Cost of living in Slovenia

what is the cost of living in slovenia?ie,food,electricity,council tax,water,gas. eating out and property rental prices?

Hi!

I'm living in Ljubljana for 14 years now, so if you have any questions just ask

A few quick answers for all of you who are wondering about the cost of living:

> accommodation prices (how much does it cost to rent or to buy an accommodation in Slovenia
Rent:
studio - from 300€ per month
one room (not one bedroom) kitchen, bathroom, room - from 350€ per month
Buy:
cca. 2000 to 3500€ per sq. meter

> public transportation fares (tube, bus etc ...)
there is no tube here
bus is 1€ per 1.5 hour
taxi 1€ per km

> food prices(per month, how much does it cost you?)
hmmm i'd say about 500 to 700€ per month (for one person)

> health prices (for those who need medical insurance)
dentist - from 25€ per filling to 100€
other - not sure

> eduction prices (if you need to pay)
-prices are more or less the same as in rest of Europe if you wish to take computer trainning (IBM, ORACLE, REDHAT...) but higher than in US
-university degree is from 1000€ per year (for 4 years)

> energy prices (oil, electricity)
- fuel (unleaded) 1.2€
- electricity - I usualy pay from 30 to 35€

> common bills (Internet, television, telephone, mobile phone)
- internet cca 40€ including TV and phone
- mobile prepaid or from 10€ per month

> prices of a good menu in a traditional restaurant
- i'd say from 25€ up to 100€ without drinks (tipping is not common here)

> prices of a beer or a coffee in a regular pub
- beer from 2,5€ (o,5 litre)
- coffe from 1€ up to 3€

Ciao from Ljubljana

Hi,

I am thinking of rellocation to Ljubljana from London. Could anyone please tell me how much it costs to rent a 4 bedroom house over there. Also with schools, I have very young kids, so are there private Internation schools that I can send my kids to and if there are how expensive are they?

This is the only private school I can think of - waldorf.si/

You can find a 4 bedroom house from 1000€/month in Ljubljana. Check here:
realestate-slovenia.info/nepremicnine.html

Hi, some very useful information here.
Me too I'm considering moving to Slovenia. However, there are some questions I really need answers to, so I'd be very grateful if someone could provide them:

1. What is a good net salary in Slovenia (one of which you really can live, given you're 35 years old, but not married).

2. Besides rent and food (700 Euro and 500 Euro), how high are the telecommunication costs etc.?

3. I read that executives receive 2'500 Euro net. This can't be, right?

Thank you very much in advance.

P.S. does anybody know how out-of-pocket-expenses are handled by the slovene tax law?
Is it possible to declare them a business expense?

Thank you very much.

Hi Constantine

Slovenian tax law is more or less the same as in other EU countries. I really don't know how the expenses are handled but I can check since I'll be forming a company of my own in a month or so.

To answer some of your other questions:

1. Depends on who you ask! There are a lot of differences between professions and locations. Ljubljana has above average salaries and also above average prices...
I think the average salary in Slovenia these days is about 900 €! So above average is everything above that! But I cant imagine how you could survive on 900€!
I'm lucky enough to travel a bit from Italy to Austria or Bulgaria and Serbia, and to tell you the truth I think the prices here are much higher then in these countries.

2. Depends on your needs. ADSL or optics are from cca. 20€ and up. Mobile is from 10€ up...

3. Yes it can be! I'd say from 2500 up to 10.000€! Net! Depends on who you work for, your experiences, your formal education and so on...

Lep pozdrav

Ahhh here it is:

In January, the Slovenian net salary per person employed in companies and other organizations amounted to EUR 936,77. The average Slovenian gross salary per employed person amounted to EUR 1.448,12.

Hi,

Was visiting Slovenia last week just to take
a look around and fell in love with the place
i was in Celje.I did go with the intentions
that i might move there if i liked it,next
question now is can i find a job?
Thought i'd just ask around on here,who knows
if you don't ask.Not just looking at Celje but
the whole of Slovenia.At the moment i work for
myself in Norway,painting,wallpapering,tiling
(originally i came here to play pro-football,
many years ago)i also now coach youth football
so would very much like to get involved in football
as well,anyone have any connections who can help
i would be very gratefull.Thanks in advance,


      Pete

Hi tommyrose!

You can be selfemployed as a football coach here as well. I don't know about jobs in sports but you can try asking here:
football.si/

painting,wallpapering,tiling... as far as I know people with these skills get payed more then CEOs! You'll have more work than you can handle!

Regards!

Nice to know there's plenty of work,i plan to go again to look in July and if Slovenia gives me that same happy feeling again,think i'll just rent an appartment for 6 months and try to make connections while i'm there,guess that will be the easiest way.(how much roughly for a one bedroom?)Just one last question,is there any particular place i can look to get a listing of painters in Slovenia.
Thanks again in advance,

    Best regards  Pete

I hope you speak the language!!! You can have trouble working with people without good language skills. I worked for international company in MB and we used to have directors and managers coming from all over Europe to work for us and all of them declared on their first day that first thing they'll do will be to learn Slovenian... not even a single one of them... ever... learned more then few sentences and after 4 or 5 years their fair well speech was still in German or English. I am not saying it's impossible to learn, many people do it, but you need to be aware that it's not as easy as learning English or French or even German, so it will take quite some time and in this time you'll probably not be able to find some well-paid job.

Good luck to all of you :-)

For you to compare:
my netto salary at the time was 830 € on which I could not survive!! (or let say, I hardly did)
but my college doing exactly the same job in AT and DE they earned 1650 €!!!

Hi guys

My girlfriend and I are seriously considering moving to Slovenia next year to teach English. I am an Australian national (with TESOL qualifications) while my girlfriend is a Danish national (with full teaching qualifications). We have decided on Slovenia due to the natural beauty (I love hiking, however there's not much of it in Denmark) as well as the proximity to the rest of Europe. My main question I guess is is there a big market for English teachers in Slovenia? I have experience teaching business english, will this work in my favour?

If anyone can help out it would be much obliged

Cheers

Josh

Hey, I'm pretty sure that, since your native language is English +  you have a TEFL diploma, you could get a job at some high school or even college as a native speaker. Although, if I were you, I definitely would look into the matter BEFORE I moved to Slovenia, and not just move here and see how it goes. Economy is pretty bad here and getting a job here is no piece of cake. So maybe make some calls to Slovenian high schools or colleges and find out what the demand for native speakers is.
If you do that, please be sure toport back since I have an American friend that's thinking about moving here and doing the exact same thing as you. And most of all, good luck!!:-)

If you do that, please be sure toport back since I have an American friend that's thinking about moving here and doing the exact same thing as you. And most of all, good luck!!:-)

What I meant was to REPORT :-)

I agree with Nadia. Please be aware that whole Slovenia has only 2 million inhabitants and just for comparison, Vienna has almost the same number of people so market is not that big. Also, these days in Europe you can get by easier by knowing and teaching some more "exotic" languages as English. There are a lot of English native speakers leaving all over and I know a lot who still didnŽt get a job and they are in Slo for years now. There are some "head hunting" agencies (google them out) that could be helpful to you. I would also suggest you first try to see if you can even get a job and then you move otherwise you will have more problems than necessary. Good luck.

Thank you both for your assistance. I have done a little research already on english language schools, however thanks to your advice I will cast the net a little wider.

Again thanks for you help, I will REPORT back to this forum on how I go

Cheers

Josh

I have just joined this group and read through this link, so here are a few replies to some of the questions asked.

I have lived/worked here for 3 years as a permanent resident and experienced all the 'joys' of dealing with the tax office and every other office that you get sent to once you join the merry-go-round!

Hey bubablast....if you spend 700e a month on food, I'm coming to your house for dinner!!

Slovenia is expensive in the supermarkets, and surprisingly more expensive in the open markets, but unless you need to eat gourmet food every day, you can live on a lot less.

Having said that, the cost of living here is high, especially in comparison with the wages.
The way most people survive the low wage is because they are usually part of a big family group....if grandparents are on a pension, child support for the children, and earnings from 2 or 3 family members, then the total family income works out well, especially as most people have lived in their houses all their lives and don't have a mortgage, or not much of one.

However, paying the monthly bills on the average wage as a single person can be tricky, as there is no such thing as tax relief...in England you don't pay tax until you earn over £7,000...here, you pay tax on every penny....the minimum you will pay for tax/health/pension is around 300e a month, regardless of how much you earn.

Regarding self employed and 'out of pocket receipts'....again, in UK you collect whatever invoices you have that are against your business and it goes onto your accounts....here you have to have an 'official' invoice that is printed off by the store with their business details/your business details, everything stamped (a stamp is an unusual necessary business requirement, everything is stamped)....this is ok if you are buying expensive items, but waiting for 10 minutes for the paper work to go through each time you buy a light bulb....you don't bother....thus you are out of pocket!

Regarding teaching English....have you thought about private tuition, there is a demand for it....15e per hour...also just across the border in Austria (I knew someone who made a living this way) but of course it means living in Maribor!

June

Can you share where u found the statistics about salaries bubablast?

Jyrki

I'm a little surprised at the comment that the groceries are roughly 500 - 700 euros for one person for a month.

In $AUS for me this is around 650 - 900 for one single person. But when I look at my shopping list, my average is around 80 for one week so around $320 for the month (that's half of what was suggested).

I've been using numbeo.com to find out roughly the cost comparison between my city and Ljubljana.

(http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/ci … rrency=AUD)

Bubablast, are you sure about your figures?

@Damjo

No need to worry... you should get by with 320$AU easily... I moved to Melbourne a couple of years back and I can definitely say that food in supermarkets here is a bit more expensive... around 25% more or so. And eating out in Slovenia is a lot cheaper too. Not too many options if your are looking for asian or indian food though, mexican restaurants though are way better than the ones here in Australia though

Good luck with your move!

fajrvehr:

No worries. I'm not a big fan of curries and I'll have stir fry once in a blue moon. I don't think I would have too many problems

I live in Ljubljana since 2002. Prices on numbeo.com are realistic.

Salaries in Slo are pure disaster!! It is definitely true that you can earn more with being a handyman than with some proper office job. I wonder really how people leave with that money!! Prices are almost the same as in Austria (and here is far from cheap) but salaries are much much lower than here. It is bad and it is getting worse. I had demanding job in one international very well known company in Slovenia and I did not get over 800 Euro per Month. A friend of mine who did the same work as I did, only in Vienna (same company, same job just in different country) had 1700 Euro!!! The only reason why I went abroad is because I could not earn enough to lead a normal life with 800. And that is not even that bad, my mother worked for accounting firm, she had 500 and now she has 360 Euro pension!!! My sister works in a hospital, she is a roentgenologist and she works in shifts and she can not get over 1800 Euro no matter how much overtime she gets!! Just to compare, I spend 200 Euro just to come home for a weekend and that is only for gas, vinietta and some food for 2 days!! Really bad, sometimes I have no words!! I was lucky to get away on time.

"It is definitely true that you can earn more with being a handyman than with some proper office job"

And why do you consider this as something bad?

"My sister works in a hospital, she is a roentgenologist and she works in shifts and she can not get over 1800 Euro no matter how much overtime she gets!!"

Her salary is very decent. It's relatively easy work (ignoring the overtime and changing working hours), you don't really have to be an expert in anything.

"I spend 200 Euro just to come home for a weekend and that is only for gas, vinietta and some food for 2 days!!"

You're obviously a good spender. YEARLY vignette costs less than 100 euros. It's less 1000km from Vienna to Ljubljana and back.
70 liters of gasoline is 90 euros + 10 euros for vignette (let say you go home 10 weekends per year) = 100e. 100e just for the 2 days food? Not bad.

Hi and respect to anyone!
well i read all the comment and ideas.
and also that language is much important to learn it.
but here is some things that are making me confuse or things that i dont know how to find the way to fix it!
( anyway i need to tell that i have plan to come slovenia after like 1year and i have time to learn things which i can improve myself better for slovenia )
if i dont mistake the most important things that i need to worry about is language and job for when i want to join slovenia ( if i mistake tell me and made me know what else is much important! )
hmm i have a question at end that is important to me to know :
can some1 tell that around how much salari is Normal for a normal live for 2 person per month ( by Consider pay for rent of home or apartment which is less to pay and pay for power/water too )
you have my thanks to help me know truly .

Hi,

anyone needs any info on self-employment, please let me know. Food here can be very expensive if you're not careful, try and shop in the likes of Hofer and Lidl to keep the costs down.

Hello ttori!

You should help on the forum itself.

Harmonie.

It really depends where you live in Slovenia and what standart of life you expect.
Of course you can find accomodation for 120 eu (bed in shared room), but to rent your own apartment it is far more expensiveand again depends on part of the city, and apartment's standart, 2 room apartment not far from center is 400-450 eu for rent, then about 100eu expenses for building and water, 80 eu heating during winter, 35 eu electricity, 30 eu internet makes cost about 600-750 for apartment with expences. Mobile phone starting form 15 eu/month.
Insurence (as the one paid by employer doesn't cover many things) is about 270eu/year.
If it goes about food, I would say for 1 person it's about 400 eu/month if you cook by yourself not eat all the time out. I don't know for car, but with bike you can get everywhere in Ljubljana, and the cost of it is around 200 eu, but you must be aware they still them quite often. (You can buy old bike for 50 eu as well).

Hi PEEPS
I'm Moving to Celje in Oct. of this year, How is the weather there? I'm in California USA  I'm use to Hot weather

Also as far as jobs I'm licensed here as a Phlebotomist, working also with Hospice and Elderly patients.  I do not speak any of the languages

I seen online a job for Foreign Services Officers?? Consular  anyone know more information on this?

Hi DaintyFlight,

Foreign Serive Officer/Consular job it not so easy to obtain. A bachelors degree is needed to start the process. Also, there is a track with the U.S. governemen, I assume you are a U.S. citizen? There is an exam offered 2x per year.
Once you pass the exam, security clearance and get an offer for a job, you do not get to choose your idea location for 1st assignement.

All the information necessary is there on the website. However, it is off topic to Cost of Living in Slovenia...

> accommodation prices
    I & my husband rent a 35sq.m. apartment in the north of Ljubljana (8 KM. from center). 
   - Rent fee: 300EUR / month
   - Internet 40 EUR / month
   - Water, Electricity, Elevator, Garbage charge: 80 EUR / month

> public transportation fares (tube, bus etc ...)
   - Bus: 1.2 EUR per ride within 90 minutes
   - Taxi: between 5 - 10 EUR for 10 Kilometers.

> food prices(per month, how much does it cost you?)
   - 500 Grams of Spaghetti: 0.7 - 2 EUR
   - A croissant: 0.4 - 1 EUR
   - 1.5 litre of bottled mineral water: 1 EUR

> prices of a good menu in a traditional restaurant
   - Lunch: 6 - 12 EUR / person
   - Dinner: 10 - 20 EUR / person

> prices of a beer or a coffee in a regular pub
   - A cup of cappucino / espresso: 1 - 1.5 EUR
   - A cup of white coffee & cacao: 2 EUR

> food prices(per month, how much does it cost you?)

about 100-150€ /month for 1 person

I buy "normal" food (i'm cooking) , i love meat , only fruits and vegetables in season.. and local if possible.

Prices on numbeo.com are realistic.

About Statistics, there are a lot here :
Statistics

Any idea how property taxes work there if you buy a home?

@bubablast
Hi,
I assume for so may years you have already obtained a permanent residence permit. Are there any contributions to the social programs that one is obliged to pay, such as national health insurance (like they introduced in in the States, aka Obamacare) or any other contributions, a pension plan for example. An if there is something like that do people with low income need to pay towards these programs. How much is a vehicle insurance on a 5-7 year old car?
I am trying to figure out monthly unavoidable expenses. TV and cell phone are avoidable. Electricity for the time being is not, while heating is a matter of a building design, could be powered by renewable energy.
I would really appreciate your insights on the situation in Slovenia. I am watching the housing market  and it seems to tank, as expected. How is the situation with idiotic regulations such as banning raw milk or forcing farmers to register their heirloom seeds? Maybe if you can cover the subject-property taxes, how they work and how much one would pay let's say on a property worth 150K Euros? Any breaks for hobby farms with property taxes? Are you aware of any production quotas that regulate the agricultural market? Sorry for so many questions.

Thanks in advance.

Prometey

Hello! I'm from the coast but now live in LJubljana, so I can answer for both!

> accommodation prices
Ljubljana: About 10euros per m² around Ljubljana centre, a smaller apartment around 300-400 euros per month? In the centre it's also more expensive than on the sides, and if you go out of Ljubljana into just the "Ljubljana area" the prices probably fall too.

Coast: More expensive than the rest of slovenia, maybe even up to 20 for m² of apartment! But it depends on the location. Portoro and Piran, then other major coast cities (Koper, Izola), then the smaller cities and towns not as close to sea is how I'd say in goes in price from highest to lowest.

> public transportation fares (tube, bus etc ...)
My student (!!) monthly ticket for busses was 10 in Koper, in Ljubljana it's 20. It's probably going to be more for non-students. I notice most people actually use top-up urbana, which is 1.20 a ride with no extra charge if you change bus lines for around 90 minutes.

There is no intra-city train, but a regular 1way ticket from Ljubljana to another side of the country is around 8. But trains make a lot of stops on their destination. I was going from Ljubljana to Koper in 3h with a train, a journey that usually takes 1h with car!

> food prices(per month, how much does it cost you?)
I'm a student so I can live with food around 100 a month, but let's say maybe twice that for a non-student. Depends on where you shop of course

> health prices (for those who need medical insurance)
Basic medical insurance is sort of free & comes out of your tax money. Then you can choose an advanced health insurance for accidents etc. You pay a little extra for it, but it covers more than the basic and also funds you for possible treatments in the case of accidents. Advanced insurance is also free for children, teenagers & students who are fully enrolled in university.

> eduction prices (if you need to pay)
No tuition for all stages of education. But you will need to buy/acquire your own books. Elementary school might charge for food, but this is not neccessary if a student brings his own food from home. University: there is a small "enrollment fee" for full-time university students, it covers things like library memberships, the student ID card. It was around 30 for me. Students also get around 25 discounted meals per month. It means you pay less for a meal in certain restaurants, around 3-4 on average. Part-time students however have tuition, depending on the course they choose, can be around 2000 a year.

> energy prices (oil, electricity)
Petrol is over 1 a litre, depending on the kind you need. Electricity I don't know for sure, as it depends on your usage. I'm a single person living in Ljubljana, and it's around 50 in winter months (I heat with AC).

> common bills (Internet, television, telephone, mobile phone)
You can get internet+telephone+TV 3packs from most providers from 30 per month. Mobile phone is either charge-up, or different plans. I think you are looking around 15-20 a month for a phone plan that includes around 1000 minutes of talking and 1000 sms, 100mb internet.

> prices of a good menu in a traditional restaurant
Non students, one person around 10 for a meal+drink? Maybe more in fancier restaurants. Special lunch offer menus will often be cheaper, around 6, without drink included.

> prices of a beer or a coffee in a regular pub
Regular coffee is around 1 or less, up to 2 or 3 for fancier ones. Beers are around 2. They are much much cheaper if you buy them in a convenience store, under 1 for the same brand.

Hope this helps!