Joe -- just a warning -- last year for New Year's it was 40 degrees celsius -- 104 degrees fahrenheit. This year they are predicting worse heat waves... ugh. If you can't stand the humidity I think perhaps you should consider spending December - March elsewhere (even Mendoza and Bariloche can be hot as hell then, but at least they don't have all the humidity). Most portenos that can afford it escape the city if not for the entire 3 months, at least they go every weekend. In January the city is dead quiet -- you can stand on 9 de Julio for about 5mins and not get run down... a lot of the restaurants still even close for the first 15 days of January because it is so dead... everyone just desperate to escape to the coast!
Re: your budget -- I'm not saying it's completely unrealistic but do make sure you have generous wiggle room if your planning on moving permanently and will be on a fixed income.
In this country when prices go up it's not usually by 5% or 10%, it's more like 50-300%. It's little things and big things -- ie my water service started at $1 peso a bottle, 6months later it was already $1.20 per bottle (cheap I know, but it gives you an idea of the quick increases). Peppers when I got here were about 4 pesos a kilo -- this winter they were anywhere from 12-16pesos a kilo. Towels that i got last year for 50pesos are now 100pesos. My gym membership started at 35pesos two years ago and now they want 85pesos.
In the 2 years that I have been here prices on many food items have doubled, or more.
Your rent of $500 is not necessarily going to hold. As a foreigner you can only sign 6 month contracts, every six months they will have the gall to try and raise it by another 100 bucks. Oh and they always want 1.5-2months commission every time you sign a contract, so instead of being 1500 a month (pesos) you have to adjust it to be more like 2000pesos, so you might be looking at $625bucks a month. (Some agencies will only ask for 1month).
Also, ABL services (garbage removal) are set to go up by as much as 300% in some areas of town (those areas where the short term apartments usually are - Belgrano, Palermo, Recoleta, etc).
100 bucks for eating out is not a lot -- if you like foreign food that is! Japanese count on spending anywhere from $16 bucks to $40 or more if you go to the better places and have some wine. A foreign meal can easily be 60 pesos if you have any booze with it. More local fare we usually end up paying around 10-15 dollars a head for the meal with a gaseosa or one glass of booze. If you're like me though and want to go out so you can have some variety of flavours, then you're usually lookng at a pricey meal -- oh and if you know Thai food, don't even bother here. There's one place that's decent, but expensive, and the other one that's supposedly "the best" I believe uses a tonne of MSG -- I don't know, but the one ime I went there I had some sort of allergic reaction where my throat swole up and I nearly passed out...
Ok so enough of the misery guts... I've been here for 2 years and I love it. I am saving more money than I did at home, but I also have the backup of a regular income from Canada, an income that has the potential to grow, and a dollar that's kicking some ass! I think you can esily come down here and live and love it, but I just always think it's important to caution those coming on fixed incomes that the economy is just not stable, so come with a nice cushion... and perhaps a plan to get away to the coast every summer?
Suerte!
