Cost of Living: Munich vs. Sydney

Hello Toytown,

Like so many people here it looks like we may be moving to Munich... Yeah!!!

But as so many Brits and US posters have found comparing cost of living seems hard to do. I have looked at various posts and calculators etc on the web but still find it difficult to answer (simply) the questions of "how much do we need to earn to keep our lifestyle".

Can anyone help...(I know this sounds like a high school exam question)...
If in Sydney (Australia) we were earning $100,000 AUD after tax what salary would i need to get in Munich to allow me to, say;
Rent a 2/3 bedroom flat/house in the Sth/sth East suburbs within 30min of city,
Run a small car
Keep both of us in clothes and food
Eat out once a week or fortnight
Ski a bit, travel a bit,

What do i need after tax in Munich,(in Euro's)

Your help would be greatly appreciated and we look forward to joining the forum full time later in the year ... fingers crossed...

Mr&Mrs C

G'day...
(now you are feeling at home... )

Approximate numbers:

2/3 bedroom house/flat in the southern suburbs: €1100-1500 (including power, heating, utilities). Lower end covers an apartment. A house with garden would come closer to €1500 or more...

Small car (e.g. BMW 3, assume 1 year old, purchased on 3-year lease contract, with €3000 downpayment) - €350-450/month inc. insurance (with reasonable insurance record), tax, fuel and service

Weekly domestic (food, household goods) needs - €200-300

Eat-out once a week at typical bar/restaurant, decent 2-3 course meal with drinks: €50 (for 2!). If you are simply drinking reckon on €3-€3.50 a pint. Drinking at home is much cheaper - usually around €1 a pint.

Ski/Travel - well if you have the gear, you can be on the Ski slopes within the hour from Munich, so costs are included above. Further afield (for holidays) depends on where you want to travel to.

Bottom line, two of you can survive on €2000-€2500/month very comfortably, but having more never hurts...

Don't forget - you'll probably need a home-visit to Oz at least once a year, if only to cure your (or your partners) home-sickness-yearnings. That is NOT a cheap trip...

Good luck in your ponderings

YL6

YorkshireLad6 >> Thanks for that - Great info!!! Now i need to push the HR team to make it happen

Mr C

Mr. & Mrs. C - I am available for a "wife swap" exchange programme.

You can have my wife, cars, kids, house etc if I can please spend the next few years hanging around Bondi Beach.

I would say you need more like about 3000 EUR net a month. Which would equate to a salary of about 2500EUR gross a month each. (if only one of you was working then that person would need to perhaps earn over 5000EUR per month)

per month

3 bedroom house 1300
oil, water, electricity 180
telephone 50
food 300
car (inc tax, petrol, service, insurance etc) 200
travel 250 ??
other stuff inc eating out, U-Bahn etc 400 ??
mobile phone 20 ??

total 2700

How much food do you eat in a month Boomtown? There's no way I spend more than 150 for 2 people. If you have a car, what's the extra for travel then?

travel was holidays. I was just guessing and adding the odd trip to Australia in.

150 per month!! Not sure how I spend 300-350 as I don't eat that much. I suppose the cat costs about 50 EUR in sand and food. Dunno what I eat so much of (I'm only a little bloke) - seems easy to spend about 70 EUR a week on a weekly shop for two

Yeah us too We were just doing a budget and past food bills easily come to at least 60 euros a week for food...fruits, veggies, yogurt, bread, cereal, pasta, etc...not even really counting meat in the mix!

Maybe we are shopping at the wrong place?!

could be - unfortunately I work close to Kaufhof so quite often go there. I don't remember the weekly shopping bills being that much cheaper when I shopped at Wal Mart though. That shopping quite often covers the cost of lunches too though if that makes any difference

i used to load up on goodies each week either at miniMal or marktkauf, even Wal-Mart, until one day i happened to pass by lidl to try them out. i went from spending €30 a week to around €20 and i still get my gelatine-free landliebe yoghurt and my bio free-range chicken eggs.

now that i live with my bf, i tell him he has to buy his own cold cuts and cheese because that alone amounts to €10-15 a week (and i rarely eat cold cuts). no joke! a 100 g cambonzola costs easily €3,20. 100 g of black forrest ham costs maybe €2,50. he'll eat a thing of cheese in one setting.

last week at Lidl i bought 2 x 500 g bags of penne, 1 200 ml cup of cream, 200 g grated mozzarella, 250 g butter, and a package of 8 herbs and paid €3,27 at Lidl. i only remember this cause i only had €5 and needed to cook for 4 collegues!

PennyMarkt and Aldi are also really cheap.
Wish we had a Lidl near us, I've heard from a few people that they are great.

We also did a price comparison of a typical shopping list for a "big shop" - Pennymarkt & Aldi both worked out at €40 cheaper than Tengelmann.

blimey thats a big difference. Per week? I will have to look into this

not quite per week - just the basic items we buy, so some of them would be every week and some of them would be once a month.
but it's still quite a difference.

Hey Topsy - I got Aldi, Lidl, Norma and everything else near me but its all crap.

What we need is a good branch of Fortnum and Mason, or a Harrods foodhall.

Joking apart they actually have one in FFT:
http://www1.frankfurt-airport.com/cms/defa...ds_foodhall.htm

I really should run a course on frugal shopping. There's obviously a market.

But you can be sure that whatever you charge for the course, there will always be someone prepared to undercut you

YL6

Well when we move we will have a Pennymarkt across the street...countdown to saving begins

Wow thanks everyone for the info ... I should have been posting all my questions here.

Johnny >> no offense mate but I'll hold off on the wife swap... but as for Bondi you can have it ... to many people no good surf and a real hastle to get to

It's an easy €3000/month for 2 people ...

ps. And that's without cothing!!!

what did I tell ya? spoilt soft southerner

I still can't work out how you manage it. 150 gives you 5 EUR per day which is 2.5 per day per person - and that doesn't include more general stuff like washing powder, diswasher powder/washing up liquid, toilet paper etc. Does that really include all three meals every day?

We pay for the rest through Quiz nights. Same applies to Topsy's budget.

Teehee - winnings on the quiz night are max 2 meals a week (sometimes only one! ) so that doesn't account for it...

Trivia nights!!! oh no don’t make me rely on winning those

I thought people were talking about E3000 as a budget for a working / professional person .. not a just surviving/travelers budget

surviving doesn't really cover


though I guess

having moved from sydney to here a just over 3 years ago i offer you my simple formula for wage comparison

take your before tax wage in AU dollars (WAGE) and your wage in munich should be 0.9 to 1.0 x WAGE Euros.

This is if you wish to maintain your standard of living that you have in australia. The biggest shock will be cost of housing and car costs.

Other costs such as food (with the exception of beef / steak) are similar.

Boomtown, I will spend the next month or so and do another calculation, I might be off. But way closer to my estimate than yours.

@ Boomtown ... sorry - It was a little (lot) touge-in-cheek.

@bucket ... we were lucky enough to get a super quick visit to munich
(1.5 days to get there and 2 days to get back but only 3 days on the ground) and we spend most of our free time noticing prices ... the food stuffs seem pretty cheap but my first estimate was similar ... i was guessing at about 80euro cents for one Aussie dollar

@everyone ... I know i mentioned it before but thanks to everyone for your comments - this is a pretty great forum - its been a lot of help

Mr C

I have a Lidl grocery store pratically right across the street from my apartment and an Aldi Right across from my place of work. Both of these stores are a real bargain and you will save a bundle on your weekly/monthly grocery bills over Tengelman or Edeka or any of the more upscale markets. In the past I noticed that I was flat broke before the end of the month. When I analyzed where all my money was going, I realized that I was spending upwards of 200 or more Euros each month eating out almost every day and going out to bars 3 or 4 times a week. So I now only eat out once a week or every 2 weeks. I buy all my food myself and cook for myself at home. I also started buying beer in bulk at the getrankemarkt and have saved a bundle on my beer costs as well. Needless to say, Munich is expensive. If you go out to eat, go out for drinks and then to a club afterwards, you can easily blow 50 Euros in one night alone.

Nope, 60 euro cents

www.oanda.com

If only I could go to a resturant and then go clubbing and spend such a small amount! I think even a conservative evening of a meal for two and then a club would get me heading towards the €100 mark!

That's true. I was only estimating for one person!

Mr & Mrs C, as Willy mentioned, the exchange rate between the Aussie dollar and the € is closer to €0.60 per Aussie $1. I tend to estimate that the exchange is actually 2 to 1 (i.e. €0.50 per $1), and then, when I check my bank account back in Oz, I find I'm spending a teensy tiny bit less over here than what I've been calculating. Yay. A true illusion, but it brings a smile to my face every time. So I don't have to freak out so much when a bartender tells me that a regular Gin and Tonic (that's right, nothing fancy) costs €6 (eek, that's $12 Aussies!) - mind you, I'm from Adelaide, so expect everything to be a bit cheaper anyway, hahaha...

Thanks Caitlin. I do the same for Exchange rate but there is a differece though between exchange rate and cost of living.

Cost of living is more about how equal your money is. For example a meal in Aus might cost $100 but only 70E ...