekly benchmark | Share of the $1,425 |
|---|---|---|
| Housing (rent, mortgage interest, rates, repairs, insurance — excl. principal) | $279 | ~20% |
| Food & groceries | $237 | ~17% |
| Transport | $207 | ~15% |
| Recreation & entertainment | $172 | ~12% |
| Insurance & financial services | $97 | ~7% |
| Medical & health | $82 | ~6% |
| Communication & subscriptions | $47 | ~3% |
| Energy (domestic fuel & power) | $41 | ~3% |
| Clothing & personal care | $73 | ~5% |
| Education | $44 | ~3% |
| Other (furnishings, household services, alcohol, tobacco) | $148 | ~10% |
What the Current Data Says
The direction of costs is measured much more recently than the benchmark. In the year to the March 2026 quarter, Australian household living costs rose between 2.6% and 5.2% depending on household type (ABS Selected Living Cost Indexes, March 2026). The spread is the interesting part: households feel cost movements differently, so an employee household with a mortgage sees a different number to an age-pensioner household. What the SLCI can't give you is a clean 2026 dollar figure for each category per household — that's the gap the old HES still, awkwardly, fills.
What the Averages Hide
An average household is a statistical creature, not a real one. The $1,425 blends together situations that barely resemble each other, and three splits matter most:
- Renters vs owners. The housing line looks modest at ~$279 a week partly because outright owners — with no rent and no mortgage interest — pull the average down. A renter in a capital city, or a household early in a mortgage, can spend two or three times that on housing alone.
- City vs regional. Housing and transport costs diverge sharply by location. A regional household may spend far less on rent but more on fuel and car running costs; a city household often flips that balance.
- Household size. A single-person household and a family of five sit inside the same "average", yet their food, energy and transport bills are worlds apart. Per-person, smaller households often spend more because fixed costs don't halve when the household does.
This is why the per-category comparison is more useful than the single headline number. Seeing that your housing line is 90% above its old benchmark while your food line is only 20% above tells you something real about your situation — the headline total on its own doesn't.
What To Do With the Result
A cost-of-living total is a starting point, not a verdict. If you want to turn these numbers into a plan you can act on, the budget planner takes the same spending lines and sets them against your income, so you can see your monthly surplus and savings rate rather than just how you compare to a decade-old average. If housing is the line stretched furthest above its benchmark — as it is for most households today — the mortgage repayment calculator shows how much of that housing cost is interest versus principal, which is the part the ABS counts as a living expense.
And once you know what life costs you each week, the natural next question is whether your wealth is keeping pace. The net worth calculator adds up what you own against what you owe, so you can see the level while this tool shows the flow. Together they're a fuller picture than either gives on its own.
Frequently Asked Questions
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