How much does a family of three (2 adults and a small child) need to live in Montevideo and as far as you know are there any major cost differences between MVD, and other cities (excl Punta del Este) such as Colonia, Piripolis, and Atlantida?
I read somewhere on this website that the monthly cost of living is around $2,400 to have a comfortable life. However, what does that include? (mortgage or rent, food, bills, car, etc?) For how many people? Can anyone help?
Our cost of living of $2,400 per month is basically what we spend each month on the living expense side, this doesn't include our business, travel, or anything we do that's above and beyond... Just the basics... It's getting ready to go up though, because of our new baby girl Kaylee...
Our cost of living is different from other people's cost of living... because our lifestyle is different. We tend to get all of our veggies, eggs, cheese, bread, honey, pasta... household items like paper towels, cleaners, tp and everything we can at the feria... We buy our beef and chicken from the big grocery stores... We buy our bacon and random items from the little store across the street... And diapers from the farmacia.
We make the majority of our food from scratch... Because it's best that way... We eat out about once a week, because there are some great chefs here in MVD... But for every good one, there are 10 bad ones...
A family of 3... 2 adults and 1 child (21 month)... Which includes; rent, utilities, High Speed Internet, Food, Taxi & Buses (we don't own a car), eating out about once a week, health & ambulance insurance runs us around U$S 2,400 a month... Sometimes more, sometimes less...
I think our cost of living is going to increase about U$S 3-400 per month with Kaylee...
The one ****ty thing that has happened since we arrived in MVD 9+ months ago is... The dollar has dropped from around 23.5 to a buy rate in the 19.00 to 19.50 range... And everything has inflated here in the 7-10% range...
The real test with us was pulling a UYU 2,000 out of an ATM... When it goes from costing you $85 to $104... at the same time, a dozen eggs goes from 27 pesos per dozen to 35 pesos per dozen... It doesn't sound like much, but once you start to add it up it makes you stop reassess things.
Around the elections economist were boasting about the economy set to inflate another 4-6% over 2010... We have friends who have been here for several years, and they said the cost of living here has easily doubled if not tripled from what it was 2-3 years ago...
Living outside of the city you can find cheaper rent... The prices vary as much as snowflakes...
Thanks Brian for a very detailed reply. I have been seeing the numbers between $2,500 and $3,500, but each family has different lifestyle (the info I looked at also includes cost of living data from Argentina, primarily outside of BA area). I noticed that the US$ living expenses in UY and ARG have been going up in the last few years.
-- Edited by Goran on Friday 19th of February 2010 04:55:54 AM
