POLOKWANE – A salary looks and sounds very different before and after the bills have been paid.

For households in Polokwane, the difference between earning an income and having money left over at the end of the month can be substantial.

The national average take-home salary is R21 228 a month, placing the average worker just below the R22 000 to R75 000 monthly range researchers at the UCT Liberty Institute use to define the middle class.

But the national figure does not necessarily reflect what workers in Polokwane take home. Local salary data puts the average Polokwane salary at approximately R13 635 after deductions.

So is that a salary a person can live on, or are they barely scraping by?

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Start with the things you cannot avoid

To get an idea, Review Online looked at several of the biggest monthly expenses facing a four-person household.

The first is food. PMBEJD’s July 2026 Household Food Basket cost R5 530.52. The basket tracks 44 basic food items that households typically prioritise. It is not a luxury shopping list, and it does not represent every expense a family might have at the supermarket.

Housing is another major cost.

Polokwane’s rental market shows significant variation. While the average two-bedroom property rents for R7 500 per month, some units are available for as low as R5 500. Others can reach R8 500 per month.

For larger families, three-bedroom properties averaged about R11 046 in July 2026.

For a four-person household, the two-bedroom figure provides a useful, if conservative, benchmark.

Then there is electricity and water.

Rather than presenting one electricity purchase as a universal household cost, we have treated this as an illustrative R2 500- R3 000 monthly allocation. Actual electricity spending varies considerably according to household size, appliances, and tariffs.

Transport is similarly difficult to reduce to one number.

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For a household with a private vehicle, the current inland price of 93 petrol is around R25.42 a litre. A 50-litre tank therefore costs roughly R1 270 to fill.

That means two 50-litre fills would cost about R2 540, before considering any other transport costs.

What does that do to a salary?

Using food, rent, electricity and water, and a R1 500 transport allowance for one worker, the core monthly costs come to approximately:

Illustrative figures. Actual household costs vary.

For someone earning the average R13 635 take-home salary in Polokwane, those four costs alone would leave the household approximately R3 395 short every month.

That is before the household has paid for any other costs of living such as Wi-Fi, streaming platforms, other grocery essentials, insurance, school costs, debt repayments, and others.

2 incomes change the picture, but not completely

If two people in the same household each earned the average Polokwane take-home salary, their combined income would be R27 270.

Transport would increase if both people needed to commute, so using R3 000 rather than R1 500 for transport brings the core monthly cost to approximately R18 530.

That leaves around R8 740, and it looks considerably healthier, but it is not disposable income. It is what remains after only four major expenses have been accounted for.

The expenses we don’t see

South Africa’s latest comprehensive household spending data from Stats SA shows just how important these categories are.

In 2023, housing and utilities, food, transport, and insurance and financial services accounted for 75.6% of all household consumption expenditure nationally.

In other words, three out of every four rand spent by households went towards those four broad categories.

Insurance alone can take a sizeable bite.

Hippo’s latest data puts the average monthly car insurance premium in Limpopo at R1 382. The figure is based on insurance quotes and will vary according to the driver, vehicle and level of cover.

There is still the cost of maintaining the vehicle, replacing tyres, servicing it and dealing with unexpected repairs.

This doesn’t account for other insurance like medical or household. The numbers therefore become less about whether a household has money left and more about how quickly that money has to be divided up.

Polokwane salaries vary widely

The average salary also hides large differences between occupations.

Local salary data shows annual salaries ranging from around R78 000 for an administrative assistant to almost R479 000 for an operations manager.

Other listed salaries include approximately R180 463 for an office administrator, R256 500 for a high school teacher, R302 330 for an educator and R478 895 for an operations manager.

That means two people can live in the same city, face the same food and fuel prices and pay similar electricity tariffs, while having completely different amounts of money left at the end of the month.