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COST OF LIVING

How much will life in Sweden cost you in 2024?

This year, food and electricity prices rose dramatically for Swedish consumers. What does the situation look like when looking ahead to next year?

How much will life in Sweden cost you in 2024?
How much will life in Sweden cost next year? Photo: Henrik Holmberg/TT

Food

The prices of food in the Swedish Consumer Agency’s yearly prognosis vary depending on the age of each person and whether they eat lunch at home on weekdays or not.

For an adult aged between 18-30 who eats three meals a day at home, with two snacks between meals, the agency predicts a monthly food cost of 3,940 kronor, or 3,710 kronor for someone aged 31-60.

Babies aged six months to a year have a monthly food cost of 1,090 kronor, according to the agency’s calculations, rising to 1,220 kronor for a one year old eating all lunches at home. 

A one year old who eats lunch at preschool five days a week is predicted to have a monthly food cost of 910 kronor next year, rising to 1,260 kronor for 2-5 year olds.

A child aged 6-9 who eats five lunches a week at school would have a monthly food cost of 1,850 kronor, rising to 2,320 kronor for a 10-13 year old and 2,800 kronor for a 14-17 year old.

All these categories are based on the Nordic dietary guidelines, which recommend little red meat and high amounts of whole grains, vegetables and fish.

This means that a family of two adults aged over 31 and two children aged 6-9, where the adults take their own lunches to work, can expect a monthly food cost of 11,120 kronor in 2024. That might sound high, but it’s only eight percent higher than the agency’s food costs for 2023, so the real number for some households may be much lower.

Other individual costs

On top of those costs, there are additional individual costs for each age group, giving a total of between 2,000 and 2,860 kronor on top of food costs for things like clothing, leisure activities, a mobile phone (not including the contract) and personal hygiene.

See the table below for a breakdown of these costs.

 

Shared household costs

Finally, there are shared household costs for households ranging from one to seven people. These include consumer goods, home goods, media, electricity, water and drainage, and home insurance, which varies in price depending on whether the household is in a large city, medium-sized city or a smaller town.

Single-person households in a major town can expect to pay 3,670 kronor per month on these expenses, rising to 4,340 kronor for two people or 6,460 kronor for a family of four.

Is this more or less expensive than in 2023?

It’s likely next year that people living in Sweden will still be facing high interest rates and high rents. When looking at the bigger picture, though, it’s not all bad news.

According to the agency’s forecast, Swedish energy bills will be 30 percent lower than this year, meaning we’re unlikely to see electricity prices anywhere near the levels seen at the end of 2022 or in 2023, unless there’s an extremely cold winter or an unforeseen event affects the energy market.

Water and drainage costs for homeowners are expected to rise by around 15 percent next year, which will also indirectly affect owners of apartments in housing associations (BRFs), as this may have a knock-on effect on association fees.

Food prices, which have risen 26 percent over the past two years, are expected to go up by eight percent in 2024.

Finally, prices for shoes and clothing are expected to rise by 30 percent, although the agency says that is due more to the fact that the items included in the “basic wardrobe” used for the calculation have changed, rather than the fact that prices have shot up.

How is this data used?

The Consumer Agency’s figures, which don’t include housing costs, are calculated each year and supplied to government agencies, where they are used by municipalities and the Social Insurance Agency when figuring out the size of benefits, like subsistence allowance.

They’re also used by banks in their kvar att leva på (“left to live off”) calculation, which they look at when deciding whether to approve a mortgage or not.

Essentially, the bank will look at a prospective homeowner’s income, subtract costs of housing (mortgage, interest rates a few points higher than the current rate, in case it rises in the future, and any fee paid to a housing association or running costs for a home), and then see if the amount left over is enough to cover the cost of living according to the Consumer Agency’s figures.

The figures are also useful for anyone living in Sweden or planning to move to Sweden who wants a guideline when setting their own household budget.

Member comments

  1. Living in Stockholm for some time, I would say the figures are a bit too low.
    On average 2 room apartment rent here starts from 12000 SEK/m + , for expats. So, for family of three, the cot of living in Stockholm would be around 20000 SEK /m minimum.

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MONEY

‘Swift and Eurovision’: Swedish inflation fell less than expected in May

The year-on-year inflation rate fell to 3.7 percent in May, according to new figures from Statistics Sweden.

'Swift and Eurovision': Swedish inflation fell less than expected in May

This is a drop of just 0.2 percentage points in so-called CPI inflation since April. Experts had predicted that inflation would fall by twice as much, to 3.5 percent.

“This is a setback,” Alexandra Stråberg, chief economist at Länsförsäkringar, told the TT newswire.

According to Statistics Sweden, inflation in May was primarily affected by increased housing costs, mainly due to rising interest rates for household mortgages, which pushed up the inflation figure. This was mitigated by some extent by lower electricity, and fuel prices have also had an effect.

“The inflation rate fell in May, even though most service prices increased,” Statistics Sweden statistician Caroline Neander said in a press statement. “It was electricity prices which mainly contributed to the decline.”

Month-on-month, May saw a rise in the prices of transport services – like car rentals, train travel and flights – as well as increased prices for hotel stays, package holidays and food.

This could be due to two major events which took place in Sweden in May: Taylor Swift concerts in Stockholm and the Eurovision Song Contest in Malmö.

“There could be a temporary Swift or Eurovision effect here,” Stråberg said.

The head analyst from Nordea, Susanne Spector, said that this could partially explain the rise, but added that it wouldn’t explain the rise in the cost of services too.

“That’s a risk factor for the central bank,” she told TT.

What does this mean for interest rates?

On June 27th, Sweden’s Riksbank central bank is set to make its next announcement on Sweden’s key interest rate, just one month after it lowered the rate for the first time in eight years.

Even before these inflation figures were announced, Riksbank governor Erik Thedéen made it clear that the bank is not planning on lowering interest rates, stating there would need to be “very large changes” to even begin to discuss it in June – and unexpectedly low inflation figures for May would not be enough on their own.

Now that inflation rates have dropped less than expected, it looks even less likely that the Riksbank will lower the key interest rate in two weeks’ time.

Spector from Nordea believes that the next interest rate drop will be in the autumn.

Länsförsäkringar still predicts three further drops to the interest rate this year, although Stråberg said these figures had increased the likelihood of the bank only cutting the rate twice.

“It depends on next month. There are a lot of months to go which need to confirm the fact that inflation is on a downward trajectory,” she said.

According to chief economist Robert Boije, the most important takeaway from the new figures is the fact that year-on-year inflation did not rise.

“Today’s inflation figures for May from Statistics Sweden don’t give any reason not to believe the conclusion that the spectre of inflation in the Swedish economy has been vanquished,” he told TT.

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