Just kidding. We actually meant to do this a long time ago, but we just got around to it now.
I thought it would be interesting to compare our results with the "sample budget" that Nefesh B'Nefesh has on their website. NBN actually has three sample budgets, one for singles, one for a family of six, and one for a retired couple. I think Rachel and I came closest to the retired couple, although that budget is listed in dollars, and we're at the point where it only makes sense to discuss such things in shekels.
I'll move through the categories that NBN uses: rent, transportation, food, phone/cellphone/internet, utilities, health insurance, entertainment, and arnona (municipal tax).
Rent
This one is hardly worth talking about, since it can vary so widely. We pay ₪2,400 a month for a 50 square meter, 1 bedroom apartment here in Haifa. That's at the higher end of what couples around here would pay for a 1 bedroom, but probably at the low end of what they'd pay in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv.
The point is, if you really want to get a sense of rent, pay no attention to NBN. Go to www.yad2.co.il, click on נדל"ן, click on השכרה, look up a particular city or area, and see for yourself. And use the הצג על גבי מפה feature, it's great.
To sum up:
NBN Single: ₪1,200-3,200
NBN Fam of 6: ₪3,700-6,290 (6,290 is a nice round number)
NBN Retiree: $600-1,500
Yoni & Rachel: ₪2,400
Public Transportation
I walk to school, and Rachel takes the bus to uplan. A ₪50 cartisiya (10 rides) gets her through the week, so I'll say that's ₪200 a month. I'd say We also travel to Jerusalem once or twice a month - ₪160 per round trip for both of us.
If you're a student, you can get an unlimited bus ticket for about ₪1,500. This is valid for about a 10 month period. If you're a daily commuter, this deal is totally worth it, and puts all of your intercity bus travel at a flat rate of ₪150 per month.
NBN says to budget ₪300-400 for a single. I might have said that's a little high, considering what I just told you - that a non-student can ride the bus for about ₪200/month and a student can ride for ₪150. But singles tend to travel around a lot, especially for Shabbat. So this range is about right.
To sum up:
NBN Single: ₪300-400
Yoni & Rachel: ₪400-500
Food
Before Rachel and I made aliyah, I believed that food was relatively cheaper in Israel than in America. To put it daintily, this is a big fat lie. Sure, certain things in Israel are cheaper. On a good week you'll find yourself paying the equivalent of 50 cents/pound for staple produce, like tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and eggplants. Sugar and flour are pretty cheap, too, and milk isn't too bad.
But that's where the bargains end. Non-staple produce (i.e. anything other than what I've just mentioned), dairy products, meat and processed foods (i.e. anything that comes in a package, from a can of tomatoes to veggie burgers) - are expensive, and quickly add up. As much as we felt that food made up a solid portion of our budget in New Jersey, it makes up a larger portion here.
But what's really tricky about food is that everyone buys food differently. Some people plan their meals, and some people don't. Some people stock up once a month, and some people shop every week. Some people don't have time to cook, and so most of their food is bought at work, at school, or on the street. Some people don't know how to cook. Some people eat three actual meals a day and some people skip breakfast, barely eat lunch and only really eat dinner. Each one is going to end up with a different food budget.
Here's what we do. We eat three meals a day, and we cook a lot. We plan out suppers week by week, and for breakfast and lunch we keep a running supply of cereal, bread, cheese, tomatoes.. that sort of thing. Each week we'll usually do one major grocery shopping for those meals and a second once we figure out our plans for Shabbat. A typical Shabbat grocery bill, especially if we are cooking two substantial meals, usually costs about as much as food for the rest of the week. Once a month we'll do a grocery trip where we stock up on things other than what we need for meals - be it toilet paper, flour, sugar, etc. We only eat at sit down restaurants if we're getting together with friends or family. About once a week I'll eat lunch at a school cafeteria or buy a felafel or something.
All that being said, let's talk numbers.
For us, a typical month of groceries, one sit down restaurant dinner for two, and about 4 or 5 street restaurant meals (about ₪20 per meal) has cost us around ₪2,000. That's what we've spent without a budget; that is, without setting ourselves a monthly limit, and consciously striving to stay within that limit as we do our shopping. I think if we did budget, we could knock it down, maybe closer to ₪1,500 a month.
NBN assumes a single person will spend ₪1,000-1,600, that retirees will spend $550-800, and that families will spend ₪2,400-5,000. This seems to assume that the typical American oleh shops for food without knowing how to budget, and tends to buy the same sort of food he ate in America, regardless of whether or not it is more expensive here. That is probably true.
Here's the takeaway message: food is more expensive here. Despite that, I think people can feed themselves for less than what the see in NBN's budget, but only if they plan their meals, don't eat out, and choose ingredients that are cheap.
To sum up:
NBN Single: ₪1,000-1,600
NBN Fam of 6: ₪2,400-5,000
NBN Retiree: $550-800
Yoni & Rachel: ₪2,000
Utilities
Utilities are divided into four categories: electricity, gas, water, and arnona. I'll describe our usage of each.
Electricity: we're around the apartment a lot, so we have lights on and computers running all the time (though I don't think that uses so much electricity). We use electricity every time we heat up water to take a shower, and we also run a washing machine about once a week. In the winter, we run a heater in the living room when we're in there, and we have a heater on a timer to heat our bedroom when we go to sleep and when we get up. We get a bill once every two months. Our first was around ₪220 and our second was around ₪600 (because of the heaters). So I'll say our average monthly electricity usage is ₪200.
Gas: we only use gas when we cook, but we cook a lot. Our first bill was ₪35, while the second (more realistic) bill was around ₪90.
Water: We try to keep our showers short, closer to 5 minutes than 10 minutes. When we do the dishes, we turn off the water when we aren't rinsing something. And we use water when we run the washing machine, but it's supposed to be water-saving. We're supposed to get our second water bill soon, but in our first bill we paid ₪100 for the first month. I think when we get the next one it will be more like ₪150 per month, so I'll go with that.
Arnona: Like rent, this varies. But as an oleh chadash you get a 90% discount. We're paying about ₪20 a month.
To sum up:
NBN Single: ₪400-600 (+ ₪40-120 for arnona)
NBN Fam of 6: ₪925-1,500 (+ ₪40-370 for arnona)
NBN Retiree: $150-$300 (+ $10-100 for arnona)
Yoni & Rachel: ₪440 + ₪20 for arnona (more once the discount wears off)
Phone/Cell phone/Internet
We don't have a land line. The truth is, you don't really need one. The phone companies realized this, and recently announced new rock-bottom rates for land lines. But you still don't need one. Between gchat, skype, and the Magic Jack, we are in constant contact with our friends and family in America. With the Magic Jack, we can talk to them for free.
We pay, on average, about ₪200 a month for our two cell phones. We have a pay-as-you-go plan with Cellcom, which means that beyond a base rate of ₪11 per phone, we pay for talk time and texts. Compared with the other, fixed, plans that were being offered to us, I think we made the right choice, as those plans were going to cost ₪300 and above for the two of us.
For internet, we use HOT as the provider and Smile (012) as the ספק. If you don't know what that means, don't worry about it. We pay ₪86 a month for I don't even remember how much bandwidth. It's not lightening fast, but it gets the job done. And although, due to technical frustrations, we often need to reset our connection (it's a long story), we never actually have internet blackouts.
Fun fact: Apple only agreed to sell iPhones here once Israel's three cell phone companies (Cellcom, Orange and Pelephone) agreed to sell 100,000 units each. Per year. For the next three years. That means, in 2013, there will be 900,000 iPhones in a country that currently contains 7,000,000 people. Because Israelis are serious when it comes to iPhones. Maybe that's why NBN's estimates are so high.
To sum up:
NBN Single: ₪300-600
NBN Fam of 6: ₪600-1,500
NBN Retiree: $150-250
Yoni & Rachel: ₪286
Health Insurance
This one's a little tricky. Rachel and I are with Maccabi, and we have their highest level of insurance - Maccabi Zahav. Our monthly bills have been, starting from November, ₪160, ₪90, ₪98, and ₪104, respectively. I don't really get why we aren't paying the same thing each month. Also, people have told us we should be paying less, but we honestly just haven't bothered asking Maccabi about that because even our highest payment - ₪160 - is so much lower than anything anyone would ever pay for in the states.
Is it worth it? That's a whole 'nother story.
To sum up:
NBN Single: ₪0-160
NBN Fam of 6: ₪0-740
NBN Retiree: $0-250
Yoni and Rachel ₪100
These areas of expenditure are not exhaustive. NBN budgets for entertainment, but we don't spend much on that. We watch TV shows and stuff online, and we went to our first movie yesterday (The Social Netowrk. It was good, but the theater was deserted and creepy. On a Thursday night.) We don't have a TV, which stinks; not because we want to watch Israeli TV shows (which you can do online anyway), but because we can't play our Wii.
I also left out my "home" category, which includes things like pieces of furniture, appliances, kitchen supplies, mosquito-control apparatus, etc.
So there you have it. I'd like to stress that Rachel and I are not the kind of people who keep track of all their purchases on a daily basis. We exercise restraint when we shop, but we don't really deny ourselves anything. So I think our budget is a realistic approximation of how much you'll spend if you aren't great at budgeting, but know how to control yourself.
No comments:
Post a Comment