The household life‐cycle stage is a significant contributor to the perception of subjective well‐being, however, the effect of household expenditures of life‐cycles on subjective well‐being has not been thoroughly explored. The present study evaluates the level of subjective well‐being across the various life‐cycle stages using a matching method on a Hungarian national sample. This approach is appropriate for studies using observational data because the administration of a true experimental design is usually not feasible for this type of research. The main finding of the paper is that controlling for the expenditure structure significantly modifies the effect of life‐cycle on subjective well‐being, which is varied across life‐cycle stages and shown to be highly dependent on household expenditures. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.