The Cost of Living

Candy is cheap when you're only planning
for two trick-or-treaters! (although they
stopped at every door inside the house)

We live in one of the least developed countries in the world - and one of the poorest. So we continue to be very surprised by how expensive it is to live here! Our rent is very low. Labor is very inexpensive. But we spend more money on food and transportation here than we did in the US.

In a previous post I talked about all the food preparations. I should have said, food preparations come with privilege. We have a choice in what we eat, so we get to spend a lot of time preparing food! If we only ate beans and rice, it wouldn't take too long to fix our food.

So the locals’ food may not be as expensive as ours because we do have extra options, like milk, eggs, fruits and vegetables. As we buy food here, it amazes me how inexpensive food is in the US. Off the top of my head with easy comparisons, onions, carrots, green peppers, potatoes, flour are all more expensive here, even at their inexpensive season. Imported and canned items (which only we foreigners are interested in) like oatmeal and milk are super expensive.

Also we were pretty shocked at the price of vehicles. Our cars have been very expensive to buy. Our first car was a disaster, so we won't even go there. But the last car we bought had been imported from the US by a previous owner. As we were looking at buying it we found the blue book value. We ended up paying twice as much as it was valued in the US. Of course gasoline is much more expensive here too, but more comparable to Europe.

Water is inexpensive, but not very readily available. Electricity is expensive. Overall, we would be able to live less expensively in the US! With all that being said, we are always astonished at how people are able to live on so little (if you don’t have electricity, running water, a car, or food variety).

--La Maestra