I want to prove that in Spain we are living better comparing to other countries (Lithuania)

I am going compare my family example in order to compare standard of living between of this two countries.

Lets start by image what kind of works I am talking about. My father was working in construction, factories and my mother in some school and with flowers.

So in my country we could survive without effort, by surviving I mean that we could eat perfectly healthy food, have some clothes to wear, some old car like 10-15 years old, have some “holidays” but nothing especial.
Then if we want to buy some new furniture it was quiet difficult, because we needed to save the money for a long time. We used to say that life is depending on day of the month you will get your salary. You used to have exact amount of what do you need for surviving.

Let’s think about Spain. The same situation, same jobs… Before that I would like to give some data:

We are tying to compare domestic product at purchasing power parity per capita, the value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given year divided by the average (or mid-year) population for the same year. (PPP)/per capita, other word standard of living.

We can see that in Lithuania: 20,321 $ and in Spain: 32,045 $

So different in standard of living around 57.5%.

I am going to prove this economics relation in our family’s terms.

In Lithuania my father was earning around 600-700€ and my mother something less. So in total we have around 1500€ per month ( a bit less).

When we came to Spain we realise that at the same jobs my father was earning around 1300-1600€ (with economics boom even more) and my mother around 1200€. Those salaries are quiet similar for people without a lot of education and who are doing something in order to get it… (Always there are cases that you can earn less, but is depending on you, on the job..) So lets make it total of around 2500€ incomes.

Let’s start by looking how much extra money we have left out of our salaries. In Lithuania we had around 10% of extra from the salary per month for (clothes, holidays, something especial).

The largest amount of money that we need is for house utilities. In this we compare totally different things. In Lithuania we weren’t paying “nothing” for our place, some economics/politicians situation from previous governments.

In Spain, buying a house with all insurances and taxes we are paying around 700€ /month, so it is some kind of investment, because after 30 years you will have an apartment.

2500-700=1800€ Then lets think about internet, electricity & phones. let make it 200€. 1800-200=1600. We can buy a new car, like 5 years old, not those 10-15 years old. So around 300€/month, we have left 1300€. (but don’t forget this car is going be like for 10-15years… so by dividing 15000€ in 15 years lets put around 100€ per month) so we have left 1500€ /month

As we are coming from Lithuania we have our own habits, to eat well, healthy and it is not so expensive. Let’s think about eating well (that means with dessert all days, some biscuits, meat, wish, fruits, vegetables… ) at home 4 people during one week around 125€ I will be very generous (should be less) so it is 500€ per month.

So we have left around 1000€ extra for traveling, clothes, restaurant anything that we want.
Don’t forget that we are investing some money in our apartment. Without investment we can have like around 1200€ extra per month.

Lets look at the different between PPP of Spain and Lithuania it was 57.5%.

So we are talking about comparing those 1500€ that we need for survive in a bit better condition than before and we can add those 57.5% so will be 1300€*1.575= 2047.5€
We can be a bit more generous, lets increase our expenditure in 20%!! when would be 1300*1.2=1560€ and 1560*1.575=2457€. If we are not increasing this we can have 1300*1.9=2470. So 90% better. Almost a double.

So now I can prove that we are able to survive with almost one person’s salary in the family.

In this case you can observe clearly the different for medium class in Spain and Lithuania.

Then you will understand why people are moving somewhere else.

For sure situation is changing during the crises, but is changing everywhere.