Cost Of Living In Spain Still Beats UK!

Is Spain still a cheap place to live in? There’s a great deal of evidence to show that the gap in the cost of living between Spain and UK has narrowed over recent years, yet in the main as long as you don’t move to Spain with the full intention of continuing to only purchase your favourite UK brands with no deviation whatsoever from your current UK shopping basket, you’ll find that with gentle changes towards a more localised shopping basket that living in Spain is still a far less costly option than staying in the UK.

As to exactly how much cheaper Spain will be for you personally, it does depend on your individual spending habits, how willing you are to adapt to the local products, your likes and your dislikes. Generally, the closer your life is to the life of the local population the cheaper it gets. If you’re happy to take a leisurely visit to the local markets for your day to day groceries you’ll comfortably reduce your shopping bill by up to 30%. On the other hand if absolutely you must have all UK name brand products and find yourself being drawn to the expat shops, with all of your favourite UK labeled brands you may well find that any potential savings in the cost of living will be lost in the additional import and shipping costs you’re now paying on UK produce.

Most of us who manage to strike a happy medium with a mix and match our UK favourites and local produce.  Marmite on a slice of local bread works just as well for us…  and we can generally take advantage of a cost of living reduction of around 20%.

Certain services do tend to be a little more costly than UK although prices are moving down steadily, most notably Telecom and Internet services tend to be more costly than in UK, primarily due to Telefonica’s almost monopoly like hold of those markets, this is expected to change over the coming years as de-regulation pushes ahead and a more competitive market emerges.

The expat generation who’ve lived in Spain for some years already can sometimes be heard complaining about the continued rise of living costs in Spain, often the problem tends to be that they’re comparing the prices of Spain today with the prices they remember paying in UK some time back and have not kept up to date with the recent inflationary spate in UK. Like UK one of the greatest influences in Spain’s cost of living recently has been ever increasing fuel costs having impact across all product ranges.

When any of us think about starting a new life in Spain the thought of enjoying candle lit meals on a warm summers evening will never be far behind and on that front we still have good news! Eating out in Spain continues to be a lot less costly than in the UK with the price for a meal for 2 with wine still averaging around £20.00, quite a bit less than most restaurants will charge for similar quality of food and wine in UK and of course the beautiful climate still remains as ever cost free!