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

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 :)

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.

$1000 USD is £630 GBP. Our family of 4 (2 young children) live on about £1000, ie $1600 - we have a private home with a bedroom each, run a car (necessary for work otherwise it we'd ditch it and use mass transit) and eat a moderately varied diet with meat/fish twice a day. I would say ours is probably unsustainable long term (clothing, building maintenance, increasing costs for the children) but a couple of hundred £GBP a month would be enough to change that (sadly the poverty trap probably means that we'd have to go to both being in full-time paid employment requiring full-time childcare just to get that £200 extra; poll tax mounts, allowances decline).

Anyway, my point was I'm surprised by your figures for India. Cost of living seems a lot higher that I'd expect. But here's the rub - "decent living" has vastly different interpretations. I'd say we live decently despite living well below the official poverty line in our country.

OT: we still pay taxes (but not lots) in part to help people on as much as 8+ times our per-person income to look after their kids.

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.