Hi Everyone! My husband and I are planning to do a temporary move from the USA (New Orleans, La.) to Europe in January 2018. We own a business, which will continue to be run here in the states while we are abroad, we have a family of 6, 4 kids and ourselves. Would a monthly income of $6,000 USD be a comfortable income for Amsterdam for our larger (than average) family?
Here's the plan:
Rent: 2 bedroom apartment in a convenient area within the city
School: either state run international school (15,000 Euro/yr Im not sure what it would break down to monthly as we would come in mid year and that is total for all 3 kids or we will Homeschool)
Travel: We plan to travel often, as often as our budget allows. More often if the kids homeschool instead of traditional school. We would ideally like to allocate 1500.00 USD a month to traveling at least.
Food: We plan to eat at home often when we are in Amsterdam, eat out 1x/week.
*We currently spend $200 USD/week to feed our family of 6 comfortably and $50.00 USD/week on household needs like toilet paper, detergent, soap, toothpaste, etc. and $2,000 USD/mo. for rent $700.00 USD/mo for utilities (Cable/internet, Electricity, Water, Trash Pick Up and Gas) we have vehicle expenses right now that will be eliminated in Europe for instance we pay tolls to commute to work $60/mo and $420 UDS/Mo. in petrol. School is free. Does this sound more or less or about the same as what our family would expect to pay in Amsterdam?
I realize that nobody can say for sure what it would look like for us, but just having a round about idea of what the cost of living for our family might look like or what our quality of life on a $6,000/mo. budget might look like would be VERY helpful. Our entire reason for doing this is to see Europe, experience other cultures, get out of our American bubble and explore so it is very important that we are able to travel atleast 1x/month on our budget (like a 4 day trip for instance Friday-Monday 1x/month to a European destination) Thanks in advance for your time!!
Cost of Living for Family of 6
Hi there CajunMomma and welcome to the Forum.
At the top of the page is our Handy Tools section, from there, select our Expat Guides and you'll get some articles that may help you out in planning your move.
Amsterdam is eye-wateringly expensive, you'll get more for your buck if you live outside the city. To help you plan this, an organisation called Numbeo publish a webpage with some information regarding costs in different places around the world; this link will take you there. Word of warning, they reflect the previous 12-months costs, so are little bit behind the curve.
As for schools; again, international schools are expensive, we sent our 3 kids to the local state schools and they all thrived (and learnt Dutch very quickly). Unless your kids are in the middle of a US based education syllabus where it's important they stick with it for the future, I'd recommend you at least consider the local schools.
Have a read of the guides, then if you have any further specific questions, please come back to us.
Hope this helps.
Cynic
Expat Team
Thank you so much! I'll definitely check all of that out.
I do have a 12 year old and he is the one I know won't be able to integrate into the Dutch schools and the one that an international school would be mandatory. He is currently in grade 7 on the states. Otherwise I have twins going into 3rd grade and a 4 year old not yet in school.
Thanks again for the adivce and the links!
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