We refer cost of living as the amount of money required required to sustain a certain standard of living by providing essential needs such as food, transportation and bills. Depending on where an individual live, the cost of living can differ with more developed areas to require higher cost of living while more secluded areas require less. I live in a rural area so my expenses falls in the lower side. However, my place of work is located in a developed city, so it was inevitable for me to not to spend money for my needs. In this post, I will give you a rough estimate of my expenses and to make it easier to understand, I will set the price in its value in US Dollar.
Transportation Cost
Since I'm the type of person that is not fond on driving for a long time, I use public transport as my means of transportation and will be an easy trip if only not to the pain of traffic that I have to endure on a daily basis since my work place is just within the bus route at the cost of 1.82$ back and forth. Aside from that, there is also the tricycle that I rode from my home to the bus station which cost 1.04$ back and forth. Assuming I work 25 days each month, my transportation cost will be at 71.5$ per month.
Utility and Bills
As the only male in the family, I take on myself to for all of our bills but I will divide the cost to 3, assuming that I am only paying for my portion. On average, we pay 21$ for electricity, 26$ for internet, 10.5$ for water for a combined amount of 57.5$. An 11KG LPG tank worth 20$ can last us for 3 months so that will be an additional 6.7$ per month for the total of 64.2$ and when we divide it by 3, monthly cost will be 21.4$. Aside from that, I also spend another 7$ for mobile data so that I can do other online stuff when I am outside.
Food
When it comes to food, I mostly eat at home and since it was homemade, the cost was also cheaper than eating out but when I am at work, my only option is to eat on restaurants close to my work for my lunch where food can cost between 1-6$ per serving so if we go for the middle ground which is 3$, I have to spend 75$ when eating out for a month. Meanwhile, eating at home can cost me up to 100$ but that includes breakfast, dinner and my food on my day off.
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Healthcare
There is nothing much here since I rarely visit hospital for a checkup so the only expense that I have when goin to the gym and I also recently started to consume whey protein which combined cost me 16$ monthly. Then for hygiene, I think I spend another 5$ since I use different brand of soap and shampoo which is more suitable for a male body.
Summary
| Transportation Cost | 71.5$ |
|---|---|
| Utility and Bills | 28.4$ |
| Food | 175$ |
| Health Care | 21$ |
| Total | 295.9$ |
All in all, my cost of living was roughly 295.9$ which can be high or low depending on where a person live but for me, it is just what I require to somehow live comfortably. Of course there are other things that I did not include such us clothing since I do not really buy clothes on a monthly basis so the price can get lower or higher depending on the circumstances.
Do you feel things would be better if you changed location?
The cost of living for less developed areas will definitely be lower but so is the salary while developed areas will have higher salaries but cost of living will also be more expensive. For that reason, I choose to work far from my home to have better salary so I have a better wiggle room when it comes to my expenses but even that comes at a cost which is my time.
Thank you for reading my post and see you on the next one!
