Cost-of-living pressures are being felt by all households but some are being hit harder than others, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.<\/p>\n
Where do you spend your money? Tell us<\/a><\/p>\n We’re keen to understand how the cost of living is being felt across Australia. What are your biggest expenses? Are you making cutbacks? Do you afford yourself luxuries?<\/p>\n The bureau’s latest Living Cost Indexes recorded annual cost increases of between 2.3 and 4.2 per cent in the year to December.\u00a0<\/p>\n The households that saw the largest increase in costs over the past year were those on government payments, with increases of at least 4 per cent largely driven by rising energy costs.<\/p>\n Employee households saw the smallest increase of 2.3 per cent because they “benefited the most from falling mortgage interest charges”, the bureau said.<\/p>\n The Reserve Bank of Australia cut rates in February, March and August last year.<\/p>\n Australian National University economic and social researcher Ben Phillips said the data showed positives for employee households where the primary source of income was wages and salaries.<\/p>\n “Their increase in cost of living actually hasn’t been that high,” Dr Phillips said.<\/p>\n “So it’s a pretty good story for the majority of households, particularly those with a mortgage.<\/p>\n “The last year was, in terms of cost-of-living increases, pretty benign.”<\/p>\n Dr Phillips said it was different for people on government payments, which included pensioners and welfare recipients.<\/p>\n “That’s probably mainly driven by electricity costs increasing fairly sharply with the rebates coming off through the course of the year,” he said.<\/p>\n The quarterly rise in living costs across all household types slowed in the December quarter compared with the September quarter.<\/p>\n “In this [December] quarter, lower electricity and health costs offset rises in other areas of living costs,” the bureau’s head of prices statistics, Michelle Marquardt, said.<\/p>\n