The average salary and expenses of living in Greece!!
Hello my friends. At this post I would like to discuss with you about the money situation in Greece. How much money earns an average employee, the insurance contributions, annual state benefits and unemployment benefits, how much are the rents, the electricity, the expenses for food, communication, entertainment, the fuels price and generally I want to make you understand how things are financially in my country.
The minimum monthly salary is only 546 euros (net) although very few people work for this sum of money, mainly young people who just started to work. Most of the people's salary is 800-1000 per month, a sum which is very difficult to cover your expenses because everything is very expensive in proportion to the salaries that the average Greek receives. Insurance contributions are about 200 euros for part-time work and 400 euros for full-time. The unemployment benefit is 400 euros per month and some employees with low salaries take a benefit of 500 euros once a year. Further more a housing benefit is given by the government to low paid people which is 70 euros per person monthly. For example a poor household of 4 people takes 280 euro per month for housing.
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The biggest problem in Greece is housing. In order to rent a decent house with 1 bedroom you will pay from 250 to 450, while for a house with two bedrooms from 400-650 euros. For larger houses that multi-member families stay, the prices are from 600 to 1200 euros depending on the rooms, the area and the situation of the house.
For electricity at a small house an average Greek pays every two months from 75 to 200 euros and for bigger houses that families live, they pay from 200 to 500 euros. In the electricity bills are included municipal fees, state television and other charges for the development of the electricity grid. Fortunately for water the bills are lower like 10 to 50 euros every three months. As you can see the housing expenses are very high and Greeks spend at least 50% of their salaries on this.
The house owners pay every year a tax called ENFIA which means undivided property tax and is estimated at about one monthly rent. They also pay 15% of the rents they received once a year. If the owners' income is more than 12.000 euros per year he pays 40% tax for rents. In recent years, due to high taxation, most homeowners rent their homes through the Airbnb platform, which earns them up to 500% more revenue than they used to rent per month. As a result the available houses have greatly diminished and prices of rents have skyrocketed.
For food and essentials, a household of 4 people pay about 200-400 per month at the supermarket, the butcher and the grocery store. For entertainment Greeks spent 8 euro for cinema, 6-8 euro for a drink at a club, 3-4 euro for a coffee at a cafeteria and for bouzoukia which is live music and is very popular way of entertainment in Greece the prices are from 100 to 200 euros for a bottle of alcohol which usually is for 4 persons.
For communication Greeks pay about 20 to 30 euro for mobile telephony and 20-30 euro for home telephony and internet depending on the speed of the internet which starts from 24mbps while the highest speed is 100mbps and costs about 30 euro per month.
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The price of the fuel today, after the devaluation of oil prices during the corona lockdown is about 1.40 for unleaded 95 octane gasoline, 1.65 for 100 octane, 1.10 for diesel, 0.80 for heating oil and for LPG the price is about 0.73 euro.
As you can see the salaries proportional to costs of an average Greek citizen have nothing to do with each other. Not only you can't save any money or go for holidays once in a year but it is very difficult to even cover your expenses.
That was it for today If you want right below at the comments section where are you from and some economic information of your country like how much is an average salary and how much are the expenses like housing and food. I would be very interested to read your comments.
Thanks for reading see you at my next post.