Cost of living

[awayinamerica]

Do you find that the cost of living in America is a lot higher than most other places? I think it is, but wages are also much higher. So it is good if you have a job here, but bad if you are just coming over with savings that you earned somewhere else. What do you think?

[GINGER BASTOS]

Listen, Im A American Living In Portugal And I Am Thinkin About Moving Back And Quikly. You Will Never Get What America Gives You Nowhere Else. You Have So Many Oppurtunitys. Be Thankful

[choctawmicmac]

You can GET a job. That's the difference. In some places in the country they still don't check all that thoroughly if you are legal or not, depending on the job. (That applies more to heavy-labour "mens' work" than to things women can do, though...although domestic work - you may not have to show papers as much but they do require references for that kind of work...)

The difference can boil down to whether you can support yourself or whether you rot away on the streets of the large cities and die of some communicable disease that you wouldn't have gotten even in the "County" hospital in a large city in the States.

If you come here, or come BACK, with nothing but savings and no job lined up (how you could actually do that from abroad is the subject of another discussion entirely) you might actually SURVIVE; whereas if you go abroad with "some" savings and a job lined up, or at least you thought you'd lined it up from afar, you could wind up not getting the job and winding up on the streets when your savings run out. And the Embassy won't help you at all because you have no friends with phones or living relatives who will answer their phone when they find out it's the Embassy calling on behalf of YOU, so the Embassy just leave you stranded there on the streets in a country that doesn't want to hire you because you were not the colour they were expecting based on the telephone interview...and because they won't sponsor you for the work permit you would've needed, no place else will hire you either....

So anyway, in the States, more so than in Canada, there is still a chance you will survive and not get raped or killed on the streets of the large cities (unless you just WANT to sleep outside!)

It's called SURVIVAL. In most other countries, no job=(the opposite of survival). Not to sound morbid, but....!

[synthia]

It depends on where you start. If you are from Guatemala, America is horrendously expensive. If you are coming from Europe, especially the UK or Ireland, it's pretty cheap.

I'm in Malaysia right now, and when I buy used paperbacks they are usually ones that were printed in the UK. The printed price on a paperback looks like a US price, let's say $7.99. But there is a pound symbol in front of the number. So that is GBP 7.99, or US$16.14. For a regular ordinary police procedural paperback. I've been told that going to a movie in London costs GBP 11.00, or $22.

If you come from the UK, you will find the US is cheaper, even in the big cities.

[JohnSoCal]

The cost of living in the US varies greatly from one area to another mainly due to the cost of housing. It is considerably cheaper to live in the US than in Canada.

[Penguins_Pet_Pumpkin]

True that, John. I have friend who's originally from Manchester, but had lived in Texas for some years and was amazed at how inexpensive everything was compared to what she was used to in England.

Now she's relocated to my old neighbourhood, the Pacific Northwest, and she's griping that it's very expensive there. I told her to come back to England for a visit. She'll appreciate my old area much more after the visit.

[Travel Dude]

The MOST COSTLY in the USA has to be New York.I have lived in several major cities throughout the US and NY is for the super rich.I read online on USA Today that the rentals are going up 15% to 25% within the next several years (due to the crummy housing market in NY)....I guess many people loose their homes so there is a strong demand on rent.

I am glad I left NY.

[Penguins_Pet_Pumpkin]

Yeah, I think Manhattan is supposed to be outrageously priced. But I've heard people compare it to cost of living in England, so we get back to subjective again. lol