Information on cost of living

bthorburn wrote:

I will be moving to Dusseldorf and after ALL my expenses have been paid I'll be left with 1000 euros in my hand; will this be enough to live on for one month to buy food for me and my wife and pay for public transport?

We do not eat out a restaurants, drink alcohol or smoke.

Unless you eat caviar and lobster every day 1000 Euros is more than enough. There is a lot of competition with supermarket chains in Germany and the price of food is lower than in many other western European countries.

IWangermann wrote:

Hi,

should be enough. The  monthly rate for public transport varies, depending on the zone in Düsseldorf  (how big the area you want to use) you want it for.

Here is a list: http://www.vrr.de/de/tickets/vielfahrer … index.html
I suggest you go to an info-point and ask them to explain it to you.

The tickets are really useful, if you want to get around. Besides maybe a bicycle. We have great bike tracks here, all over the city.


Best,
Iris

I would add that while public transportation is quite good in most larger communities in Germany it is not so cheap. It really pays to get to know all of the options if one is using it on a regular basis. In Stuttgart anyway there is a selection of year or monthly tickets, day tickets, 4 ride tickets, group tickets, short ride tickets etc. What is optimal varies by one’s usage.

puhmuckel wrote:

Most restaurants in Germany no longer cook the food.  The buy big buckets of potaoes or salads and remade schnitzel and so on and just heat it up.  Cheap fare for high prices and unless you want to pay 25 euros for a schnitzel , it is better to eat at home.

This is certainly true for cheap, bad and mass restaurants, but there are still plenty of good and reasonably priced restaurants that put pride into making all food themselves.
Of the four restaurants with lunchtime set menues (all below €8 per meal) that I frequent near my workplace, three prepare everything themselves and the fourth in their own central kitchen, which is 5km away and supplies their several branches.

puhmuckel wrote:

Also I would be careful with the supermarkets in Germany and not shop there primarily and eat Billigfleisch or meat that is super cheap and horrible quality as are many of the other items in those stores.  They are to be used for Beer , paper products  and other staples.   Shopping the the Butcher and local markets for fresh produce is the way to go. Buying veggies that come from Spain and Portugal is not advisable because of the the poor working conditions there.   You have enough to cook at home using good ingredients.

Most restaurants in Germany no longer cook the food.  The buy big buckets of potaoes or salads and remade schnitzel and so on and just heat it up.  Cheap fare for high prices and unless you want to pay 25 euros for a schnitzel , it is better to eat at home.

Supermarkets sell the food, they don't produce it. Much meat is produced in inhumane ways and the slaughtering and butchering of the animals is done by low wage workers. Thus it can be sold cheaply. One can get better quality meat by paying a lot more for it if it is organic. But one should simple reconsider if they eat meat at all. Even free range animals go through cruelty.  But in the end, 99% of the food you will get at a cheap chain supermarkets like Aldi, Penny, Plus, Lidl or Netto is EXACTLY the same as at the more expensive stores – you just pay less. The difference in canned goods between the brand names and no name is nothing but the label; they are usually even produced in the same facilities. Thus I judge Puhmuckels advice here to be possibly well intended but basically wrong. Ideas like buying organic and/or regional or fairtrade are also possible at the cheaper places these days, one only need be a conscientious shopper.

There is some truth to Puhmuckles’s comments about restaurants often using premade food. The problem is that it is not necessarily correlated to the price of a restaurant. Even pricey eateries do this. It more has to do with the kind of food; things like soups often coming out of a can or package, French fries frozen out of a bag… There are lots of cheap Chinese or Thai places where you get good, quick, freshly cooked meals for well under 10 Euros. There are also many Turkish places selling cheap but freshly made food. Casual eateries in Germany are usually called an Imbiss rather than a restaurant. It was different a few decades back but these days one can easily eat a cheap good meal other than just going to a hamburger fast food place.

puhmuckel wrote:

Eating meat that comes from mass production being sold at Retailers will not be raised humanely and the Wurst just does not taste the same.  Back in the old days , we had the real thing.  Now , I will only shop at the Metzger where I am certain where we know where the meat comes from (organic) and get the taste we expect. 

IF you were not there "before" the turn , you will not notice the difference.    I usually just buy Wurst or Schweinemett and things like Fleichsalat.   

However, it is fact that most people will not go through the trouble and expense and just go to the discounter due to cost and convince .   That is the sad future.

My opinion , Tom states is not wrong but gathered from many reputable sources.
If you buy produce from other EU counties , the working conditions there are horrible and I cannot endorse buying those items.

I therefore choose an alternative to the supermarkets of going to the market and buying seasonal vegetables and fruits there ...from the Bauer.

One can discuss the farming situation but in the context of claiming one should not shop at the discount supermarkets it is irrelevant and wrong. What percentage of one’s shopping is meat? For me, it is zero. And while there are special outdoor markets and schemes to get veggies direct from the farmers this is not a practical solution for most people’s normal shopping. Formerly I was happy to see shops opening offering exclusively organic products but the downside is that they were too expensive. I am will to pay more for organic but not 2 to 3 times as much. Fortunately, even discount chains have seen the demand for organics as a market opportunity. They now offer organic products in addition – always costing more but often within reason. I don’t know the statistics but the majority of organic products will; if not already, eventually be sold through normal supermarkets – just for the fact that that is where most people shop.

According to EU rules, supermarkets must label the country of origin for all food. Thus one can also avoid buying from countries where one might suspect problems - or limit one's self to domestic products. Many supermarkets even show if products are regional - as demand has made such offerings a marketing advantage.

My personal strategy since I still can’t afford to buy just organic is to look for specials and buy organic (and if possible) fairtrade: coffee, sugar, bananas, milk and eggs. Especially with the first 3, since they come exclusively from warm, usually 3rd world countries the risk of non-organic products being sprayed with dangerous chemicals is higher and the wages of the workers inhumanely low. Fair-trade concepts lessen the exploitation although they actually fall short of eliminating it.

A note to Puhmuckel about language. Even when you post in English you tend to throw in occasional German words. For us German speakers it is not a problem but it would be considerate to the non-German speaking readers here to use English only. If you don’t know the terms then better you look them up once than expecting all of the readers to do so.