International Nesties
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Geneva- Costs/Budget for different buckets
I have a few questions about costs and budget for things as we continue to look into the Geneva opportunity. My family is DH, me, and currently 16 month old DD. She will be 23months when we move to Geneva.
- What should we budget per month for food? We tend to eat in a lot already so will mostly eat at home but will go out once in awhile.
- What should we expect to pay for internet at home?
- What should we expect to pay for DH's cell phone? My cell will be covered by work.
Thanks!
Re: Geneva- Costs/Budget for different buckets
- Food in Switzerland is expensive, even in the grocery stores. It's just me and H and we spent 600 CHF a month on groceries. That included all toiletries, cleaning supplies, and alcohol purchased from the grocery store. The good news is that food is cheaper in France, some shops are actually opened there on Sunday mornings, and Geneva sits on the border. If you have a car you can drive across the border and do your grocery shopping there. If you don't have a car there is a public city bus that takes you to just in front of a Carefour in France.
-We had a bundled tv/dsl/home phone package from Swisscom and it was 165 CHF a month. I believe we had the highest speed internet they offered.
Also, if yu have a tv or radio in your house you have to pay a tv/radio tax. A quick glance at our 2010 budget tells me that this was 39 CHF--it's in my budget as working out to 39 CHF a month but was paid quarterly or annually. That seems a bit high to me, but it could be right. I'm sure ktlk or ali can correct me if this is off.
-I had an iPhone with a data plan and it was 60 CHF a month.
-Not asked about but also in my old budget:
Renter's insurance --31 CHF a month
Utilities --18 CHF a month
Demi-tarif -- If you plan to do any train travel you'll want this. It's 165 CHF a year and allows you to buy train tickets for half price. Since train travel in CH is really expensive, it's worth it if you plan on using the trains. It pays for itself with one round trip train ride from Geneva to the Jungfrau.
UNIRESO yearly pass -- you'll have to do the math on whether or not buying a yearly pass is worth it for you. It covers all local train, bus, and trams in the canton and is around 670 CHF a year.
If your husband doesn't need the latest and greatest in technology for cell phones then the Orange prepaid is really inexpensive in my opinion. I maybe reloaded my hone every 8 weeks with 20 CHF credit and my husband was about every month.
Our internet was set up by the apartment and we payed 30 CHF a month. We just watched regular public cable which doesn't leave much to offer in English but a few channels you could change the audio back to English. When your there you can download http://zattoo.com/ and it creates a browser were you can watch a bunch of the UK channels. Otherwise we downloaded and itunes most of our entertainment stuff. I know a lot of English speaking people I babysat for in Zurich subscribed to SKY TV. That's something to look at if your into TV.
We were spending around 600-700 CHF on food a month. Sometimes it was more if we were splurging on good meat, wine, or cheese. Going out can be really expensive even if it's occasional. We only would go for special occasions. For two us it would be just under 200 CHF for a typical meal.
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- I don't remember what we paid for the TV tax. It was paid by the person we subleted from before we moved in.
Alright I looked it up and apparently it's 450.40 CHF per year.
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Thanks. It must have gone up from last year. I'm so glad we're not paying that anymore.
Something else that you didn't mention is health insurance. You have to be insured in Switzerland with a Swiss insurance. As soon as you enter the country and registered you are expected to pay but it can be possible that with the registering and paperwork crossing you won't get a bill for a few months and then bam! you get the huge retroactive bill. So when you arrive keep that in mind.
You can go on http://en.comparis.ch/versicherung.aspx To compare health insurance plans. You need to pay extra for accidental health insurance. But for you I believe your employer will pay for your accidental health insurance. (Pup or ktkl might no better then me on this) So you would just need that policy for your DH and DD.
I don't have a lot of advice on what is a better insurance company but I would stay very far away from Agilia. They were nothing but trouble for me and very hostile to my husband on the phone. If my DH didn't speak German we would of been thoroughly screwed out of tons of money. DH had CSS for his insurance and while they were more expensive then my plan they had decent customer service.
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I didn't mention this because I assumed her employer would offer coverage. I'm pretty sure they're legally required to if they sponsor your visa. But like alli said, in CH everyone has their own plan and it's not really a "family" type scenario like it is in the US. That being said, my H's company covered me as well, we just had to pay a higher amount every month for me than we did for him.
IIRC, for the two of us, our portion of insurance worked out to be somewhere around 700 CHF a month out of H's pre-tax income. H's company picked up the rest. We had a really thorough policy though that covered a lot more than the minimum required by law (which is still a lot of coverage).
*edited because I'm losing my mind and confused the amount we pay for insurance in Malaysia with what we paid in CH
DH and I spend around 700chf/ month on groceries, occasionally we make a once a month trip to France to buy a huge stock of things (We're not so close to the French border in Neuch?tel, but if we were in Geneva we would shop more often in France). With the exchange rate now and the general lower costs of groceries in France, our you can get around 2x what you would in Switzerland for around the same price.
Fruit and veg in Switzerland aren't that cheap, but not that expensive either. and dairy is pretty cheap (yogurt, milk, cheese...and a huge selection!). Meat is very expensive. Things like pasta, rice, and other grains aren't that expensive, but other things are very expensive such as cereal, any form of "ethnic food" at the big grocery stores (6chf for 8 tortillas). Fresh bread isn't expensive.
We pay 350chf each/month for health insurance. DH's job does cover a portion of it, for him.
I don't know much else about taxes and bills, DH deals with that.
I have an iPhone with a 60chf/ month plan but usually end up paying around 120chf/month with overage costs (text msgs are expensive...).
Keep in mind though, DH is a Swiss citizen and doesn't have a lot of the benefits that your family will have of being relocated here, our costs (health care, rent) will generally be higher.
If you wanted you can go to http://www.coopathome.ch/ to price out some groceries. Coop and Migros are the two grocery store chains. I'm glad to not paying so much for really waxy crappy soft taco shells. Ktkl have you ever tried the Mission ones by the toast bread? They are a lot nicer.
Your DD will probably still be in diapers or pull ups too. They are pretty expensive. One family I babysat for actually brought with them a 6 months supply in their shipping container. Might be worth considering if you will have a container.
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