Some Hard Data In Favour Of Choosing Uruguay To Live InOk, you all have heard me often talk about how awesome Uruguay is. Some of you may think that I'm exaggerating, or that either the living can't be as good here, or the quality of life can't be as good.
In fact, it is. And
this article backs me up on it. To briefly summarize, apparently in the index of the world's cheapest countries, Uruguay is the 10th cheapest country to live in on Earth. And the nine that are cheaper are utter shit-holes. Narau? Turkmenistan?
Uruguay, beyond that, has the best index between cost of living and quality of life. To quote the article: "one of Latin America’s First World countries; a country with one of the continent’s highest standards of living, lowest levels of corruption, best infrastructures, and lowest cost of living. Uruguay beats every other country in Latin America in our Cost of Living category... Uruguay has the lowest poverty level in Latin America and the highest life expectancy. The literacy rate is 98%...If you want extensive infrastructure, ease of access, an established expatriate community...you can have all that. And if you’re looking for a hideaway retreat by the sea, you can find that too...and all at a surprisingly reasonable price."
There are several other very good articles about Uruguay (and moving to Uruguay) on that site. You can find a list of them
here. I'll pretty much confirm anecdotally what the articles say. In Montevideo you can buy a very nice small downtown apartment for about $20K, and a penthouse-mansion kind of deal (like my place, 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, living room, den, full kitchen, balcony, seventh floor, jacuzzi) for about $70K-$80K (or beachfront skyrise for about $100-200K). You can buy a fancy house in the suburbs for about $100K, or much much less if you want something more simple (again, down to as little as about $20K).
If you want to rent, you can rent a nice basic downtown apartment for about $200-$250 U.S. a month; and something much fancier for anything from $300 on up to about $500. If you'd rather live outside of Montevideo, you can get incredible deals on land in the countryside, and houses are much cheaper in the smaller towns.
At this point we have pretty decent internet connections, the ADSL here isn't as fast as in the first world, but its more than enough for my own needs (I forget the exact speed the maximum has got now, maybe Jong or Marcos could mention it in the comments). Health care is relatively cheap (I pay $60 a month for one of the best private hospitals/health services in the country, and there are cheaper packages if you want). The weather is moderate, the beaches are wonderful, the people are extremely friendly, the culture is very european.
Anyways, take a look at those articles, if you're trying to figure out where you'd like to live cheap and comfortably in the world.
RPGPundit
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Comments (9)
Typical internet speeds range between 512k and 3mb. Free Wi-Fi is common in most public spaces, and there are 3G networks for mobile phone and computer users.
A city bus ticket costs $0.5 USD. Your average taxi ride goes for $4
USD. In any case, public transportation is heavily developed and
extensive, even at night.
The downtown core bus tickets are even cheaper, only about $.30, and they recently expanded their line.
And yes, the internet in Uruguay has grown by leaps and bounds since I got here in '03. That's one area where there's been really significant progress. I don't know if you remember, Jong, but I used to bitch about it. Things like Wi-Fi have just exploded in this last year.
Meanwhile, I just finished a delivery-dinner from a very good restaurant, a sizeable portion of freshly-made Sorrentinos bolognese for $4.75.
Whenever I hear how cheap it is to live somewhere, I always want to know what the average salary is of that area; can you inform me what it is there, and how its salary-to-cost-of-living compares to that of North America?
Ah, well, there's the rub. The trick is to find a way to manage a yearly income that is suitable for the cost level. You can live here, relatively well, for about $16000 a year. But the average income here isn't close to that. You'd be lucky if a job gets you $10000 a year. So you have to have a job you can telecommute with, or be retiring here, or have savings or some kind of very specialized or professional job that will give you a higher-than-typical income.
@RPGpundit -
Hi. I've been reading your site for sometime, being, too, an RPG & comics fan.
I've been thinking for a while into moving to another,cheaper, country. I have some monthly income due a pair of websites. I am payed in euros...not enough to make a living here, in Spain, but judging on your post, enough to live well there! I even talk the languaje, so the adaptation would be easy.
Damn, now I can't stop thinking about the f*ckin Uruguay. Is there any comic book store down there?
Jose: If you are from Spain, you would find Uruguay EXTREMELY comfortable, since obviously the culture is very Spanish, Montevideo wouldn't be very different for you than a smallish Spanish city.
There are a couple of comic stores here (not great ones, but ok). But aside from that, the last big advantage Montevideo has is that on any given weekend you can go for about $75 to Buenos Aires, which has just about everything. Some people have described Montevideo derisively as a "suburb" of Buenos Aires; but actually its like that in a very good sense: you have easy access to all the luxuries of Buenos Aires, but you don't have to deal with the higher cost of living, the much higher crime rate, the more unstable economy, and the political insanity you encounter in Argentina.
Note also that some people seem to think that Montevideo, with 1.5 million inhabitants, might be a little too "small" for their tastes.
My own experience, having lived in very big cities and smaller ones is that a city after a certain size becomes very irrevant; there's only so much size you can actually manage comfortably anyhow.
Also, I've lived in other cities the same size as Montevideo, and never found any that was as lively as Montevideo is. Possibly because its a national capital, and the only real city in Uruguay, it has a LOT of cultural and night-life, so its not boring at all.
@Nick - There are good options for expats, like teaching foreign languages, as institutes and multinational companies will always prefer native speakers. I have a British friend who is making $1k just by teaching English, and the company I work for usually tries to hire any and all native speakers of foreign languages.
@Jose - Yes, there are some comic book stores in Montevideo, and Buenos Aires is close enough. I also know there are some courier services that bring comics here if you are subscribed.