Thread: Cost of Living - especially the North

Thanks to the great answers about the visa questions I had on my last post. As everything, it seems that opnions and experiences vary, but it's an excellent start for me to have a general idea and to further research.

I understand why my thread was moved to the visa section as it basically became a "visa discussion", thereby possibly "hiding" this second part of my inquiry.

The other part of my question was about current costs of living - particularly in the Singaraja area. Of course I understand that it depends very much on a person's personal circumstances. For example, I searched archives and people's personal consumption of electricity varies a great deal, and so on...but it is all useful in that most added that they run AC or so on to account for the particular cost. A lot of the info. I found was quite dated - or am I off track thinking that 1 or 2 or even 3 years is "too dated" for a frame of reference?

My question is basically about the housing and daily living costs that a person would have - taking into account lifestyle and so on. Consider a single person, no kids, living in a moderate/basic villa - no pool or such.

Any reply would be much appreciated and I assume many who are not currently living in Bali but are "thinking" or "dreaming" of it, would also be interested...

Thank you in advance... :)

Thanks for the reply. It is obvious that everyone's lifestyle will affect this topic a lot. Having said that, it is really useful and interesting to get the perspective of various people. I'm hoping at least a few others will post whether living in the North or other places.
Syd :)

Try a search. I believe I've written about this here before. If not, I'll find out where I did write about it.

HI...I have searched and have found various bits and pieces but quite a lot was from some time/years ago, so was wondering if some would post some current costs of living. Thanks... :)

Well as Jimbo noted yesterday the prices of everything are going up. Land prices in Bali are already very high - incredibly high in some places, and the cost of fuel going up is going to add to other areas. We just had a fellow renegotiate the price of moving us from Sumbawa to Bali because of the increase in fuel. But, roughly we are going to live on US$2,000 a month for a family of 6. We own the houses that we live in already and have a relatively new car and more furniture than we could use in a lifetime. So big purchases are over for us.

I noticed Bert's price for elpiji. Ours is significantly higher - perhaps because we cook constantly throughout the day.

Internet is going to cost more than I would like because of the lack of providers (or ones that I can find anyway) up north.

Schooling is always an issue for us and so are things like clothes and medical expenses. But, how you can tell about them? We go years with spending almost nothing on medical expenses and then, bang, somebody has surgery and we have to come up with 40 million.

Hmm...What else?

Thanks for the tidbits everyone. I had a general idea but some clarification/new information is nice. If there are additional thoughts on my topic...great! I will continue to read the forum with interest but leave most of the posting to the members living in Bali and experiencing life there on a daily basis. On the flip-side, if anyone wants to know about Japan/living in Japan, give me a shout as I have lived here for 14 years...