Statistics Canada- Canadian household spending

Canada’s statistics gathering agency has just released its report on household spending by Canadians for the year 2012.

Not surprisingly household spending was up from the previous year by 2.7%.

The average Canadian household spent $75,443 in 2012 which included just over $56,000 on goods and services, with the remainder for things like income tax, pension contributions, and employment and insurance premiums, and gifts of money.

Couples with children spent the most, at $80,000 for goods and services, while seniors living alone spent the least at $27,546.

Shelter represented the largest share of those costs at a household average of just under $16,000. This includes rent or mortgage payments, repairs/maintenance, property tax and utilities. Homeowners spent more than renters at almost $18,000 versus almost $13,000.

It also shows more households are dropping their landline telephone and using only a mobile phone for communication. In 2011, just under 13 percent of households were mobile phone only, and by 2012 this had increased to just under 16 percent.

On average Canadian households spent $7,739 for food in 2012, down very slightly from the year before. This was due to a decrease in spending at restaurants, down almost 2 percent from 2011. Still, on average in 2012, households spent a little over $2,000 of the over $7-thousand total, in restaurants.

Transportation costs were little changed from 2011 to 2012 at  just over $11,000.  This included about $10,000 on purchase and/or operation and maintenance costs of private vehicles, and just over $1,000 for public transit.

It should be noted that these are figures averaged across the entire country and costs regionally can be quite different.

As an example a 2-bedroom apartment in Vancouver rents for over $1500 a month, in Winnipeg its under $900. In Canada’s biggest city, rent would be approximately $1500 a month, while the Montreal it would be under $800.