People ask this often enough that it is easier to write it down. These are real numbers from the last three months, averaged, in euros. I am a single person with no car, no children, and no debt, which makes me an unrepresentative sample of almost everything.
The fixed costs
- Rent — €520. One bedroom, unfurnished when I took it, on a steep street about fifteen minutes’ walk from the market. The bad window is why it is cheap.
- Utilities — €48. Electricity is low because the summers are mild enough that I have never wanted air conditioning. The winter gas bill is another matter.
- Internet — €26. Fast, and it has gone down twice in two years.
- Phone — €12.
- Health insurance — €61. Private, catastrophic cover only, on top of what I pay in.
The variable ones
- Food — around €280. I cook most nights and eat out three or four times a week, almost always cheaply.
- Coffee — €45. This is a line item because I refuse to pretend it isn’t one.
- Books — wildly inconsistent. Some months nothing; the month a shipment arrives, €120.
- Travel — nothing in these three months. In a travelling month it doubles the total.
The total, and the caveat
Call it €1,050 a month in a quiet month. That number is often quoted as proof that a place is cheap. It is not — it is proof that I invoice in one currency and spend in another, and that I am paying last decade’s rent on a contract a landlord has been trying to end for two years. Both are advantages I did not earn and try not to be smug about.
The thing the number hides: I have no pension contributions beyond the minimum, no employer, and no safety net beyond savings. Cheap months are only cheap if you are also putting something away for the year the work dries up. Some years I have. Some years I have not.