Is the Cost of Living in the Netherlands Affordable? | Housing, Transport, Utilities and more

hi everyone welcome back to my channel in this video I'm going to be breaking down the cost of living in the Netherlands whether you're planning to move to the Netherlands soon or you're just curious about what or how much it costs to live here I'm going to be breaking that down in this video [Music] and Rising energy costs the cost of living in the Netherlands today and when I made this video two years ago is totally different the prices have changed significantly things have become more expensive and I'm going to try to break down how much you could expect to pay for things as at the time of this video recording so let's get into it let's start with housing the cost of renting or buying a house in the Netherlands can differ significantly based on the size of the apartments the location and the type of property right now the Netherlands is currently having a housing crisis meaning that there is shortage of available apartments and then increase in prices essentially two years ago if you were to pay a thousand two hundred per month for an apartment that would be costing you a little over a thousand three two thousand four hundred in larger cities like Amsterdam Rotterdam the Hague you can expect to pay higher rent than what you pay in the rural areas like Maastricht and other places that are not city-like so keep that in mind when you're looking for somewhere to live in the average monthly rent for a 1 bedroom apartment in Amsterdam would cost you around 8 200 Euros and this is on an average cost and also depends on where the apartment is located in Amsterdam to get a real sense of what the current housing market looks like I recommend you check out this website called funda.nl there you can see a listing of different apartments in different location and how much they cost per month next let's talk about Transportation the Netherlands have a wonderful public transportation system that includes buses trams Metro trains and bikes I mentioned bikes because in the Netherlands the bikes here are enormous like the Netherlands is known as one of the biggest bike cities in the world and it's also part of the transportation system used here you probably find more bikes than humans in this country but yeah that's by the way how much does it cost to use public transportation in the Netherlands they have a system called ovg card and with the OV chip cards you can either buy an anonymous card or have you registered with your name how it works is if you're trying to get into any public transportation system here in the Netherlands you have to check in and check out using your ov2 card and this is how you get billed for the transportation systems that you use for example a single use ticket for a Metro could cost you around one to three Euros well if you're going outside of Amsterdam could cost you around 15 to 20 euros depending on the location that you're going to but you use this OV chip card to pay for the transportation system personally for myself because I work from home and I don't end up going out a lot with my OV cheat cards at the end of the month I pay an average of 100 euros per month some months is higher if I'm out a lot and some months it's lower than 100 euros what about utilities the cost of Utilities in the Netherlands can range between 200 Euros and 300 euros and this can include your internet electricity gas lights if you have any of that heating as well so depending on your situation you could get a proper apartments that has an all-inclusive deal where you don't have to bother about this it's all in your rent or you pay that separately for me I got a deal where um my apartment comes with the bills all inclusive and I only get to pay for heating separately right so for hitting per month I pay around 120 euros while for energy electricity internet I don't get to pay because that's also been added to my rent but I can tell you on an average that I pay around 200 to 300 Euros for heating electricity and all other utilities that that I have to pay for so expect that range on an average for a single household apartment let's talk about health insurance in the Netherlands the cost of health insurance varies based on the package that you're going for for basic insurance which is what I have I pay an average of 125 Euros per month and also this really depends on the plan and the company that you sign up with there are different providers out there and I typically recommend people to use this app or this website called independent or ml to check and compare prices for different providers out there but Healthcare in the Netherlands is actually great for I find that the cost of health insurance doesn't really favor me because I don't actually use it the few times where when I've had to use my health insurance I was told I did not apply simply because I got the base basic insurance one so if you're going for premium insurance you would expect to pay 200 Euros and above so just keep all of this in mind and I also recommend using that compare websites that I mentioned earlier to compare the prices of different health insurance in the Netherlands finally let's talk about entertainment and Leisure now this depends on whoever is watching this video we are different people right what I do for fun might be different from what you do for fun and you might end up spending more than I would spend in things like this but the Netherlands have so many different things you could do from museums to nice places to eat like restaurants for example there are so many things to do the theater you could go go watch a movie and this actually cost a lot of money on an average ticket to go to a museum cost around 15 years and on an average if you go to a restaurant to eat a proper meal you'd be spending around 40 to 50 euros right so on an average per month entertainment and Leisure for me would range around 150 to 200 Euros and this varies if I go out a lot during the month but yeah that's pretty much all the things that I wanted to share with you I also really want to cover budgeting because I think what has helped me a lot with planning for the cost of living and managing everything that comes alongside that is that I have the help of some applications that allow me budgets for the month so that I'm not going over setting bandwidth of what I should be spending so I use an app called grip it's by the bank ABN Amro I recently read that grip is going to be merged into ABN Ambrose app but I don't think that's the case yet so if you are a customer or if you plan to sign up for a bank called ABN Amer you would have a budgeting feature included in it but for now that's not the case but I use this to track my spendings for the month so I know how much I spend for gross trees how much I spent on utilities how much I spent for entertainment and Leisure that way I can at the end of the month check if I'm going way above my budget or my means and cut down on some of the costs that I've spent for the months some months I decide to do something called self-care just this is just me I decided to do something called self-care where I splurge on things that I really really want but I don't do this every month so I do it only when necessary only when I feel like doing it and for this I usually like exclude the cost from my budget just so I'm not I'm not at the end of the day surprised that I spent that much amount in a month right so a month when I do the self-splodge or self-care I don't include that in my budget but yeah I hope this video was helpful for you if you're planning to come to the Netherlands or if you're already here and you're looking for better ways to manage your money I hope this video helped you let me know in the comment section if there is anything I didn't mention but you know because you're here and you've been living here longer than I have please let me know in the comment section thank you so much for watching this video bye actually don't forget to subscribe as well don't forget to subscribe bye see you all in my next one [Music]

Channel: Gift Egwuenu

Views: 4,367

Keywords: giftegwuenu, living in the netherlands, cost of living in netherlands, cost of living in holland, living in the netherlands black, living in the netherlands as a foreigner, cost of living, housing, funda.nl, inflation, amsterdam, netherlands, rotterdam, the hague, expats in amsterdam, expats in netherlands, health insurance, Independer, cost of living amsterdam, moving to amsterdam, how expensive is netherlands, Housing, Transportation, LivingAbroad, WorkingAbroad, Budget, Relocation

Id: kbwpDwdSnlM

Length: 9min 36sec (576 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 14 2023