Monthly equivalent
Monthly mean = published weekly mean × 52 ÷ 12This converts the ONS weekly household figure to a calendar-month equivalent without changing the annual amount.
Household Spending Across the UK · Methodology
How the comparison works
Compare user-entered monthly household spending with published ONS Family Spending means across gross income decile, age of household reference person, household composition, housing tenure or UK region, without presenting a survey average as a target.
Return to the datasetIncluded
- The ONS financial-year-ending-2025 household spending total
- Thirteen high-level expenditure categories
- Ten gross household-income deciles
- Five household-reference-person age groups
- Thirteen household-composition groups
- Four housing-tenure groups
- Twelve English-region and UK-country groups
- Like-for-like UK means for each source period
- Published subgroup sample counts
- Optional user-entered category comparisons
- Preserved suppressed estimates
Outside this method
- A recommended budget
- An affordability or financial-health assessment
- Inflation adjustment beyond the source period
- Equivalisation of user-entered income or spending
- Confidence intervals not published in the selected tables
- Bank-transaction categorisation
- A cost-of-living forecast
- Household-specific needs or quality adjustments
Comparison method
Core formulas
Total difference
User monthly total − selected segment monthly meanA positive result means above the survey mean and is not labelled overspending.
Percentage difference
Total difference ÷ selected segment monthly meanThis gives scale relative to the selected mean; it is not a score.
Category difference
Entered monthly category − selected segment monthly category meanThe comparison appears only where the user enters a positive category value and ONS publishes the segment estimate.
Income-decile profile mapping
Saved annual taxable-income proxy ÷ 52, placed against published gross weekly income boundariesThis convenience mapping can be wrong for multi-adult households or income definitions and must be reviewed by the user.
Timing convention
Which source periods are used
Gross-income-decile, household-composition and tenure figures use the financial year ending 2025. Age and region figures use ONS three-year averages for the financial years ending 2023 to 2025. The tool uses a UK comparator from the same period as the selected segment. No values are uprated beyond the source period.
Limitations
What the comparison cannot establish
- The Living Costs and Food Survey is a sample survey; subgroup estimates can have substantial sampling error and the displayed sample count is not a confidence interval.
- Arithmetic means can be lifted by a minority of high-spending households and need not resemble a median household.
- Income deciles use gross household income before tax and are not equivalised in Table A4; a user's income concept may differ.
- Household expenditure categories follow ONS definitions and may not reconcile with bank transactions or another budgeting taxonomy.
- Suppressed symbols in the source are retained as null values and shown as not published, never as zero.
- Different comparison lenses overlap and are not controlled comparisons; changing one lens changes many household characteristics at once.
Reference tests
Numerical checks
| Case | Inputs | Expected result |
|---|---|---|
| UK monthly conversion | £676.60 published weekly total | £2,932.07 monthly equivalent before display rounding |
| Regional like-for-like period | Select London | London and UK comparators both use financial years ending 2023 to 2025 |
| Suppressed category | Select an income decile with suppressed health expenditure | Category displays 'Not published', not £0 |
| Below-mean total | £2,500 monthly total; £3,000 selected monthly mean | −£500 difference and 16.7% below the mean |
Evidence