What Households in Your Income Decile Spend
"Am I normal?" is the question underneath most budget anxiety, and it has a measured answer: Stats NZ publishes what households at every income level actually spend. Three points tell the story. On the 2023 survey's comparable categories, average weekly spending runs about $678.90 in a lower income group, $1,081.00 in the middle, and $1,794.30 near the top.
One definition before anything is compared. The income groups are tenths of households ranked by raw household income, unadjusted for how many people that income supports. A nurse living alone and a family of five on one wage can sit in the same decile and live in different economies. Every comparison on this page carries that asterisk, and the honest use of the data is line-by-line with your household size in mind, not a verdict from a single total.
The full decile split for every category is in the household spending section; this guide is about the shape.
The shape: almost everything scales together, and why that surprises people
Total spending near the top runs about 2.6 times the bottom group's. Now the surprise: food runs about 2.6 times too, $158.60 against $420.10 a week. The textbook story says necessities flatten across incomes. On these deciles they do not, and the reason is the definition doing the work: raw income deciles bundle household size with income. Higher-income households are, on average, bigger households, and bigger households eat more. The flattening people expect is real, but it lives per person, not per household.
Once size is riding along with income, the differences that remain are the honest signal. Recreation and culture scales fastest, then transport, both ahead of food and housing: discretion still leads, mildly. And the shares story survives untouched, because incomes spread across the deciles far more than 2.6 times. If a low group and a high group spend proportionally similar dollars on essentials while their incomes differ several-fold, essentials consume a far larger share of the smaller income, which is why percentage budget rules travel so badly downward and why the bill prioritisation guide exists.
Housing sits with food at the flatter end, $234.40 a week at the bottom group against $591.00 near the top: at the bottom dominated by rent that cannot be compressed, at the top by mortgages that were chosen.
Reading your own decile honestly
Three corrections turn this from a comparison trap into a useful mirror. Size first: divide the world by your household size before your income, using the household size guide, because size explains more of the variation than income does. Averages second: every figure is a mean, pulled up by the biggest spenders in each decile, so typical households sit under their row. Tenure third: within any decile, renters, mortgage payers and outright owners have utterly different fixed costs, and the tenure guide holds that split.
After the corrections, a genuinely useful signal survives: a line where you sit far above households of your income and your size is a line worth ten minutes of attention. Not because the average is a rule, but because it is what everyone else facing your constraints actually does.
The budget calculator runs this comparison automatically, line by line, against your own size, region and tenure.
Test Your Knowledge
Quiz on spending by income
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do different incomes spend?
About $678.90 a week in a lower income group, $1,081.00 in the middle and $1,794.30 near the top: a spread of roughly 2.6 times, on 2023 figures.
What flattens and what scales?
Almost everything scales together, food included at about 2.6 times, because raw deciles bundle household size with income. Recreation and transport lead; the expected flattening of necessities appears only per person.
How do I compare myself properly?
Line by line, for your income and your household size together, which the budget calculator automates.
Related calculators and guides
- Budget Calculator, the comparison automated line by line.
- What households actually spend, the full decile split per category.
- What household size does to a budget, the correction that comes first.
- Owner vs renter spending, the tenure correction.
- What it actually costs to live in NZ, the level this guide distributes.