So whats been happening since my last post? The short answer is nothing. Or at least nothing that gets us closer to moving. That doesn't mean that we've stood still. We're still beavering away at learning German, Things are still being packed into boxes for use once we move, and above all, we've been running a few figures to see how much better or worse life could be for us in Vienna. More of that later. First though, Let's look at the German.
Language Confusion.
This summer, as a last hurrah for the summer holiday, we took a trip to Japan. The weather was a wee bit on the warm side and the food and culture just awesome, and all in all we enjoyed what was our last big holiday before moving. The thing is though, Even though we've been to Japan a few times before, Jess discovered a new problem. In the past, Jess spent some time learning Japanese. It's nothing fantastic, but enough to order food, drinks and ask where things are. However, this year she hit a new problem. Because she'd been learning German, parts of that language got mixed up with the Japanese. She found it very confusing. Where as a simple 'please' or 'O kudasai' was usual for Japanese, on more than one occasion she answered with 'Bitte' instead. She said it felt like her brain was in a panic, trying to find the correct response and it latched on to the first word in a foreign language she could find. 'Domo' would become 'Danke' without warning.
Lynda, already fluent in two languages, Welsh and English, didn't struggle to badly, although she occasionally has issues in Vienna with German as her head tends to go from English to Welsh, then french and then to German. The price of learning in Welsh I suppose. Either way, the holiday was enjoyed and to a certain extent the accidental German was useful. Especially as we were flying Lufthansa home.
A little eastern promise.
Living the good life.
As we've touched on in previous posts, Cuts to local government have meant less work for Lynda of late. So money has been in our minds throughout December. Now moving to another country is a scary process, and you'd have to be insane to not have the odd moment of doubt/freakout. Jess had one such moment this week. She was worried about the cost of living out in Vienna. Now there's a fantastic website called www.numbeo.com which happily lists the cost of living for cities all over the world. The figures are added by local people and as such, with enough data added, you can get a fair picture of the cost of living out in Vienna, or indeed any city. Reading the figures was a real eye opener. so we sat down and compared our current outgoings with known figures in Vienna, then we tried a like for like comparison. Wanna see the results? Of Course you do!
These are our average bills over the course of the year. We've only included the household bills as opposed to things like HP agreements because many of those will continue even after we've moved, thus not really changing anything.
Let's start with the easy bit.
RENT
Living in the Welsh valley's is fairly cheap, and the average rent on a three bedroom terrace house is around £450 per month. As it happens a friend has just rented such a property.
By contrast, rents in Vienna are a bit more, and for less. €650 will get you a fairly nice 60sqm 2 zimmer (One bedroom apartment) apartment. This is where it gets interesting though. Included in your €650 will usually be your water rates and what we call in the UK, Council tax.
The council tax is an extra £59.16 per month and water rates are an extra £50 per month. So now our UK home is actually costing £559.16 per month.
Over the Year the figures give us.
item PA. Cost UK. Cost Vienna.
Council tax. £710. In rent
Water. £600. In rent
Rent. £5400. €7800
---------------------------------------------
£6710 €7800
(€8723)
Converting it to Euro's (@ €1.3 at time of writing) and things seem to be fairly good.
Transport
Transport is close to Jess's Heart. Through work, she sees an average of 15000 to 20000 miles a year. We joke that Jess see's more of the car than of our actual home. In fact, ditching the car is one of the main reasons to move.
So where does that put things. Well due to the mileage, Taxes and insurance, We spend £5500 a year for the pleasure of driving! Public transport isn't a solution as in many area's, buses stop at 6pm. Train services aren't much better, running at just one an hour after 7pm. In the Valley's, it really is a car or nothing.
Looking at Vienna though, and things get soon much better. Public transport is a dream, and since your in a city, cars aren't needed at all. So the cost of annual passes for Vienna are just €700 for the two of us. Needless to say, its a huge saving. Even venturing outside the city is cheap, and trains can be taken to Salzburg for example for as little as €38 each way for the two of us. Its a big plus for Vienna then.
Home Comforts.
With any home these days, we have to heat them, power them and of course, get the internet in. So looking at our bills here is a bit of an eye opener.
Starting with Gas and electricity. Well these were never going to be cheap. Our combined bill for the year comes to around £1600! Much of this has to do with the size of house we live in and the account holders reluctance to switch to direct debit. No taking the average in Vienna the bill falls to €1800. Its pretty much like for like with Vienna coming out slightly cheaper. Given we don't know what our actual consumption will be until we're there, the figures are likely to change.
Moving on to TV, Telephone and internet. No home is complete without any of these. Currently we're using Sky to provide all three. on our current packages the cost per month is £100 or £1200 for the year. Ok its on the higher end of things, but amazingly moving to sky broadband actually saved us money over using BT. In Vienna, The current big player is UPC (www.upc.at) Looking at they're pricing structure made our jaws drop. Cutting the cost in half to just €49 a month or just €720 a year was impressive. More so if you look at the internet speeds offered. Sky are currently pushing 20mb down and 1mb up here, basically a technological miracle. In contrast, UPC is offering 125mb down and 12.5mb up. And its not even they're fastest speed. Its a huge saving, and although the channels provided will be predominantly german language, somehow, it doesn't seem to matter (Jess is also a fan of Frauen Tauch on RTL 2)
The only spot where Vienna works our bad for TV's is the tv licence. The UK TV licence is £145.50 per year whilst the Austrian equivalent is somewhere around €300.
Food shopping
Finally there's food shopping. on a quick calculation, our average food shop is around £40 a week. So we allowed for that to be £40 in both the uk and Vienna. So we spend around £2080 a year on groceries. looking for a more accurate gauge of things, we decided to do a direct comparison using Billa and Sainsbury's. So we hunted down a Billa promotional leaflet and set to work. The results were surprising.
Billa shop. Sainsburys
Ham offer €5.99 kilo. £10 kilo
Iglo 6 white fish fillets (400g) €5.49. £4
Bacon €4.99 kilo. £7.33
Crisps 150-175g €1.32. £1 on offer
Soup can 500g offer €1.66. £1.40
Pasta 500g offer €1.06. £1.55
Iglo frozen veg mix offer 300-400g €1.99 £1.75
Can meals 400g €1.32. £1.80
Eggs free range 6 €2.59. £2.15
Cold meats 100g €0.99. £2 pack 100g
€38.39. £32.98 (€42.87)
Its a little unscientific but Billa comes out slightly cheaper.
Totals
So what's the results. Take a look.
Food. £2080. €2080
Transport. £5500(car). €730(public pass)
Gas. £800. €1800 (both)
Electricity. £800. """""""""
Tv, broadband, phone. £1200. €720
Tv license. £145.50. €300
£17,235.50. €13,430
By moving, our annual costs just on these few items drops dramatically, Just shy of saving £7000! Now much of that is down to a lack of car, but still the savings speak for themselves. Vienna will afford us a better quality of life and for a lot less than the equivalent UK lifestyle. Suddenly the moving isn't so scary at all.
