Costs to run a household vary a great deal, influenced by factors such as the local cost of rent, energy and food, as well as other costs. The cross border ecommerce platform Ubuy has put together new research that ranks the affordability of running a household in different countries, comparing costs to the average monthly salary.
Ubuy created a list of the 5 that are the most expensive, as well as ranking those that are most affordable. Ubuy gave each country a rating out of 100 for various costs, and used these scores to rank the countries. Each country was also ranked for its average monthly salary. Ubuy created an average of both rankings in order to build its list of the most expensive and most affordable countries.
|
Country |
Utilities Score |
Rent Price Score |
Property Price Score |
Furniture Score |
Food Price Score |
Total Score |
Costs Rank |
Salary Rank |
Overall Ranking |
|
Portugal |
66 |
58 |
51 |
50 |
64 |
58 |
19 |
26 |
22.5 |
|
Canada |
74 |
36 |
31 |
18 |
37 |
39 |
32 |
11 |
21.5 |
|
Austria |
37 |
59 |
43 |
34 |
55 |
46 |
28 |
14 |
21 |
|
Greece |
70 |
85 |
56 |
61 |
58 |
66 |
14 |
28 |
21 |
|
Ireland |
41 |
13 |
49 |
34 |
47 |
37 |
33 |
7 |
20 |
|
Hungary |
89 |
86 |
42 |
75 |
77 |
74 |
8 |
32 |
20 |
The country that emerged as being the least affordable place to run a household was Portugal. It has the eleventh most expensive rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in a city centre area, at €937.34 a month. But costs like this are not balanced by the monthly salary, which is €1,057.60 on average, ranking 27th from the top.
The next country is Canada, which has the eighth highest cost to rent a 1 bedroom city centre flat at €1,254.22.
Austria and Greece both ranked in joint third place as the least affordable country. Austria is the third most expensive country to buy a 1 bedroom flat in a city centre area, at €6,431.28 per square metre.
Despite having the sixth lowest rent for a 1 bedroom city centre apartment at €407.35, Greece has the eighth lowest salary at €967.26 a month on average.
Ireland and Hungary landed in joint fourth place. Ireland has the fourth highest monthly cost for rent for a 1 bedroom city centre apartment at €1,600.80.
In contrast, the most affordable country was Lithuania, which had the most favourable ranking thanks to low costs such as the fourth lowest monthly cost for internet at €13.88.
Then, in joint second place were a number of different countries. Bulgaria, Estonia and Poland all had lower costs but did not have salaries that ranked in the top ten. In contrast the US and UK were also in second place, despite higher costs, thanks to some of the highest salaries in the ranking.
Faizan Khan at Ubuy comments:
“It was interesting to compare the ways that the cost of running a household varies across these different countries – and you can see just how much the monthly salary in each country makes a difference. For instance, while the United Kingdom ranked near the bottom in terms of costs, having the sixth highest average monthly salary at €3,298.48 brought it up near the top of our chart of the most affordable countries.”