Written by Cezar Tabrizy, a teacher in Budapest
Since I’m from the US, as many of the English teachers here are, I’ll refer to costs in USD, but for reference, the current exchange rate from the Hungarian Forint to the American Dollar is 312 ft=1 USD. I’ll stick to the essentials like groceries, recreation, and bills. For those who work for Bilingual like I do, this can be quite different, since I pay for my own housing, but I’ll address this later on.
Unsurprisingly, the price of groceries varies quite a bit from store to store. The major grocery chains, some of which exist all over Europe or even in America are Spar, Aldi, Lidl, and Penny. These are the major stores that you can find everywhere. In my experience, these are the most expensive to the least, respectively. I’ve shopped at all of them, but currently I shop at Penny. The lower price comes with a tradeoff, being that Penny seems to have the smallest inventory and variety of food and produce for a lower price. Spar or Aldi will generally have bigger stores with better inventory for higher prices, and Lidl is in the middle. As someone who eats out about once a week, eating from home every other day, I spend about $200 a month when I’m strict enough about not eating out. I buy a lot of meat, don’t drink tap water, and buy lots of coffee, so your mileage may vary. Out of my first-year paycheck of about $1300, this is very manageable.
Recreation like eating out or going for drinks is pricy here. If this also includes bath houses, domestic travel, or museums then you’ll need to budget for that. If you go to bars in the city center, they will have tourist pricing, and drinks will be around $7 minimum. I never go to these anymore, because if you go to smaller dive bars or places further from the center, the prices are between $2-5. Eating out is very expensive on this budget. Restaurants charge service fees, which is like a mandatory tip, and these range from 10-15% added to your bill. At a restaurant, the cost will be $20-30 at least. However, many jobs provide a recreation stipend in the form of a card that they pay into monthly, which can only be used at restaurants, museums, bathhouses and the like. Often, I only eat out with this card for payment. In addition to this, if you request it and the school is willing to provide it, you can get a “teacher card”, which renders many museums and event centers around the country free or discounted for you, but you have to request it and follow up quite a lot to get it. The principal usually must approve it personally. Things like bathhouses and museums are often at least $20 for a visit.
Bills and rent vary the most, since most of the teachers I know have company housing, which is when the employer gives you an apartment and pays the bills and rent, but you lose a set portion of your paycheck. In our case, it’s about a third. This still saves you a lot of money. For example, my paycheck being around $1300 right now. If I had company housing, I would lose about $400 and pay zero utilities. That leaves $900 for everything else. My current apartment, which is not large or in a nice area, costs about $750 in total, leaving me with $650. So, it’s a tradeoff as well. If you have company housing, you will always have a roommate, and the quality of the apartment will certainly vary, and you have little say in it, but it is free. If you want your own place, you will have to jump through some hoops to acquire one on your own, and without being able to communicate in the language, it isn’t extremely easy, but it’s doable.
Other than bills and rent, you will have a phone bill, unless you get a company phone. If so, that is free, but their phones are a bit older and slower, and you can’t keep it permanently. My phone bill is about $30, but you can find cheaper ones if you don’t need unlimited data. You also need a residence permit to have an actual phone plan contract, so you won’t be able to get one until your immigration situation is sorted out. You will also need to pay for transport. If you buy the monthly pass, as most do, you have unlimited transport through any public means for a month, and right now that costs $28. Not bad at all, because this applies to the metro, cable cars, buses, and trams all over the city. Even with my reduced budget from having my own apartment, I save at least $100 a month, or more if I’m tighter with it. Something like the gym can also be paid with your recreation card, so I do that to save from the paycheck as well. A lot of the teachers here also supplement their income by tutoring or taking private students. When you work at a school, many parents are looking to have teachers that their children already know to tutor them after school, and as long as the student is not currently your student, you are allowed to tutor them, and can charge per 45 minute or hour-long lesson. This rate is higher than the payrate for the job most of the time, so it helps quite a lot. Most of us charge around $22-27 per hour for tutoring and often tutor at the school after classes are over. If you do this on the side, it helps immensely.
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