Cost of living in Spain

In this video I talk about the cost of living in Spain on a monthly basis. 

Spain is not a cheap country but you can easily make enough money to cover your monthly expenses.  At least that has been my experience over the years. 

I teach English and have been doing so for the last 18 years. I explain more about that in another post . 

But basically, I have never had trouble to pay the rent, bills and other common expenses. 

There is demand for what I do and that means means that you can find work quite easily. 

Which is handy because the Spanish job market is notoriously difficult. Even more so when you are not from Spain. 

However, it is not all a bed of roses. You have to get up early, work hard and put in the hours. 

Although I still find Spain cheap - at least compared to Australia - prices have been creeping up over the last years. 

Combine that with a terrible economic recession that lasted for 10 years, and you have a recipe for disaster. 

Salaries have stagnated and high unemployment has closed business after business and forced many Spaniards to pack their bags a leave. 

The euro was introduced in 2002 and it changed Spain a lot. 

Prices for many things went through the roof on Jan. 1 2002 . This phenomenon was called by the Spanish 'redondeo', which translates to rounding up. 

The peseta, Spain's former currency, departed with an exchange rate of 166.386 pesetas for 1 euro. 

To give you an idea of what prices were like before the euro, here is a rough guide:

One beer 250ml - 150 pesetas

Baguette - 40 pesetas

Cup of coffee - 125 pesetas

Menú del Día - 800 pesetas

When the euro landed these same items cost:

One beer 250ml - 1euro

Baguette - 50 cents

Cup of coffee - 1 euro

Menú del Día - 8 euros

As you can see, prices increased. Not by the annual inflation prices but by up to 50%. Yes, 50%!

And the worst thing was that salaries didn't increase. They were just converted to euros. 

I plane to update my Cost of living in Spain video in the near future. In the meantime. Here is another video I recorded recently on supermarket prices.