Ask HN: Cost of living across the world (Ramen PPP Index for hackers)

Typical monthly wage for a programmer / designer: $300 to $500

Monthly Expenses: $860

  Apartment Rent + Utilities: $500
  Internet (2 Mbps): $50
  Food: $100
  Public Transport (Taxi+Bus+Metro): $100 (Higher if you mostly use taxi, and $300/mo for car)
  Coffee at a coffee shop: $60 ($2*30)
  Entertainment: $50

General expenses in USD (not necessarily mine because I'm detailing how to live cheaply here which is not my goal)

Rent: Two bedroom unfurnished house as low as $80 / month or upgrade to western standard furnished studio for approximately $230 / month.

Internet: $21 - $35 for 1 - 2 MBPS connection.

Electricity: Big variation on costs depending on your lifestyle. My bill is around $30 / month.

Food: Also hugely varies but it's pretty easy to live here on a bill of around $100 / month for one and more people gets cheaper per person.

And most importantly...

One bottle of San Miguel Pilsen (beer!) - approx $1 / bottle at the bar.

$500 to $1000 in rent, plus equivalent amount food and entertainment for a non-stressful lifestyle. You can pare down costs to perhaps $800/month by getting a room in a shared apartment and eating inexpensively. Add on $2500 annual expenses for visa, entry-exit expenses, etc.

Hiring programmers costs between $500 and $1500 per month depending on skills and experience. Without a legitimate Chinese business it can be hard to attract talent since you will not be able to pay social benefits, etc. Starting a legitimate business costs upwards of $30,000 in a one-time incorporation expense and pushes hiring costs to about $1500 per month per staffer.

typ. exp:

  ~600$ per each family member for food/clothes/utilities (no fancy stuff)
  700-1200$ renting 1 room apt.
  20$ internet (10MBit+ is common)

  60-100$ meal for 2 at *reasonably* priced restaurant
  15$ movie ticket
  10-20$ taxi ride
  1$ ramen noodles (called "Doshirak" here)
  2.5$ BigMac

One bedroom rent in Sydney: $1200/month (EDIT: increased the rent based on comments)

Food: $400

Wages:$60K-120K/year (gross)

Internet:$50/month

Phone: $50/month

Bus ticket: $3.20

McDonalds Big Mac small meal: $6.45

--

By the way, I am looking to hire a Ruby on Rails developer for USD600/month in India / Philippines / Indonesia to help me develop my ideas.

Please contact me if interested aymeric{at}wiselabs.net

I assume that this is for an entry-level position.

Monthly salary : ~ US$650-$950 (Average US$800).

EPF deduction: 11% Room Rent: US$150. Food: US$250 (3 ramen sized meals) Car Installment: US$100 (Perodua Viva) Petrol: US$50

These are the costs for survival mode living.

Optional Movie ticket: US$3-5 Internet (1Mbps): US$35 Mobile (300 mins): US$10 Alcohol: Forget it.

Expenses:

Rent: £200-£500pm for a flat/small house. Lower end can be in somewhat interesting areas though.

Bills: Utilities usually £40ish. Council tax £80-120 pm.

Internet/Phone: Bundled from £10-£20pm. Pay a little bit more and you can throw in cable too.

Bus: £10 unlimited weekly travel Train: Depends on how far you go, obv but city to outer suburbs never more than £4-5 return. Adv returns to London from £22. Trams: Free in city with train ticket. £2-3 to outlying areas.

Cinema: £7-10 a pop. Or £13pm for unlimited.

Noodles: 7p cheapo packs. 80p Pot Noodles (a "Welsh" delicacy)

Beer: Scandalous £3+ pint. Go outside town for decent pubs anyway and you'll be a bit closer to £2. Find a Holts or Sam Smiths and it's nearer £1.

Eating out: Mid-market £30ish. Posher £60-100. (for two). McDonalds/KFC around £3-4.

Wages:

I think typical would be roughly £1500-£2000pm, so I hear. I'm being horribly underpaid :)

I wrote way too much for a place no one would visit :)

Expenses:

  * rent - small 1 bedroom in CBD - $1000 p/m

  * food - cheap 1 person - $300 p/m

  * electricity - $80 p/m

  * internet - 10Gb p/m - $30 p/m

  * supermarket ramen - $1.1 per meal

  * big mac meal - $6.8 per meal

  * coffee long black - $2.6 per cup

Income:

  * graduate salary - $3150 p/m gross

  * median developer salary - $4800 p/m gross

Typical monthly wage for a programmer / designer: $600 to $1000. (This varies a lot, so there is no actual upper/lower limit)

My expenses:

  Apartment Rent + Utilities: $80
  Internet (1 Mbps): $23
  Food: $135
  Transport (Bike): $20
  Books: $75

Also keep in mind that I am not married. I expect the expenses to shoot out of the ceiling after marriage. :)

EDIT: Less than 6 months ago I was trying to get a startup up and running and I was living off my savings. The lifestyle then was entirely different and the expenses were around one half of those given above.

- 2009 study http://www.ubs.com/1/ShowMedia/wealthmanagement/wealth_manag...

- 2010 update http://www.ubs.com/2/e/medlib/wmr/pdf/Preise_Loehne_2010_e.p...

- web page http://www.ubs.com/1/e/wealthmanagement/wealth_management_re...

I've lived in India for the last few years working as a web designer/programmer. I worked for people in the US - a few clients and would make about 15K per year USD. This was more than enough to live and do as I pleased in India as well as travel around the area - it's really a great life style.

The price of living in India varies based on location - I once rented a house from a family in the Himalayas for 30 dollars per month - add on the fact that I cooked most of my own food and probably only spent $100 max per month. I've also taken $100 hotel rooms in really neat little boutique type hotels in places like Ahmedabad and Delhi - so as you can see anything is possible. Generally, though, you can hire a nice room in a guest house for 10 dollars a day (max) and eat for $10 as well - this would be living pretty nice. If you can handle it you could get by for much less - not as little as you used to - but $10 a day would be very easy $5 is possible but you might not like what it entails.

But again - it just depends upon where you are. India is very nice but living in New Delhi or Bangalore would be akin to insanity. Living in the Himalayas or on the beaches in the south or the any other small town is an amazing experience - and cheap. Also, there is a HUGE traveler scene in India so you are never alone.

I've worked some for people in Asia and generally would hire myself out at $500 per month. It's not really worth it - you'd be much more satisfied in doing volunteer work for a project you have a passion for - and then maintaining a bit of freelance work back home that pays you real money. This is what I've done and it works quite well. You'd be amazed that even half way around the world you can still get jobs - and the fact that you spend about 4 or 5 times less than you earn means the downtime between jobs is just like a long vacation.

If you are thinking about it - just go and do it. I know that it's the same in the rest of asia/se asia and south america: everything is cheaper - 3 times less, 5 times less, or even half the cost which is how i've found mexico. But these cheaper prices make the work you get stretch that much further.

Once you get the people you work for used to the idea that you are not in the same country it is really not a big deal at all anymore - it's the same as you are in another town. One thing which really helps is to just call them randomly and check in or clarify something which is hard to explain via email - and skype makes this trivial and cheap.

Let me know if you have specific questions and I can elaborate.

- Montreal: 300$

- University town, Germany: 250$, 180$ for the dorms

- University town, Turkey: 120$

- India, monastery guest house: 60$

- China, Kunming (mid-sized city): 80$

In my experience, the other expenses are roughly proportional to the rent, except for manual-labor, which is even cheaper. I get a haircut for 1$ in China.

I live fairly comfortably at $2,000 a month. The ramen profitable number for a single self-employed twentysomething is in the neighborhood of $1,500.

Some costs:

- A month's rent for a capacious apartment (by Japanese standards): $450 (This would be $700 inside of Nagoya, and you'd get a third the size of the apartment.)

- Utilities: Gym ($100), phone + Internet + cell phone + gas + electricity + water + sewage = ~$300

- Health insurance: $300 / mo, assuming your income is in the "typical Japanese twenty-something" bracket

- Pension: $200 / mo, ditto

- Food: A cheap meal at a restaurant runs $8. For Western food (pizza, Italian, etc), budget $15. My best friends manage to make $300 a month work for a monthly food budget -- I don't cook at all and spend closer to $700.

- A bowl of ramen: $1 if you make it yourself, $3 from a convenience store, $7 at a restaurant.

- Sundries: Prices are similar to expensive metropolitan areas in the US.

- Typical monthly wage for a programmer: if you work at a certain Japanese megacorp in Nagoya, you will earn $100 per year of age per month. All engineering salaries within five hundred miles of Nagoya are pegged to this number. Individual circumstances may vary (particularly for foreigners).

Numbeo has lots of crowdsourced data. They ask contributors for city data, so you can even compare between cities in your target country.

Hyderabad, India is at the top of their Consumer Price plus Rent Index for 2010.

- rent/mortgage 500 (comes to about the same)

- food 120

- mandatory health insurance 100

- internet 20M 75 (yep, that's splurging)

- cheap car 250 (owning a car is expensive here)

- energy bill 200

- various other insurances 100

- phone 50

- single room flat $400-500 + expenses

- internet 6Mbps $20

- public transport $50

- restaurant downtown $10-30, sushi $30-40, kebab $3-4, mcdonald $4

- beer in a club/restaurant $3-4, 0.5 can of heineken $1.6, marlboro $4

wages are really flexible (to call it nicely), if you have clients you can make more on freelancing than even some good programmers on 9to5, a lot of good programmers are paid below average they should get but it really depends on the company. noob $700-800, avg/well-skilled $1100-2500, specialist $3000+. take it only as approx.

for the moment of writing this $1=2.8pln

Expenses

- Rent: small 300sqf one bedroom unfurnished apartment + utilities, in average area - $900/month

- Internet: $60 for 5mbps

- Cell phone: $150 for 300 minutes

- Bus or Metro ticket: $1.50

- Petrol: $5.20/gallon

- Movie ticket: $12

- Pizza, takeaway: $15

- Pizza, in restaurant: $25

- BigMac: $6

- Eating out, mid-market: $50 for 2 people

- Bread, whole: $3/pound

- Oranges: $1/pound

- Expresso: $1.50

- Beer, in bar: $4

- Haircut, men: $15

- Apple Mac mini, entry model: $1600 (high taxes but also high margin by Apple Brazil)

- Foreign books: amazon price x 2

Wages

- Programmers: $30k beginner, $50k mid-level, $70-$100k senior

- Webdesigner: $30-$60k

- Customer support rep: $15k

Monthly expenses - S$1600

  * Rent - S$900 (this will get you a room in a nice high-rise condominium with swimming pool/gym but you've to share the flat with 2 other flatmates).

  * Broadband - S$70

  * Mobile + Unlimited 3G plan - S$40-50

  * Food - S$400-500 (this will get you good tasty meals at hawker food stalls; not swanky restaurant dinners w/ alcohol).

  * Transportation - S$100-150 for public transport (forget about owning a car in Singapore, it's too expensive and unnecessary).

Misc facts about SG

* Taxes are lower compared to other developed nations.

* Singapore is generally pro-immigration although they're trying to slow it down now.

* English-speaking country so makes things easier compared to Taiwan/HK/etc.

USD 1 = SGD 1.30 (as of today)

- Room on a flat: $150-$200 - Food: $120

As someone who used to live in (very expensive for non-basic necessities, cheap for basic necessities) São Paulo and moved to (reasonably cheaper for non-basic necessities, way more expensive for rent and food) Boston, when I went to Prague it felt cheap.

I found 4-star hotels in Prague 1 for the price of not-that-great hostels in London, €18/day. I'd go to a bar or a club and pay €1.50 for a pint of beer. I could get a day pass at the tram/bus for Czk 100 (about €4). I heard that a 2-bedroom downtown goes for about €600-700. Internet would be €50/month.

If someone can give more accurate prices or tell me how it's going for Budapest, I can guarantee you one karma point. :)

  Apartment Rent + Utilities: $400-$600
  Internet (1 Mbps): $25
  Food: $250
  Phone: $50
  Transport (Bike): $20


  A decent meal: $8-$30

Rent, 1 room- 250 Utilities- 60

Gas- 2.50/gal

Groceries- 150-200/month (depending on ramen to steak ratio)

Entry Level Programming: $3500/month