My living expenses should be 30-50% less in Portugal

in LeoFinance4 years ago (edited)

I've spent a bit more than I thought getting to Portugal, especially since I had to pay for two new wheels following a flat tyre (and driving for way too long on it), and having left a week earlier than expected meaning I'm paying for an extra few nights in an Air BnB (with my house to be rented sitting empty, what a waste, grrr).

However, these temporary very short-term 'transitional expenditures' are nothing compared to what I'll be saving on my monthly cost of living expenditures once I'm settled, which should be by the end of next week at the latest, one way or another.

I've worked out two budgets for the next few months, a luxury budget and budget budget:

  • Luxury budget = £1250 a month
  • Budget budget = £850 a month
    Portugal luxury and Budget Budgets .png

Even the luxury budget is about 30% cheaper than my usual, pre-covid monthly expenditure in the UK, which averaged out at around £1700. Although more recently my monthly expenditure has been lower because of not-going-out if I had stayed in the UK that would have meant picking up my part-time teaching job again, and that just adds on more money: I spend more in order to work, and because of the stress!

The luxury and budget Portugal budgets


The luxury version is mainly luxurious because it allows me to rent a flat to myself, for which I've allowed 300 EU. The cheapest rents in the area are for 200, but by the time you go up to 300, there's plenty of choice, and that's just looking on the first return from a relevant Google search.

In the budget option I'll just be skanking on someone's land in my tent, but I've included £100 a month for the occasional AirBnB (laundry!) and to maybe chuck my freebie-land lord a little something.

I've had to allow for £300 to 'sub' my house being rented in the UK - I'm actually getting ever so slightly more in rent than my mortgage repayments, but by the time you add on management fees (fully managed), landlord's insurance, and tax (which actually won't be very much for the first year at least once I factor in all the costs of prepping the place for rent), and a little buffer just in case, i think £300 is a decent amount to ensure no nasty financial surprises. It's probably overkill. Actually maybe in my budget budget I should reduce this to £250, that'd probably be enough!

The cost of the car is something that's just fixed - £100 a month should cover insurance, MOT, breakdown, fuel.

Food is also fixed, £150 should easily do it, again I could probably go lower in my budget option, but I always think of food as something I wont' compromise on.

Health insurance - I can get away with cheap as chips travel insurance for3 months, because I can pass-off as travelling temporarily (I have an address in the UK!), but after that I'd have to switch to nomad's insurance which is pricey for an almost 50 year old. This is just medical we're talking about - I have thought about NOT getting it, but no, this is the one thing that could potentially drain ALL of my wealth in one month's worth of medical bills, it's just not worth the risk.

As to the mobile, I'm keeping my SMARTY contract, £10 a month and I'll also go for a £30 month unlimited data option for Portugal. I'd probably rather do without food than data TBH.

If I rent a flat then I guess there's bills, if I'm camping then I've got solar but I'll probably need a little gas for cooking. Water will cost in a flat, but again should be free, but more hassle if camping out.

Coffee and Beer I've just included more in the luxury options - I bought a bottle of what looks like fairy decent white wine ealier for under 2 Euros, so even with the budget option I can be well on my to alcoholism if I so choose.

As to savings, In the luxury option £100 goes straight into my share-fund, with the budget option I can just discount this by drawing down every few months.

Budget or Luxury?


I must say I'm feeling 'luxury' for 6 months over winter - maybe even just stump up £1800 in advance (I think my tenants are paying me 6 months up front) and then I've got a nice base from which to develop my land, somewhere to shower and do laundry, and wake up toasty, and then transition fully to off-grid in Spring once it's warming up.

It might take me a while to find my land as well of course.

There's also the fact that I'm looking at my primary earnings from my REVISE blog and they're sitting at £1000 for last month, and that's just one income source, so the money is looking GOOD!

And that luxury budget itself is transitional, for a few months only, once I get established on my land, that's another £300 off my budge straight away, more once I get my food system going proper come summer, hopefully.

It's interesting to note that at the rental prices in this area, I could even sack-off the whole off-grid thing altogether and just live in a regular apartment and have a much better quality of life than in the UK, but I'm painfully aware that my online income is so dependent on Google that I'd rather work that cost of living down much further so I'm less dependent on that particular company.

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More importantly - hows your fungus?....
https://peakd.com/hive-122683/@lucylin/pjmfkwvh

Good evening. I like such publications, where the question of economy is taken seriously and deliberately. Great post. I wish you a good job in a new place and find a super income. Thank you.

Portugal is pretty cheap for sure!

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Thanks for keeping us abreast of your thought process. Portugal is far off for me given the need to travel from the US to get there, and my country being barred from entry without a 6 month residency visa, but I will definitely see you there one of these days.

Ahh, sounds like patience is your best virtue ATM, hope to see you here in 2021 maybe!?

I'd probably rather do without food than data TBH.

That has been my experience as well! Especially since I need data to generate income!
If you wind up on land with limited cellular service investing in a good cellular repeater is well worth it and will make things much easier.

Cheers!

I think this could well be the biggest challenge. TBH I'm thinking that a work around might be to get a few people to chip in on a one bed flat rental with WIFI, just for the purposes of having WIFI, an actual address, a washing machine, an occasional escape.

Not to live in it, just for the services.

I could just make a trip a couple of times a week to connect and download/ upload, and do some laundry!

Although the repeater idea sounds ineresting.

That is a really good approach and would offer you a nice 'home base' to work out of!

Hi Carl,

Where about are you in Portugal? I'm around 50 km to the east from Coimbra.

I can literally live off a couple of 100 a month here ( let's say 300 euros ) but I don't have a car. Hit me up in Discord, if you've got any questions to save even more money or just to get to know more about living in Portugal.

Cheers,

Vincent

thats almost in the centre of the country :-)

how is the living there? Portugal is a potential for us as well for next year. I used to live on and off in the Algarve for a few years

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how is the living there?

Not sure how I can answer that briefly. It's pretty good overall, mainly because 'the thing' that overtakes the media and stops the world from turning in 2020 is hardly noticable here.

I have only visited the Algarve but wouldn't see myself living there, way too touristic for me ;<)

I'm in Covhila ATM, I'll be looking to purchase somewhere around Penamacor, but I haven't made any firm decisions yet.

So it's not that far away.

I might well be in touch about money saving tips, I know I could do a lot better, I've really done my worst case scenario in this post!

Ah, that is indeed pretty close. And yeah, I'm a master of frugality and it helps to have an amazing twin sister and brother-in-law around ;<)

Feel free to reach out to me on Discord.

really enjoying the posts. Would love to travel to Portugal for a bit. looking foward to seeing how things go.

Hey cheers!

What part of the world are you from?

I've only been here for a few days, but I can already recommend it!

from lancashire uk. I have a T5 camper, would love to make the plunge also. Just fear of the unknown i guess and the pandemic i suppose. Just driving on the wrong side of the road scares me lol. I love to surf so portugal and south france just would be a dream.

How interesting - I was going to do a camper conversion, I was thinking of a Renault Traffic, but I lost so much income due to Covid, that was basically my van fund gone, so I just took the car.

You should totally do it. A van would be easier than a car, and driving on the right is really no different to driving on the left, you just have to be a bit more alert in towns when turning corners, and remember to look left, drive right at roundabouts!

Most of the time you've got traffic to follow which makes it easier!

And the pandemic seems to have less of a grip the further south you come, even if there's more people actually exposed to it!

Britain is just a very fearful country, I'm glad to be out of there!

I do work online which helped with being able to move!

If you've got a 500K stake in Hive you can't be short of cash to facilitate a move yourself though?!?

All my money comes from crypto now so i could probably make the move. 2017 was a wild year for me, i was able to quit working but the bear market has pretty much robbed me of 90 percent of what i had. Im grateful for everything though. Im single so it would be a ballsy thing to pack up and take off which is why im really interested to see how things go for you. Im sure i will do it once things are not so tight financially anymore (hopefully). Hope it goes well for you and ill keep reading and supporting.

Wow - all in on Crypto, that's bold, hopefully you got in on LEO? That's turning out to be a nice little earner!

We've all lost masses compared to 2017! I remember break times at work when crypto was going insane and me and the only other guy who was into it (the database manager funnily enough!) kept comparing our ever-increasing-in-value portfolios - and I've still got my bags of alts.

Steem/ Hive was by far the best thing I bought into - I just wish I'd had the guts to follow my instincts and sell thousands at that pump and then buy back now. I kind of went too cautious on that, oh well!

Not sure how comfortable I'd be with crypto being my only income source, I haven't drawn down on any of mine yet, but I'm going to start next month, just selling a 100 LEO and 100 Hive a month, need a discrete way to get it out though.

You should follow @eco-alex and @orlev too, they're both very nearby, never met them, but that's something for next week hopefully. They've both got land around here and are in various states of progress of moving towards off-grid.

I haven't even started yet TBH, need to kick that into gear!

I guess watching and then moving over once there's a clear model to follow makes a lot of sense too. There is a lot of off-gridding going on around here I think, I'm sure once I start exploring properly it's going to get pretty intense socially.

Thanks for the support, I'm kind of surprised I've never interacted with you before TBH, Hive is full of surprises!

Yeah im wanting to put a solar panel on my van and then it will be pretty much kitted out for life off grid. A toilet and shower is pretty much the only problem really but i like the size of the LWB T5 its not too big or too small for me on my own.

Yeah 2017 was insane for me, i had a lot of trading experience which paid off for me and i begun to sell everything at 20k but the shear amount of money i had made me feel like the police were going to bust my door down or something. I got Tinnitus simultaneously as well and to be quite honest i felt like my life was over at that point and didn't give a dam about the money. Life has a funny way of keeping you in check when you think your larger than life.

I got into LEO abit late but im swapping all my curated hive for it from now on and bought some Leo miners which is paying off nicely at the moment. I feel like LEO might go up dramatically and pave the way for more communities. Hive has so much potential, it lacks just developers and users but then the entire space is still a mere seedling really.

have you decided on your final destination yet or do you plan to drive around PT for a while till you find the region you like?

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I'm 90% certain I'm going to buy in Castelo Branco, but not exactly sure where.

I really need to buy a map and learn about fire zones and local authority friendliness to off grid living first!

I'd go for the budget version with "wiggle room" - in a new situation, especially in a new country, you never know what might happen.

Yes fair point!

Although I am fairly flush ATM, and I'm only looking at 6 months to over winter!

Thats a huge chunk of change, if you continue to compound it over the months and then use some of that to invest, that gap alone could seriously make life a lot easier going forward.

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Yes I think so, I'm sure I can get these cost of living expenses down further too!

Now that’s encouraging I am trying it too here as far as possible and then investing that to try and expand my balance sheet so I have the funds to make the move! It’s harder for me as my currency doesn’t go as far as a GBP does but I’m not giving up that easily

I'm all about luxury and would go for that option. You'll be a bit more relaxed coming in to spring with a fresher frame of mind and get the land you need out there. Seems like you have other income streams from your blog here anyway so should put you in good stead!

You have this all down to a science. When you say your money is dependent on Google, do you mean via traffic from their search engine? Way back I was doing some SEO work for myself and it is a love hate with Google for that. Love it when I have it working and the free traffic is flowing in, but hate it when they change something and suddenly what was working is now killing you. By the way congrats on making it out!