How much do you pay?

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Let's compare prices. Rent, to start with. My apartment is 60 square meters and the current rent is 525 euro per month, but the state gives me 400 euro so I personally pay 125 which is close to 130 US dollars. I have three rooms, counting the kitchen, total area is some 645 square feet. -- Then gas price is € 1.61 per liter (1/4 gallon) so a gallon costs $6.40.

Local phone calls are free, I only pay a monthly sum worth 9 US dollars. Internet 8 megabytes costs me € 29.90 a month. Added, I pay some 42 dollars a month for communication.

I live in Finland, Scandinavia.

Rent: An average 3 bedroom house or flat (approximately 90m2, or 960 ft sq) in my nearest town is around $400 per week. That's more than €1000 per month, nearly twice as expensive as your apartment. Smaller, cheaper places are very hard to find here.

Gas/petrol is $2.05 per litre, or $8.20 per gallon.

Internet/phone is in a package deal. 30GB plus free local calls cost $75.

I live in New Zealand.

Prices in NZ Dollars. We jokingly call it the NZ Ruble over here, wages are low in comparison with a lot of places in Europe, which makes coming back to visit the UK very expensive.

1 NZ $ = 0.68 € or 0.72 US$



Krabo, it's funny you should post this. I was wondering about prices in Europe a couple of nights ago. You might find this site interesting:
http://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living

Great minds do it together.

I have cheaper rent per area but you have somewhat cheaper gas. And your net counted per megabytes seems cheaper than mine.

An obvious question would be to compare gas consumption, but maybe we will not go that deep. Next step would be potato prices but since you are a producer, the comparison would be biased.

My car is a Soviet Union Volga, made in 1960. I have no idea what it consumes. A lot.

Gas prices here dropped recently by 20c per litre. Public transport is okay in the main few cities, but poor, infrequent or non existent outside those. Most people drive a lot. I had an average commute for someone living rurally (half an hour drive to work each day, one hour return) and I spent around $100 per week on fuel.

Last time I bought potatoes they were $8 for 2.5kg. That's quite high, it used to be around $4.50 but we've had a drought this year.

Know where our potatoes come from? Ukraine.

Ever heard of this black earth area? It is the most fertile area in Europe, Ukraine. One more reason to stand on your toes every time they mention Ukraine in the news. They feed us! If the whole society collapses... I dare not think about it.

A decent (1-bedroom) apartment starts around $750/month here, which will get you about 700 square feet..
Cheaper ones can be found for closer to $500/month, but they're smaller, not as nice, and generally in bad areas.

Gas prices are currently $2.07/gallon

With the cellphone plan I'm on I get unlimited free calls and texting, with 4 GB (shared) data per month. I pay $45 a month.

I live in Indiana, area code 317.

A decent one bedroom where I live (Canada) ranges from $850-$1100. There's a recent flood of $1400-$1800 apartments that seem to sell quickly that makes me wonder where the f*** are they getting the money for that! You can go as low as $600 but they are usually in high crime areas. Gas is about $1.20/litre (I haven't looked today) and I pay $40 a month for my cell phone. It's hard to compare even within Canada because my $40,000 salary is considered excellent here but poor in a province like Alberta.

I live with housemates in a 4-bedroom house and pay $550 for rent.

I pay 300 dollars, not sure what that is in your currency...For a crappy unfinished basement room complete with a leaky window and technically not even legally allowed to be a bedroom. Also included mom and her boyfriend who argue on and off, today my mom was telling him its over and she wants him out tommorrow who knows, maybe they'll go to a movie or maybe they'll keep yelling at each other all day in which case off to somewhere else...whether its hanging out with my brother or just walking around away from that, just not sure what to do...its been a while since I had any left over money to go out and about.

At least there is internet and electricity at least for now...not sure what will happen if my mom throws her boyfriend out right now...

$442 right now for probably the smallest apartment in existence basically just a bedroom, I am moving before the end of April thank god. Going to end up probably paying about at least a $100 more tho, I hoping to get one of these income restricted places that I am on the wait list for but I'm not sure one will open up in time. Hoping to get an actual 1 bedroom instead of studio but anything is a step up at this point. Of course I'm not actually paying for it but whatever, hoping to have some money of my own coming in soon to furnish the place myself. I'm lucky to live in a city with a pretty cheap cost of living.

I have a two-bedroom apt. in a small town. The rent was $950 but the housing authority haggled it down to $925. My rent is subsidized, so I only have to pay 1/3 of my income. If I ever have no income, I think I only have to pay $25 per month.

Interesting data from the US, thank you for replying. What about cars? If you want an average Japanese Toyota Avensis, how much would it be? Here it would be like $900 - $5,000, second hand.

Car license? Here it makes some € 1500 or $1600, which is expensive. If you want a trucker's license, you pay 2240 or $2400 at maximum. (Depending on what you want to haul.)

I live in France.
My rent for 40 square meters is 900€ per month (around 1000$)
My Internet is 31€ per month (around 34$) and that includes unlimited Internet, land telephone line where I can call the entire world for free, and it includes TV with around 300 channels.
My cell phone is 20€ per month (around 22$) and that includes unlimited calls and SMS in 90 countries (including the USA, Japan, Russia, Australia), yes at least for cell phones France is cheap.
Petrol prices are around 1,50€ per liter, that would be around 7,50$ a gallon.
Car insurance and home insurance is 65€ per month (around 75$)
Then food, I spend around 200 to 250€ per month on food.
So yes, France is very expensive, especially rents, and the scary part is that the median salary here (meaning 50% of the people make more and 50% make less) is only 1380€ per month.

And lets not forget taxes, VAT (in the USA it would be sales taxes) is 20%
CSG (a tax that is taken out directly from your paycheck) is 9%
Social taxes (taken out directly from your paycheck) is 13%, meaning 22% taken out directly from any paycheck.
And then there is income taxes, that go from 0% (half the population doesn't pays taxes) up to 50%.
And then there is wealth taxes where you can pay between 0% and up to 1,6% on the value of everything you own (house, car, computer, money in the bank, underwear, toilet paper, if all of that goes above a certain sum, you get busted with wealth taxes, resulting in some people paying 90% of their income in taxes, even up to 105% for some like Jean-Paul Gauthier who moved to London to avoid that).
Oh, and until recently France even had a 75% tax rate.

My girlfriend has Section8 voucher & food stamps & I'm classified as her caretaker/live-in-aid so I don't pay any of the housing or utilities. What I do pay for is my phone bill which is about $87 & the cable & net bill which is about $143. I pay $1.20 for each of my prescriptions which are 7 & I get 3 months worth at a time. I pay for both of us to do laundry which cost about $20 every two weeks. I pay for vitamins & supplements that me & her take but I don't buy them every month so I'm not sure of the cost. I buy some other medicine online but not sure of cost sense I don't buy a month's worth at a time. I pay for my share of the groceries & for both of us to eat out but those aren't fixed expenses so I'm not sure how much I pay sense it varies. I pay for food & treats for my guinea pig but I don't buy those every month so not sure of cost.

I have never even heard of a Toyota Avensis.
I looked it up and it appears to be pretty similar to the Corolla though.
A quick Carmax search finds several (years 2006 - 2014) in the $10,000 - $18,000 price range.

I drive a 1993 Plymouth Grand Voyager. It was bought in cash from a private seller for $3,000.
I get an average of about 18 mpg, but I only do city driving 99% of the time.