# Where Malaysia's Household Ringgit Actually Goes Each Month

> DOSM's Household Expenditure Survey breaks down what an average Malaysian household spends RM5,566 a month on — and housing is not the only category eating a bigger share than it used to.

- Category: cost-of-living
- Language: en
- Status: published
- Updated: 2026-07-24
- Canonical: https://negaraku.md/en/cost-of-living/household-spending-breakdown

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## At a glance

Every two years, DOSM sends interviewers into thousands of households and asks
them to log, category by category, exactly where the money went. The result is
the closest thing Malaysia has to an official household budget — not a survey
of opinions about spending, but a tally of it.

| Category | Share of spending | Monthly amount | 2022 share |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Housing, water, electricity, gas & other fuels | 23.5% | RM1,307 | 23.2% |
| Restaurants & accommodation services | 17.0% | RM948 | rose from 2022 |
| Food & beverages | 15.7% | RM876 | 16.3% |
| Transport | 11.0% | RM611 | 11.3% |
| Personal care & social protection | 5.6% | RM313 | not verified for 2022 |
| **Mean monthly household expenditure** | **100%** | **RM5,566** | **RM5,150** |

*Reference year 2024. Source: DOSM, Household Expenditure Survey Report 2024,
released 8 October 2025. The top four categories alone account for 67.2% of
total household spending.*

## The four categories that dominate the budget

Four groups eat up two-thirds of the average household's money, and the ranking
tells its own story about how Malaysians live.

**Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels** is the biggest line item
by a clear margin, at 23.5% (RM1,307) of monthly spending. This is the classic
"shelter and utilities" bucket — rent or loan-linked housing costs, water and
electricity bills, cooking gas and other household fuel.

**Restaurants and accommodation services**, at 17.0% (RM948), has overtaken
**food and beverages bought for the home**, at 15.7% (RM876). Between the 2022
and 2024 surveys, the restaurant-and-accommodation share rose while the
food-and-beverages share fell from 16.3% to 15.7% — DOSM's own release
attributes this to households eating out more.

**Transport** sits at 11.0% (RM611), a small decline from 11.3% in 2022.

## The categories the headline table skips

DOSM classifies household expenditure into COICOP main groups — the
"Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose", a UN
statistical standard — which is why the survey's own tables run to more
categories than clothing, health, transport and housing alone. Beyond the
top four (plus personal care and social protection, at 5.6% / RM313), the
remaining roughly one-third of an average budget is spread across groups such
as clothing and footwear, furnishings and household equipment, health,
communications, recreation and culture, education, alcoholic beverages and
tobacco, and miscellaneous goods and services.

DOSM's own published release does not break out an exact percentage for every
one of those remaining groups in its headline summary, so this article does
not attempt to assign numbers to them — check the full Household Expenditure
Survey Report 2024 tables directly if a specific smaller category matters to
you.

## Common mistakes

- **Treating RM5,566 as "what I should be spending."** It is a national mean
  across every income decile and every state — a household in Kuala Lumpur or
  Putrajaya and a household in a lower-cost state face very different real
  costs for the same categories.
- **Assuming the category shares are fixed proportions of income.** The survey
  measures expenditure, not income, and higher-income households spend
  differently in composition, not just in absolute amount.
- **Quoting 2022 percentages as current.** The 2024 survey is the latest
  official release (as of this writing); category shares moved measurably
  between the two rounds, most visibly in the restaurant-and-accommodation
  versus food-and-beverages split.

## What's next

- Read the inflation half of the picture: [Malaysia's Inflation Rate and What
  the CPI Actually Measures](/en/economy/inflation-cpi)
- Meet the agency behind the survey: [DOSM](/en/government/dosm)
- Consult the primary release directly at
  [DOSM's Household Expenditure Survey Report 2024](https://www.dosm.gov.my/portal-main/release-content/household-expenditure-survey-report--malaysia--states)
  for the full category tables and state-level breakdowns.

## Sources

- Household Expenditure Survey Report 2024 — https://www.dosm.gov.my/portal-main/release-content/household-expenditure-survey-report--malaysia--states (Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM))
- Household Expenditure Survey Report 2022 — https://www.dosm.gov.my/site/downloadrelease?id=household-expenditure-survey-report--malaysia--states-&lang=English&admin_view= (Department of Statistics Malaysia (DOSM))
- Household Income and Expenditure Survey — Technical Notes — https://open.dosm.gov.my/publications/technical-notes/hies-technotes (OpenDOSM / Department of Statistics Malaysia)

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