Living Costs

This is a rough idea of living costs to help you decide how much you will be able to live on in this are of Portugal, obviously this is just a rough outline and prices do vary from place to place and as time goes on.

Services

Electricity bills for a normal size house, running lights, TV, entertainment systems plus a washing machine, kettle and a couple of heaters will come to about 30€ per month.

Water, a normal amount including baths and watering flowerbeds (not watering vast amounts of garden) will come to no more than 15€ per month, probably more like 7-10€

Other services, Phone bills are difficult to estimate because we make a lot of phone calls to England and spend a few hours each night on the internet, Normal phone use would probably come to about 50€ per month (that would include a generous amount of internet time) Satellite systems cost 350€ for installation with a basic package for less than 18€ per month (that includes music channels English CNN and a movie channel in English) Broadband internet is 35€ per month for unlimited use and downloads.

Food and Drink

Basic food is very cheap here, prices can go up when you buy imported or pre-prepared foods, a can of Heinz beans is roughly 1.20€ but you can buy 1kg of frozen prawns for less than 7€, meat is also very cheap, a standard sized chicken is about 5€, 1kg of potatoes is about 0.80€ and good wine starts from 1€ per bottle.

Eating out

Every town has a few restaurants that do a lunch-time special, 3 courses plus wine for less than 5€ per person, for dinner the same places cost about 8€ for 3 courses and a few beers. If you want something a bit more special there are pizza parlors (coming to roughly 10€per person with a bottle of wine each!) There are also some nice Chinese restaurants in Coimbra which come to about 15€ per person (though this includes a couple of starters, a main meal, rice and lots to drink)

Getting around

Petrol here is just over 1.30€ per litre, diesel is about 1€ per litre. A train from Porto to Coimbra costs from 11€ per person. Cars are quite expensive here though so make sure you check out the prices before leaving your car behind.

Setting up home

As a general rule with appliances, if it is £100 in England it is 100€ here. Good furniture is very reasonably priced and made to measure fitted kitchens from the local carpintaria are only the cost of a good MFI do it yourself.

Contact us if you have any question about costs of specific items.