What to believe in Bucharest

1200 net should suffice largely for anything, including cabs, restaurants, the booze you like, discos, rent, trips in the countryside.

Oh, really...multumesc. Perhaps you can explain something to me;
I have read at some romanian pages that the average income for Romanians (psychologist, teachers and other jobs like that) pay around 5-600 euros a month. And then I read in here today, that a big international company like Genpact seems to pay 750 (dont know if it is net or gross) euros.
So, how can Romanians survive on salaries like that?
And, is there really a difference what companys pay Romanian people and foreigners?

Hi kjesper,

I can quite easily see why there should be such confusion. I know expats here would couldn't even begin to imagine living in Bucharest on less than 2000 Euro per month. That's largely because they either want the same or better lifestyle as they had back home. If you want to drink the same drinks, eat the same dishes, buy the same brands as in your country of origin (i.e. where such brands are more commonplace and therefore cheaper - economies of scale) then life here could be expensive. If you adapt to a new way of life and embrace local customs and habits, then you'll find life pretty cheap.

Regarding salaries, it's very hard to say exactly what someone earns. In the west, a particular job tends to have a particular salary attached to it, plus or minus a little to account for experience and location. In Romania two people can do exactly the same job, one for 400 Euro a month, another for 1500 Euro a month - it depends on many factors. The employment culture is different in that the job candidate, as the person offering the service, is expected to set his own price, which the employer will either accept or not.

There can be a difference between what a Romanian gets and what a foreigner gets, it depends. If the foreigner brings skills to an organisation that are not easy to find here, then of course he or she can demand a higher salary - not because he's foreigner, but because of the experience/knowledge/training he has. Similarly, some international companies will import workers from their mother country, and those workers expect to retain their home-country salary, salaries which are much more than their Romanian contempories are getting. If your Romanian is good enough to apply for a job in your local Mega Image, I can bet you'll be offered the same salary as anyone else.

Corporate jobs tend to pay very well here, especially at international firms and when compared to the cost of living. Romanian friends of mine with high-level managerial positions live in far better conditions here in Bucharest than people I know at a similar level back in the UK. Middle managers earn less here, but the money goes further (well, depending of course on how wise they are with it). Semi- and unskilled workers are much better off in the west were higher minimum salaries and benefits swing things in their favour.

Finally, don't forget that Romanian salaries, in most cases, are quoted net, so when someone says here they get 800 Euro pm, that's their take home. Furthermore, a lot of people earn 'unclaimed extras'. I have numerous doctor friends who work in the state system and although their salaies on paper are pitifully small, most of them are very well off.

As for 1200 Euro net, as calling card says, that's enough to live very comfortably, even in Bucharest. Of course, it depends on your lifestyle. If you only shop in high-end stores, eat lunch and dinner in 'fitze' restaurants, buy yourself a fancy car, buy lots of out-of-season imported groceries or expat goods, date high-maintainence ladies, party at pretentious clubs, live in an expensive aimed-at-rich-expats flat...then 1200 Euro will last you about three days.

Good luck

I dont know how to say MANY in Romanian yet, so I will just say MANY MULTUMESC :-)
Very useful info; both about the explanation of how the work culture is there o the fact that salary contrary to Western Europe is mentioned NET and not gross. I am aware that ones lifestyle predicts your everyday life and living costs, but when I go to a different country I want to try and adapt; that means getting to know the customs, eating Romanian food, cooking myself, shopping at the markets etc. No fancy ladies, cars or clubs for me, thank you. An occasional pint perhaps in one of the English pubs...
But thank you very much for the useful and comprehensive info you provided. Really helped a lot.

No worries, you're welcome.

If you fancy an English pint, there's a pub in the old town, 'Beer O'clock' I think it's called, and it has a range of Fullers and Green King bottled beers. They were about 14 RON for a bottle, which is expensive by Romanian standards but still a bit cheaper than a pint back in the UK.

Sounds good; cheers....any suggestion to a real Romanian cozy restaurant (traditional food like sarmala etc)

Home cooked Romanian food is the best, especially when it comes to stuff like sarmale or ciorbe.

Failing that, though, there are loads of Romanian restaurants around town. The ones that tourists/expats usually go to are places like Caru Cu Bere (nice decor, worth seeing, but food is expensive and not very good), Hanu' Berarilor (same chain as Caru Cu Bere), or La Mama (another chain, sort of McRomanianfood).

The better places, IMO, are the smaller restaurants - better in the sense that they depend on local residents and are less busy, so the food tends to be better and freshly cooked, rather than reheated. They trade on repeat custom and good VFM rather than branding. They are also more reasonably priced than the central ones. I'm sure if you look around your neighbourhood you'll find one or two - see which one is always full, it's always a good sign.

I ate here once and quite liked it:
Babadochia

And this place is alright too (or was last time I was there):
Casa Iancului

I've been here a couple of times and it was good:
Papa La Soni

Pofta buna

Thanks a lot; very useful info...
One last thing that I have trouble in understanding.
I have read, that many Romanians earn somewhere between 4-800 euros a month (suppose it is net). My friend is in office and earns 400.
And I wonder, how on earth people can live on 400 euros. If the rent is 400 all the salary goes just to rent...what about utilities, food, saving, travel, clothes etc...

Many Romanians are quite asset rich. I'll take a good friend of mine as an example. He also has an office job and a salary of about 450 Euro per month. His grandparents had a house back in their hometown (he's now in Bucharest). His parents lived in Bucharest. After the revolution people could buy their properties for virtually nothing and this is what almost everyone did. So his parents own a flat in Buch, his g-parents own a family home back in their hometown. Properties were also really cheap ten years ago and as most people parents had no mortgages or rent to pay, a lot of people bought additional flats for their kids and so they bought another small flat to give to him once he finished uni/got married/whatever and rented it out in the meantime.

Now his g-parents have passed away, his folks have retired back to the family home in the provinces, he and his wife live in their parents old flat here in Buch. His wife gets a similar salary and they get another 300 Euro renting out his old flat. That gives them a family income of over 1000 Euro, with no rent or mortgage to pay - their standard of living is pretty good.

Basically, if someone has a low income, they will probably either live without paying rent/mortgages or live at home with their parents or with siblings and share resources. Other people I know with low incomes do this. There are one or two people I know who have salaries of the 400-500 range and do live alone, but the rent a studio flat (garsoniere) in one of the less popular zones for about 150 Euro or flat share with a friend or colleague in a one-bedroom place (with one person using the living room as a bedroom).

and suddenly it all makes sense...:-) cheers!

And good standard of living is done by just 1000 euros? (food, savings, holiday once a year, clothes, kids...)

That takes us back to your original post, I suppose. It depends what a person needs in order to consider their standard of living as 'good'.

I would indeed say living in Bucharest is more expensive than living in sunny Malaga/Spain where it's full of British citizans. Unless you go to living in the countryside of Romania. As a UK person told to me: It's okay living in Romania, but he would not want to be poor in Romania!

I think you'll be fine with what you are making. Things can be expensive or cheap depending on the season (for veggies and fruit) and you should be careful regarding the utilities bill. I live in a "house" and I 'share' the utilities with families living on the three other floors. Let's just say the bill went up from 200 Lei in summer to 950 lei in Winter.

Party wise... I like it. Tickets to concerts are way cheaper than Western Europe. I paid 70 lei to see The Bolshoi Ballet perform. Tickets for the 3 day- Tuborg Fest (with Guns n Roses, Evanescence, etc) start at 180 lei.

Cafes are usually okay but some rather simple looking restaurants end up being way too expensive (compared to cooking at home)

Hope this helps.

I dont earn very much at all, i get 1500 Lei basic a month, plus overtime, i have myself, my wife and soon to be three children to take care of, but we always get by, we never go without anything and as Maykal suggested in one of his posts, its entirely possible to live well here in Bucharest if you are sensible!

We are lucky, we own our own house (casa) we pay no rent, it was my wifes parents house, and they now live in the countryside at there parents house. We own our own car, its not a fancy car, indeed its an old slightly tired Ford Escort, but again we dont have to pay much for it, just fuel and running expenses, also with the excellant public transport we have in Bucharest, we dont actually use the car much at all.

And for us it helps to have my parents in law out in the countryside, they provide us with many goodies, lots of dairy products, eggs, milk, cheese, meat too, chicken, lamb, pork, and unfortunatly for me green things too, this all helps us cut our shopping costs down, and enables us just to take just the essentials from Billa.

4-600 euro, is enough to live here in Bucharest, it just depends on how you want to live, we prefer not to go to resaurants and cafes, its much better to enjoy a bbq in the garden here with friends and family, and a nice cold beer or two.

Just to give you an indication on what I spend (family of 3):

- 350 RON per week on groceries (including meat,vegetables, drinks,cleaning products,personal hygene products)

- 100 RON Internet 120Mbps/telephone/130 channels/DVR+HD

- 130 RON Vodafone mobile phone bill (1500 min VDF,250 min out of the network, 1 GB 3G, 100 SMS VDF)

- 130 RON Orange mobile phone (1500 min, 250, 1GB, 500 sms etc)

- Gas: 1) summertime: 30-50 RON/month 2) wintertime 250-300 RON/month (mostly 3-4 months out of the year)

- Service costs (appartment): 0 RON

- Electricity & Water & Sewage tax: 200 RON/month (average)

- Property tax (3 room ap. 100 m2): 150 RON/year

- mortgage: 2800 RON per month

- nanny: 1000 RON (40 hours per week, including simple daily cleaning and cooking) soon to be replaced by kindergarden 900 RON (long program)

- cleaning lady: 300 RON (4 days per month x 8-9 hours, including ironing)

- Gas for car: 400 RON/month

- Car tax: 60 RON/year

- Car maintainance: 500 RON/year

- other expenses (clothing/going out): differs (one month 300 RON the other month 700 RON or more)

- Credit Card (my partner's): 300 RON/month (interest free payment plan over 14 months)


Total income of our family is around 2750-3000 EURO/month.

cheers mark; finally a specific overview....

I mentioned service costs at zero due to the fact that even though I live in an appartment,I only have one direct neighbour using the same stairway. Therefore we dont have a "Block Assocation" applying service/maintainence/heating/water costs (aka "intretinere") neither do we have blockheating. I pay my water,gas,electricity based on the actual consumption.

Most old communist blocks which have block heating are having high winter bills and for a 100 m2 appartment a friend of mine paid up to 700-800 RON "intretinere" costs during Dec-March. Of course a 50 m2 appartment will incur lower monthly costs. The summer months for intretinere costs are of course much lower (as the heating is off). If you have blockheating, you don't have a separate gas bill for heating,the exception being when the property has it's own heating installation as then you pay for what you consume + a small percentage of the blockheating for the corridors. You also you pay an x amount for the use of the elevator, except if you live on the groundfloor. But it's not a lot.

Also many block administrations can charge a renovation-cost, which is put aside for major works to be done on the whole building in the near future (e.g. roof, paining the stairways, etc).

There's much to explain about "intretinere" if you rent or own an appartment, as there are various situations which differ from place to place.

These intretinere costs do not cover electricity (which you then pay seperately).

Below a short example list of average intretinere costs for appartments durin the winter time. The red column mentions the amount per month for the 2011-2012 winter, assuming that each appartment has watermeters as well -to meassure consumption-, without an individual central heating system (aka these prices are based on blockheating).



My last advice when wanting to rent an appartment: below in each building there is always a full list on what each owner/tennant needs to pay for intretinere. It also mentions the amount of people staying at a particular address (therefore increasing the intretinere costs per appartment). Just have a good look at them to establish what is the average costs per month, and do look VERY well what the overall debt is of all the combined owners.

Reason being is that if the owners of the appartments in a particular block havent paid their bills for a long time, debts incur with penalties and there have been numerous stories of appartment blocks where they just shut down the heating/water. As it is blockheating,the ones who paid their bills also had to suffer.

If you have blockheating, you don't have a separate gas bill for heating,the exception being when the property has it's own heating installation as then you pay for what you consume + a small percentage of the blockheating for the corridors.

Another exception is a block that has blockheating but each radiator is fitted with a little metre which measures the temp of the radiator and thereby its usage. The metre is read by a third-party company who then make a calculation of how much you used the heating in your flat. The total heating bill for the block is then divided up according to these readings (plus a fixed amount again for the calculation and heating of communal areas). You receive a separate bill for this detailing the calculation although the sum is added automatically to your block bill (intretinere).

As a guide, my heating bill for this winter (2011-2012) was, on average, 71 RON per month (about 15 Euro).

My averages for the last 12 months (2 people in a 2-room flat):

Intretinere (not including the heating): 200 RON/month.
Phone/internet: 110 RON/month
Mobile phone: 30 RON/month
Electricity: 80 RON/month (I used the AC a lot in summer)
Council tax: 10 RON/month (paid yearly)
Travelcard: 50 RON/month
Groceries: 400 RON/month (I don't use the supermarkets much: takes too long, produce is poor quality, prices are two or three times more)
Rent/mortgage: 0 RON/month (paid off mortgage a couple of years ago)
Going out: As Mar_W says, depends what you like doing. I don't do a lot of pubbing and clubbing so it tends to just be a couple of meals out in town per month and the rest I save up for travel, luxury items, DIY or savings (been saving hard to buy a second home recently).

Overall, the bills/groceries come to about 1000 RON/month (220 Euro). I probably spend another 100 Euro on nights out. The rest gets saved up.