Cost of living in Paraguay – 2015

We live in San Bernardino, a small resort town about 40 KM's outside of Asuncion on Lake Ypacarai and have been here a couple of years now.   Here are some prices for our family of four with one school age kid.

While we own our house, rental prices here are pretty high as it is a resort town.  Prices spike during the 3 month long summer season of December through February and then go down a bit for the rest of the year.   Prices for a nice house near or in the town proper would run about 3 - 4.5 million Gs a month ($600 - $1,000 US).   A more traditional local home out in the countryside surrounding the town would go much cheaper, more like 1 million Gs ($200) a month.  During the summer season most rents are by weeks or even 3 - 4 day periods.

Electric and water prices are more or less the same throughout the country, here we pay around  450,000 Gs (approximately $100 US) a month on average for electric, but we do a lot of laundry, run AC and electric heat as needed (mostly AC) and have a large place.   Water runs about 150,000 Gs ($30) a month.  Our landline telephone runs about 100,000 Gs a month ($25).   Internet, brought in "over air" by a large antenna and tied into via wifi in the house is 350,000 Gs ($75) a month.   TV service come in also via an antenna and includes a standard package of about 30 stations as well as an HBO package, with some channels in HD and runs us 275,000 Gs ($60) a month.

As for cell phone service suffice it to say it'll run about the same as in the US and is highly dependent on the phone you want, the package you get and how much usage you have.   Most phone packages only include a limited amount of free air time with additional air time (or "saldo") being sold by any little kiosk or mom and pop store in Paraguay where you can buy a few thousand Gs of saldo to add to your package as needed.

Food cost for our family runs about 4 million Gs ($800) a month, with most of the shopping being done at a large  supermarket in a neighboring town about 25 minutes away.  This feeds many more than 4 though as we have lots of Paraguayan family members who drop by a lot.

Medical care is taken care of by having an insurance policy with one of the largest insurance providers in Paraguay called Assimed.   They have two large hospitals in Asuncion as well as clinics in most large or medium sized towns.  The "Premier" plan we have costs just over 1 million Gs ($200) a month and includes emergency, "catastrophic" care, with no pre-existing condition exclusions.   It also covers a portion of dental and vision services.  It does not cover drugs though.

As for transportation, if you use public busses out here it costs 3,000 Gs per ticket to get around town or to the next town basically.   We have a car though and we pay about 400,000 Gs ($80) a month for comprehensive insurance.  A drivers license cost you around 250,000 Gs  ($60) to acquire and you pay an annual fee of just over 100,000 Gs ($20) to keep it active.   Annual car registration, paid to the local town costs about 250,000 Gs ($60)  Gas prices here for mid grade gas (or "nafta" as it is called here as opposed to "diesel") runs right now 4,650 Gs a liter so about $4 a gallon.

Our son goes to a small private school in the nearby town of Ypacarai that has Kindergarten through Junior College with tuition running about 300,000 Gs a month ($60).   There is a 450,000 Gs ($100) annual registration fee also. The public schools here are very poor, with few resources out here in the countryside.  And while some may make up some of these shortfalls by super dedicated staff, it really is pretty hit or miss.   Many Paraguayan's rely on private schools if they can at all afford it, and the private schools go from top of the line as in some of Asuncion's exclusive ones (multi thousand dollar a month tuitions) to little mom and pop schools in the middle of now where.  Along with  everything in between.

Probably missed a few things but hopefully this will give anyone interested a taste of what to expect.

Thanks for sharing some info with us majbjb. Too bad there's not more people participating in this one--they're one of my favorite parts of this forum and usually filled with a lot of helpful stuff. Cheers for contributing with your experience.

Here you can get an IDEA on prices - it may be a bit out of date however the Guarani currency is the most stable in LATAM.

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/ci … rrency=USD