Never Retire: We Spend The Same On Food & Drink in Spain As in the US—How Is This Even Possible?
Five reasons why the totals match but the life doesn’t.
In two recent Never Retire stories for paid subscribers, I laid it all out:
Earning and spending down to the euro and dollar.
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Here’s the paradox: in Los Angeles, a month of food and drink—(at and away from home)—cost us about the equivalent of €1,200. In Valencia, the total is almost identical.The number is eerily close.
But what does that money buy? An entirely different life.
That’s the real story—not whether life abroad is “cheaper,” but how the same line item in your budget can transform depending on the structure of the place you live.
Today, I want to tackle that paradox.
Next week, we’ll get into how currency exchange reshapes the picture month to month, and then how the self-employed really get taxed in Spain compared to the US, cutting through the noise that taxes are “high” or “45%” in Spain.
So, how is it even possible that we spend about the same on food and drink here in Spain as we did in LA—yet it feels completely different?
I have five interrelated reasons why.