Cost of Living

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Oct 03, 2004 6:44 pm

We are trying to put a budget together for when we relocate to Portugal next year and just trying to get a feel of how much we will need to live on, without being to extravagant.(we dont play golf)
Would really appreciate some indication on:
Cost of running a small 3 bed villa per yr ie
local txes,
average for electric.
Cost of those huge gas bottles.
Telephone line
Water?
AVerage food bill for 2?
House insurance
Running cost of second hand car.(average saloon fairly modern, say £2-3K)
Breakdown cover...do have they ahve equiv of AA in Portugal?
Petrol
Would be really grateful if someone could oblige.
Kind Regards

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Oct 03, 2004 8:12 pm

very hard to quantify such figures..but all i can you is that we go thru about 1000 pounds a month

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sun Oct 03, 2004 9:04 pm

How much do you spend on running costs on the villa though, just very roughly.ie elec, taxes etc. Just really trying to get a feel.

£1000 sounds reasonable overall though
Thanks

iane · Post by **iane** » Sun Oct 03, 2004 10:51 pm

As a second opinion (for what its worth) - I manage to run a family of three on 1000 stg per month (excluding school fees) and I cant say we do badly on it - that is averaged over 18 months and includes quite a few "one off" spends like furniture items (and regrettably both adults smoke even though they should know better).

Boa sorte

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 8:06 am

average electricity is about 75 euros amonth...property taxes impsssible to say ..we pay 345 a year..others more others pay less..we dont have water...some I hear pay about 10 a month (just house use) but if you want a "golf course garden" then i have heard people receiving bills for 1000 euros in a month!!!!

car insurance is 500 a year - house insurance including now expensive earthquake cover abot 450 a year

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 9:36 am

Thanks Iane

Breakdown really useful.

Immediately picked up on an interesting point about water I was not aware of. Is this metered?
No we dont intend to have a mini golf couse, but the garden is over 1000m2

so there may be a patch of grass and loads of plants which I was going to install a sprinkler system.

Well I now know when to plant the grass etc now...in the rainy season so it is well rooted before the dry spell.

Many Thanks
Your response much appreciated

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 12:49 pm

yes water is metered...price is based on cubit metre use..or 1000 litres..the more you use the higher the price....try to keep grass to min..in fact its better to put down plastic grass...also try and cover as much ground as you can with black plastic sheeting then cover in mulch...will cut down on watering a lot as there is no evaporation...pools in summer lose abot a 1 centimetre a day..so they need quite a bit of water.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 2:02 pm

thnks for info

Not sure about plastic grass.

Going to plant a small patch of Bermudan grass. tough as old boots apparently and it perks up quite quickly if neglected. Although I understand you have to plant it root by root. Dont know how true this is as I am not that far advanced, and still need to investigate futher.

Like th idea re the plastic sheeting and mulching. thanks for that.
I think the problem we are going to have is there is not any soil. Just sand. How you buy topsoil thats going to be a challenge.

Perhaps I had better start another thread on gardening here.

Thanks again for all the info, much appreciated. When you are stuck in the UK the smallest challenge seems like climbing Everest.

iane · Post by **iane** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 10:03 pm

Topsoil is fairly easy to get from the larger builders materials merchants (no I dont mean Maxmat) but we got ours from a woodyard called Alvaro Bitoque on the road from Guia to Vale de Parra (near Albufeira) they delivered pretty decent quality stuff ar €22.50 per cubic metre.

Any grass will need a lot of water but I tend to agree that a bit of the real thing is best if you can maintain it OK. I think you are right about the planting but our neighbour used that stuff only as a sort of binder to hold the rest of the "standard" grass together and it seems to work real good.

Our general house costs are about €5 per month for Gas, about €25-28 per month Electricity, Water worked out about £60 for a year (!) and property "rates" the equivalent of £225. (We only have a 3 bed town house and no pool). TV licence I think is about €15 per year - on your monthly electricity bill

My car insurance costs €230.

I tried to work it all out a bit back and I think our running costs are about £6,000 per year less than in the UK

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 10:29 pm

i bought bermuda grass as seed...it needs very high temp to germinate...or you can use kiikku (as in the kenyan tribe) grass which you can take cuttings from and plant...only this grass goes dormant in summer (brown) comes back to life in winter when you can plant out.....we have been planting our lawn for 4 years and still not achieved total coverage

top soil you can buy as detailed above...best thing to do if you are planting any trees is to hire a jcb for say two hours (25 euros per hour) to dig the holes...soil compaction is a real problem in getting trees thru the soil..dig the holes about 1 and half metre deep...backfill with good soil.and plant and water...form an earth ring to retain water and mulch

one person in messines said that there soil has not been touched for 80 years ....and I can believe them

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Tue Oct 05, 2004 10:59 pm

Thanks guys the info is really useful.

Your time and advice is much appreciated.

I dont think we have the problem of compacted soil. I think no soil, only sand is our problem

We will be living on the western algarve and of all the plots we looked at, I can honestely say I dont remember seeing any good old earth, just sand

Like the idea of the digger though, could apply the same principle and perhaps line the holes with some sort of mesh to retain the soil.
kiikku grass yes thats it. You plant it root by root and once it has taken it responds well to mistreatment and not much water.
4 yrs is an awful long time I had not anticipated that long. Still if it does not need much water.......

hmmm

this has been a really productive brain storming session!!
thankyou very much

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Oct 06, 2004 7:53 pm

Mmmm...I just got my bill for July and August for water......Only two of us here..standard pool and a third of and Acre of Grass......water for about one hour three times a week.......The bill was Euro 550..........Beware.....
Plus the pool man 60 a month...plus the gardener 175 a month......Algarve + pool + pool man + gardener = expensive....

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Oct 07, 2004 8:53 am

Thanks for the warning!!

All these tips are really useful as it so is easy to be wise in hindsight. Never gave water a thought really until it was raised on one of the postings.

You have just stengthend my hubbys argument not to have a pool

I wonder why they do not have guttering on the villas so you can have water butts to conserve water?
Yes, I can understand on a smart and swish golf complex, but not on country properties, it would have been nice to have as at least an option.

Still if it does not rain for months on end, I suppose the water you could conserve would be minimal in the longer term.

I think I am going to have a look around the area and see what gows naturally. Seems to be huge cacti, bourganvillia(cant spell that one)
perhaps better start a new thread for people interested in gardening.

Thanks again

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Oct 07, 2004 7:59 pm

yes we have guttering...diverted into the cisterna...but iit lasts no time im afraid......pool is ok ..keep it small however.. just remember to plant what is natural...even with sand you will find down below a bit the soil is hard...hire a jcb and back fill with good soil....suggest carob trees...

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Sat Oct 16, 2004 3:24 pm

Well most things have been covered here but I can add one small thing.
Breakdown cover is automatically included in all car insurance in Portugal so you dont need to buy it seperately.