Get Paid To Live In Italy

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Jason

Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Jason »

I realize I am becoming one of those annoying cut and paste motherfuckers but here I am again:

http://www.cnn.com/travel/article/cande ... index.html

My DW is Italian and loves traveling to Italy. She brought this to my attention and was surprisingly serious. I'd say about 40% serious. The idea of retiring outside the US is gaining some legitimate traction in our household, especially if it expedites things. Especially somewhere slow and quiet. Due to my personality, I quickly become an honorary member of any senior group that is not associated with a specific historical event, so I don't care about the demographic.

I remember reading an article about the actor Daniel Day Lewis who took a few years off to become a cobbler. I'm not sure I could do that, but I think I could bake. I do have experience in drinking too much espresso and inciting boisterous public arguments that teeter on violence.

I would greatly appreciate an ERE dissection of this article. Pros/cons/scam potential etc. I honestly have no clue.

wood
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by wood »

I would greatly appreciate an ERE dissection of this article. Pros/cons/scam potential etc. I honestly have no clue.
Cons & pros, depending on you:

- Ocean seems far away.
- You don't really get paid to live there. You get a one-time, fairly small cash deposit but you have to earn it through EUR 7,500/year job. I'm sure there are ways of circumventing this, e.g. by having a business that makes 7500 income.
- There might not be many jobs to be found, Italy has a high unemployment rate.
- Be aware of how it might affect you if Italy with its debt problems exits EU.
- The city might be more "dead" a few years from now.
- I'm not surprised if the population is aging, which might be one of the reasons for its decline. This could be positive in a scenario where you want to offer valuable/modern skills to the market.
- Language (& culture) barrier.
- Something like this would feel like a remote "get-away" for me. Be aware of how "remote" you really want to live. Maybe it's not remote enough? How is this for comparison: http://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/a ... ml?gallery
- Everyone probably knows everyone.
- Seems to be close to the beautiful Italian countryside.
- Low cost of living.
- Likely access to good and afforable wine.
- Italian pasta. Mmmm.

Otherwise, the best general advice I can offer is to do some extended travelling to any location you are considering inhabiting.

Jason

Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Jason »

@ Wood - perfect thank you.

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Ego
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Ego »

When Mrs. Ego came home with stories of Italy from her language student I started looking deeper into the nuts and bolts of making the move. I bought the book, Living and Working In Italy, A Survival Handbook, after reading a few extended quotes in the heath and taxes sections of an Italian expat internet forum.

I bought an older version. This is the newest version.
https://www.amazon.com/Living-Working-I ... 1909282898

Maybe I ought to start working on learning Italian.

You mentioned that your wife is Italian. You've probably seen the thread on obtaining Italian citizenship here... but in case you missed it.
viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2497

chenda
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by chenda »

Corruption, bureaucracy and the Mafia are all endemic in southern Italy. It's basically a rich country run like a third world society.

Just something to consider.

Jason

Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Jason »

(@) Ego

Thank you - I haven’t seen that thread.

My wife leads an Italian conversation class as part of her job functions so That helps. She also watches cheesy Italian television shows to improve. Based on those, everyone in Italy is either a cop, a gangster or a priest.

So what was your feeling - is it still an option?

@ Chenda - I live in New Jersey so I’m kind of used to that.

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Ego
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Ego »

Most certainly an option that is becoming more certain with each day.

We thrive in places where corruption and bureaucracy are endemic. I take pleasure in trying to figure out the motivations of someone who is extremely different from myself then using finesse to make our goals align.

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Seppia
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Seppia »

I'm Italian, back in Italy since late 2015 after many years abroad, will try to offer some help in random order

I would not move to the place in the article, ever.
I'm sure it's beautiful, but so are 90% of Italian towns.
This place is likely dead, with zero job prospects (maybe not an issue), and zero intellectual stimulation.
There are TONS of Italian cities with literally hundreds of times more beauty, history, and access to the real world, all with a ridiculous cost of living.

Assuming working and need for immediately close high quality health care are not an issue I would look into:
Palermo in Sicily. Insanely beautiful, it is the capital of the Arab-Nordmanner art style. Google for beauty Martorana, Monreale, Immacolata Concezione Al Capo, Vucciria Market.
Perfect weather, art, history, stupid low cost of living, a good airport, incredible food.
Minuses include: anything that is public administration will take ages, healthcare is subpar
Mafia is an inexistent issue for the average human being that doesn't need a job

If you want the feel for a first world country with functioning infrastructure, you can give up some cheapness in cost of living and some (but not a lot) weather quality by considering
Trieste
Beautiful city with a taste of the austro Hungarian empire, very clean, everything works, very rich and elegant.
Food is great because of the combination of Italian and mitteleuropean heritage. Everything works by Italian standards
Cost of living is still very low, but clearly higher than Palermo.
If you spend $20000 per year in the Chicago area you will spend $7000-8000 in Palermo and 9-12000 in Trieste
The reduction in spending is not equal in all categories.
Owning a car for example is cheaper in the USA
Healthcare costs in Italy are insignificant vs the USA
Good quality food is incredibly cheaper in Italy, and you can buy very decent wine for $5 per bottle (something equivalent will cost you $20-25 in the USA)

Let me know if you want any specific info

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Seppia
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Seppia »

I just picked the first two cieties that came to mind. I think the best quality of life in Italy can be had in the mid sized cities.
Some others to look into

Genova
Torino
Verona
Como
Trento
Siena
Napoli
Bari
Siracusa

jacob
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by jacob »

Well, let's have some numbers? I find it really hard to translate cost of living because the numbers given are always much higher than what I spend and I don't know if it translates directly.
  • 1bd/1ba apartment less than 5km from downtown but not "in the ghetto" (presuming you have ghettos)?
  • internet (fast enough for streaming)?
  • 5kg bag of rice?
What about water, heat, sewerage, electricity? If you're only using 20% of the average person, do you only pay 20% of the bill or are you in the domain where 90% of your bill is taxes and minimum fees (like in Chicago)?

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Seppia
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Seppia »

1bd/1ba apartment less than 5km from downtown but not "in the ghetto" (presuming you have ghettos)?
€250 to 400 in the south, €300 to 500 in the north.
These are rough estimates for large cities except for Milan and Rome.
We live in Monza, which in terms of costs is similar to large northern Italian cities except Milan, and we spend €800 per month for a 2bd/1ba in the most expensive part of town
Except for maybe two or three big cities, there's no ghettos.


internet (fast enough for streaming)?
About €30 per month.


5kg bag of rice?
We pay €3 for high quality 2kg arborio rice. You can probably pay half of that for cheaper products. Not sure though, I'm very picky with my ingredients and with rice and pasta I feel it's always worth to get the good stuff becuause price is still low and quality difference is huge.
500g bag of the best pasta is €0.5 on sale (there's always a sale)

What about water, heat
These are paid all together unless you live in a single family house (only the very very very rich live in single family houses inside a city) in a gerenric "fees" compartment that you pay on top of rent.
These include everything except for electricity, gas and trash taxes, and they vary from 50€ to 150 per month depending on factors like do you have elevators, gardens, etc.

sewerage
Depends on the city. It's usually a flat fee per person unfortunately. We pay €220 per year for 2 people. Service is excellent though.

electricity
€24 per month in 2016, and we don't have a gas kitchen.

If you're only using 20% of the average person, do you only pay 20% of the bill or are you in the domain where 90% of your bill is taxes and minimum fees (like in Chicago)?
Depends.
In general there are more small shitty taxes in Italy (i.e. the trash tax, or a stupid "you have to pay a €100 per year tax just because you own a TV"), but the big ticket stuff is cheap.
We only buy high quality food ingredients and we eat at home almost every night (we both have free lunch at work, it's a common benefit here), and we spend approximately 140€ per person including wine.
We could easily spend 2/3 of it and eat at home every single meal if we just weren't so spoiled.
Plus a lot of stuff like utilities (for example) will have a fixed cost plus a variable cost. The less you consume the more the fixed cost has an impact.
Example: electricity, the fixed part makes up about 80% of our fees, but for the average person it's more like 30-40%
So a lot of costs cannot be compressed.

A TL:DR version would be:
The average Italian salary is €1550 net per month, and people with an average salary live an extremely decent life (those who suffer are the jobless).
Imagine an ERE person.

Stahlmann
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Stahlmann »

jacob wrote:
Thu Oct 19, 2017 3:47 pm
...last post...
Will u b in EU again? :o
Can I touch u when u come here?
What a suprise!

More seriously:
Numbeo.com
But self reported and mostly for consumers.

You also worked in high finance with big databases. Have you seen for example price of rice as commodity, haven't you? :D


Edit: ok, missed the point. I wrote this post using mobile after hard day at work. Lord forgive me, please.

Edit2:
Jacob asked for numbe.com for ERE folks... I think only here or on local FB groups (because most communities went from forums to this pseudo group wall exchange on FB) you/we will able to find so. 'Extremes' answers (as outsiders/outliers).

I also look for such data on Germany/Austria/Switzerland as a bit below average job-intern-foreigner. Thanks for any reply! :D

Edit3:
Theearthawaits.com

Jason

Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Jason »

@ Seppia - Grazie. Grazie. Grazie.

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Seppia
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Seppia »

Not a problem, I'll always try and contribute as much as I can if I feel I can be useful.
Jacob (via his book) has (positively) impacted my DW and I's life in such a way that the very least I can do is try help here whenever I can.

This mostly means recipes and info on Italy :D

so please never hesitate to ask, it may take me a little time but I'll respond to any questions you might have

Jason

Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Jason »

Ok, Seppia, time to feed the beast.

Thoughts on Monopolia, per favore.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/love-at-fi ... 1492782606

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Seppia
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Seppia »

Monopoli is great.
A very good friend of mine lived there for a few years, and a guy I hired is from nearby Bari.
The coastal area of Puglia (the region where monopoli is) is among the absolute best in terms of food, with fantastic ingredients (Puglia is where most of southern agricolture takes place, most of the tomatoes and olive oil come from there for example), lots of fish, a very healthy diet.
Monopoli is small and it doesn't have nearly the same history and art available in Sicily, Naples area or Rome area, and in my opinion that would be one of the major pluses of being in Italy.
Don't get me wrong, there's still tons of history to be seen around (I mean, you're in Italy), but it's not the same.
You would still be getting the same southern amazing weather, the same administrative inefficiencies and subpar healthcare.
Costs are stupid low, but so is all southern Italy except for Rome.
I'd still pick Palermo and it's not close, especially for a two-three years experience at a relatively young age (no need for immediately available excellent healthcare).
Palermo is a better hub for moving around Italy (very good airport), and Sicily is one of the best looking regions in Italy.
Did you know you can go skiing in Sicily?
Also, did you know that you have Greek ruins, roman ruins, Arab ruins, Nordmanner ruins?
Did you know that Siracusa is older than Rome?

Please note: I'm from the other side of Italy (lake Como) and have zero ties to Sicily , so I'm not a homer.

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Seppia
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Seppia »

The thing is though, the bar in terms of beauty is so ridiculously high in Italy that you have to try very hard to go wrong.
For example
I now live in little known Monza, people have sometimes heard of it because of the Formula 1 GP.
Here, it's considered a cute little town and nothing more.
I'm originally from lake Como (45 mins away) and in my lifetime prior to moving here I had visited it only once (to see the GP when I was 16).

I encourage you to google pictures of downtown Monza, but here's a few from my last weekend at the park, the second largest public park in Europe:

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This park is free obviously.

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Seppia
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Seppia »

A few pics of Palermo

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Ego
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by Ego »

Seppia, are you in sales? You sold me. I'm ready to move to Palermo now.

Weather is important to me. I found a great tool to compare the annual weather of two different cities.

http://www.syngron.com/weather/

BRUTE
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Re: Get Paid To Live In Italy

Post by BRUTE »

at least they don't have good food in Italy, like pesto, parmesan, pizza, pasta, prosciutto.. and that's just the Ps.. fuck. that country should be illegal.

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