O agregado familiar reduziu a despesa variável.

In Portugal, agregado familiar is a fairly formal or administrative way to say household or family unit. It usually means the group of people who live together and are treated as one unit for things like taxes, benefits, housing, or budgeting.

It is more official-sounding than everyday família.

Because agregado familiar is grammatically singular.

The main noun is agregado, and the whole expression is treated as one unit, so the verb must also be singular:

• O agregado familiar reduziu...

This is similar to English using a singular collective noun, such as the household reduced...

Reduziu is the pretérito perfeito simples, which is the normal past tense for a completed action.

Here it means that the reduction happened as a finished event in the past:

• reduziu = reduced

Depending on context, English might translate it as reduced or sometimes has reduced, but the Portuguese form itself is a simple completed past.

Compare:

• reduzia = was reducing / used to reduce
• tinha reduzido = had reduced
• tem reduzido = has been reducing / has reduced repeatedly

Because reduzir normally takes a direct object.

So in Portuguese you say:

• reduzir algo = to reduce something

That is why the sentence has:

• reduziu a despesa variável

and not a structure with de.

Portuguese uses definite articles much more often than English.

So a sentence that sounds natural in Portuguese may include articles where English would sometimes leave them out. In this sentence:

• O agregado familiar = the household
• a despesa variável = the variable expense / variable expenditure

Using the articles makes the sentence sound complete and normal in Portuguese.

The adjective must agree with the noun it describes in gender and number.

In agregado familiar

• agregado is masculine singular
• familiar matches it

In despesa variável

• despesa is feminine singular
• variável matches it

A useful point: adjectives like familiar and variável often have the same form in masculine and feminine singular. So the agreement is there, even though the spelling does not change.

You can see the number change more clearly in the plural:

• agregados familiares
• despesas variáveis

Because that is the most normal position for many descriptive adjectives in Portuguese.

So:

• agregado familiar
• despesa variável

are both standard noun + adjective combinations.

Portuguese can sometimes put adjectives before the noun, but that often changes the tone or meaning. In this sentence, the post-noun position is the neutral and natural choice.

Yes, plural would also be possible, but the meaning changes slightly.

Singular: a despesa variável

This often refers to variable expenditure as a category or the total amount of variable spending.

Plural: as despesas variáveis

This would emphasize individual variable expenses or several separate types of expense.

So the singular here sounds a bit more like budgeting, accounting, or economics language.

They are similar, but not always identical.

despesa

• often more formal
• common in finance, accounting, administration, and reports
• usually corresponds well to expense or expenditure

gasto

• often more common in everyday language
• can mean spending, expense, or amount spent

So this sentence sounds a little more formal because it uses despesa.

Yes, but it sounds more formal, bureaucratic, or economic than conversational.

You might see it in:

• a report
• a financial document
• a government text
• a statistics article

In everyday speech, people might say something like:

• A família gastou menos.
• A família reduziu os gastos variáveis.
• Lá em casa reduzimos as despesas variáveis.

So the original sentence is natural, but it is not especially casual.

Often yes, but not always with exactly the same nuance.

• família is the ordinary everyday word for family
• agregado familiar is more technical and refers to the household as a unit

So:

• A família reduziu a despesa variável.

is understandable and natural, but it sounds less administrative and a bit more personal.

In European Portuguese, reduziu is pronounced approximately like:

• rruh-du-ZIW

A more accurate IPA transcription is:

• /ʁɨðuˈziw/

A few useful pronunciation points:

• the r at the beginning is the Portuguese guttural r
• the unstressed e is very reduced in European Portuguese
• the ending -iu is pronounced like a single glide, roughly ziw

This vowel reduction is one reason European Portuguese can sound more compressed than Brazilian Portuguese.