English expat in Denmark: Cost of living

I am surrounded by shopping receipts. Because of this I have just found out that we were accidentally not charged for the 500g bag of basmati rice that we bought (well, more like 'took' as it turns out) from Netto yesterday. Feel a bit bad but hey, these things happen. All in the name of research. Which brings me to ...

... the cost of living. I touched upon it briefly here. Such a common discussion amongst expats here in Copenhagen. It's been documented more than once that Denmark is one of, if not the, most expensive country in the EU*. I can vouch for this. A half litre of Tuborg, for example, in the cafe bar round the corner from me in Vesterbro costs 40kr (approx £4.50) - which actually isn't that bad by Copenhagen standards. However the actual cost of living, not including what I class as luxuries such as going out to drink/eat, is working out to be cheaper for us than it was living in London. I have lost count of the number of people who have told me that London is far cheaper than Copenhagen so, I've been doing what I do best and playing with numbers.Take a look below.

 

DKK converted to £ on www.oanda.com 

 

The above table displays outgoings based on how much the above would cost on monthly. Note that utilities are paid quarterly and food weekly; I have therefore worked out what the figures would be on a monthly basis. I have also tried to be fair in comparing food shopping: fellow Brit expats will know that it would not be fair to compare Waitrose to Netto, so I've compared similar supermarkets (Waitrose v. Føtex for example). 

What a difference. And maybe surprising? The reason my transport is so little is because I walk everywhere. A three zone klippekort lasts me for two months, maybe even longer. London Underground, on the other hand, I totally relied on. We are lucky enough to be able to survive on one salary in our apartment here. That's something we never could have done in London without really struggling. Where am I going with this, you ask? Well, the point of this blog post is to hopefully show you that living in Copenhagen doesn't have to be that bad. It's not all wallet draining. At least from a British expat point of view, I admit.

Oh, and I forgot: add another £88 onto the London total.

Completely forgot about council tax.


*Source: http://www.ttgnordic.com/news/item/3175-sweden-and-denmark-most-expensive-eu-countries


Have I been fair in my calculations? Have I missed anything vital? If you think anything could be presented differently please leave a comment below. It's such a common subject amongst expats and open to debate.

'Cheaper' doesn't mean 'cheap'

Just a little vent here. A moan, if you will.

Why oh WHY does hardly anyone believe me when I say that my expenses have actually gone dramatically down since moving from London to Copenhagen? I'll be writing a full blog post on the cost of living in the next installment of my "English Expat: a series" but this has been irritating me recently. I've had a few conversations with both fellow expats and Danes in response to me saying how much cheaper it is in Copenhagen in comparison to London, said conversations go along the lines of "Copenhagen isn't cheap". No, it isn't. I never professed that it was. For you see, the words "cheap" and "cheaper", although born to the same lexical family, are different.

For our flat in East London we paid just over £1,000 (c. €1,160/ 8,650kr) for a small one-bed flat (c. 55m2) where we could hardly breathe. To get to the bedside cabinet next to the bed, one had to crawl onto the bed and ninja roll down. Or take a run up and ninja jump over the mattress. Our kitchen was in the same living area as the living room and was a strip of lino with all your necessities. Our bathroom was ... cosy. But, you know, you could see the Olympic Park - surely that was the reason as to why I paid so much? Not really. Our landlord was actually not allowed to raise the rent that much for the Olympics plus I did some serious haggling in order to keep it as low as possible.

Anyway, onto Copenhagen. For a large flat (c. 65m2) with large kitchen slash eating area, decent sized living room with two sofas and, ok, a just about bigger bathroom, we are paying just over half of that. Admittedly we do have a good deal with reasonable landlords but having completed quick and dirty research by comparing properties on rightmove.co.uk (London) to boligportal.dk (Copenhagen), one cannot say that either city is cheap, however one can say that Copenhagen is cheaper, at least in this regard.

Of course, having just quickly looked at the first website I saw for Berlin properties and I wanted to weep into my leverpostej.

Sigh.



English Expat in Denmark: Cost Of Living will be published on Thursday 21st February 2013.