Moving Soon, Few Questions.

Iara

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Hi, I'm from Brazil and my husband was offered a job near BA.
i just need to know how much we'll need to live there. Thinking about living in Pilar.
We have a 15 years old boy, he speaks english and portuguese, so he needs a bilingual school or international school. I can't find any information about tuition fees.
When we lived abroad it was around us$ 2.000/month. Someone told my husband that St Johns is around US$800/month, is it true?
I wrote them, but still waiting...
And about rentals, can we have a nice house, not too big, but good enough and in a safer place, for about us$1.000? or is it more, or less???
So, if we have us$ 5.000 after taxes, can we survive paying international school, rental, food, etc, living a moderate life? Company will
pay health insurance.

Thanks a lot for any tip!
 
Hi, I'm from Brazil and my husband was offered a job near BA.
i just need to know how much we'll need to live there. Thinking about living in Pilar.
We have a 15 years old boy, he speaks english and portuguese, so he needs a bilingual school or international school. I can't find any information about tuition fees.
When we lived abroad it was around us$ 2.000/month. Someone told my husband that St Johns is around US$800/month, is it true?
I wrote them, but still waiting...
And about rentals, can we have a nice house, not too big, but good enough and in a safer place, for about us$1.000? or is it more, or less???
So, if we have us$ 5.000 after taxes, can we survive paying international school, rental, food, etc, living a moderate life? Company will
pay health insurance.

Thanks a lot for any tip!
Hi! You will most likely won't get any prices by email, this is something they disclose after an interview and if admission is still open. I would say that between 800-1000 usd. Mercedes is relatively close to Pilar, about 50 km. You will need two cars for sure. In a gated neighborhood you can rent a house for about 1000 usd - unfurnished - + maintenance fees. Will your husband's company provide you with a guarantor for the rental, cars and health insurance? I think you will be fine living on 5000 usd.
 
Hi Nikad,

Yes, we will have 2 cars, need to buy it buy ourselves.
I think the company will help us with the rental, as a guarantor and for sure they will cover our health insurance.
The first plan is for my husband to go alone, so my son can start school year here in Brazil and take some spanish classes.
At least for the first year the company will also pay for the rental, not sure after that, so we can pay our rent here in Brazil.
I read a lot about BA and how everything is so expensive there. But, believe me, everything is quite expensive here also.
Food, clothes, cars, rentals...And it will be worst for the next 2 years, it's why we are running away!!
 
Hi, just to update: now they are offering us$6000 after taxes, blue dollar rate (us$4000 will be in cash, 2000 registered) , plus a car for my husband, rental and health insurance, 15 days paid vacations. Husband asked for 3 weeks.
I just need an idea of how much a family of 3 spend in a month with food, house fees, gas...We love to cook and eat at home a lot, so tons of meat and beers...Will us$2000 be enough?

Brazilian's economy is collapsing, 2016 will be a nightmare here.
Maybe with Macri Argentina's economy will do better...let's see.
 
First, I think if you all are earning $6000 USD per month for a family of three, you will have little or no problems living here in decent style. In fact, per person, your husband would be bringing in a bit more than I do for my family. For the $4k not paid in white - depends on how they give the money to your husband, whether it's deposited in a bank back in Brasil or cash in hand here. Currently, it is somewhat of a problem to get money into the country, but hopefully that will change with Macri before too long. A lot of us expats have to deal with getting the money in - it's possible, it's just that one spends an inordinate amount of time worrying about such things. And many of the (at least, easier) mechanisms for doing that are located in the city itself.

I estimate that we spend about $2200 to $2800 pesos per person at the supermarket per month. I live in Recoleta, which is an expensive place, and you may well find that outside the city the prices are a bit more reasonable than that. That would include supplies as well as food, BTW.

I haven't driven for around a year (my license expired, but I'm working on that), so I haven't really looked at gas prices lately, but I'm thinking they're in the neighborhood of $14 pesos a liter?

I used to live out near Garin, which is about 38 kilometers outside the city, about 10 kilometers closer to the city than Pilar on the same highway. Fortunately, I work at home and didn't have to drive in every day for work and when I did, it was at a time of my choosing. The problem used to be (it's been some 5-6 years since I lived out there so things may have changed, but I doubt it for the better) that the traffic going in in the morning and coming out in the evening was absolutely horrible. Horrendous. We're talking about 20-25 kilometers of bumper-to-bumper traffic sometimes, moving very slowly. Not to mention the toll booth you have to go through coming and going, at something around $20 pesos a trip now, I believe. The problem is there's only one real route to take from out there to and from the city and everyone that lives out there must take it. Unless you take the train, which even my wife, who is from Paraguay and used to dodgy things such as poorly maintained train stations, refused to take. unless she could come and go during the day.

I lived in a closed neighborhood out there and didn't like the way the people there treated my family, they being Paraguayan. Most of the people that live in closed neighborhoods out there are of the "upper class" and they have some ways at looking down their noses at certain people. We didn't have any real problems, just felt shunned (and we heard gossip from all of the Paraguayan maids that worked in these people's houses, who my wife befriended, how they felt about us, supposedly). But we were surrounded by open middle class neighborhoods and many nice people outside the walls of our barrio cerrado. Many of those homes looked to be fine dwellings, though many were surrounded by walls (there are also neighborhoods like villas, or slums, very nearby as well, but i don't think you can completely get away from that as far as I've seen).

Pilar is a pretty nice place, I think. I always enjoyed going up there from where we lived. There's a Jumbo/Easy (Jumbo is a big supermarket, Easy a big hardware store) in a shopping mall with lots of nice shops and restaurants. There used to be a good Mexican restaurant right across the street form the mall, and a really, really good Italian place a few blocks away. Good prices on clothing compared to the city, but still low-quality stuff for the most part.

If I had to commute into the city of BA, though, I think I would have gone mad. And this from a person who used to drive across Houston (freeways always under construction and horrible traffic!) every day to get to work in the 80s and 90s.

You might also look at places like Olivos or Vicente Lopez, just outside the city, much much closer than Pilar (and certainly than Mercedes) on good train lines, not as hard to drive in from or leave the city to (although there is still traffic, sometimes really bad - just not as far) and has some pretty nice living places as well. Even along the highway (Panamericana) that leads out to branch to Tigre, Pilar and Escobar (another decent little place), where it leaves the city is not too bad, for being close-in.

One other thing you might think about - I regret that we didn't stay out in the suburbs if nothing more than for the kids. We have 19, 17 and 15 year old girls (sisters of my wife who came to live with us starting some 8 years ago) and the lifestyle between people out in the far suburbs and here in the city, as far as what kids are allowed to do, is way different. I'm not sure how Olivos and Vicente Lopez are in respect to this, but I think you're making a good move to stay outside the city and not bring your 15-year-old into at least parts of the BA city proper, where kids routinely start partying around 1am and wander the streets at all hours of the wee hours and into the mornings, sometimes even on weekdays. it's a constant fight for us to keep our girls reigned in as teenagers only see what their friends do, not what's good for them :)
 
Thanks a lot ElQueso and Rodolfo!
We already lived in China, and it was a little zoo...and I loved it!
Argentina will be quite easy.
We didn't lived like other expats, expending amounts of money in things we didn't need or didn't really wanted.
We used to save a lot of money there after I learnt mandarin, buying from local stores, specially meat (btw, beef and cheese from Argentina!).
Here in Brazil us$6000 it's a lot with the dollar around 4 reais. So, at least in the first year we will save a lot.
My husband will work in Mercedes, but he told me that it's a very small city, so we need to live in BA.
I choose Pilar area because I saw some nice houses for us$1000, and it's closer to Mercedes. He will go there everyday.
We will discuss it this weekend, and then decide.
Already looking for a tango class here in Brazil!

Thanks a lot!! Muchas Gracias!!
 
I have a divorced friend who lives in capital federal, the father of her children lives in Pilar city. The eldest, 16 years old, doesnt have anything to do. There is only one club in town, all the life is in the closed neighborhoods, if you want to live in Pilar. I think further east, towards Tigre, Benavidez, you will have more options to have quality of life without spending lots of money. Delta is beautiful. Tigre is 40 minutes by car or train to downtown.
 
Pilar to Mercedes 65 kmts .without traffic 1.10 minutes figure 1.30 minutes . Only 10 kmts on freeway the rest on asphalt one lane two way traffic
 
Between lujan and Mercedes is fast now, but in lujan you can loose a lot of time. If I'm the working one, I would rent something near Mercedes ;) also it's much cheaper. Don't know pilar, but seems the best option they have, to be in between. Tigre is way too far, caba also.

You will need 2 cars for sure.
 
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