Living Costs and life in Poznan?

Hi,

I will be moving to Poznan in 2 weeks and I would truly need some help regarding the following:

1. Housing costs - I will be looking for a flat in the center of the city that is fully furnished. Bed room, kitchen, living room, kitchen and parking if possible..

2. Monthy service fees - High speed internet, cable tv, cell service, power, water, trash, and so on.
3. Food/living - Is it expensive eating out for mid range dinners? How is shopping?
4. Average Salary - What is the med range salary for an IT Manager? I know what I will make just want to see what the average...

5. English speaking - I do not know much Polish (a few words) I speak more Russian and spanish and as English is my native just would wonder how hard it will be to fit in?

I would like to thank you in advance for your help and input concerning the above and I truly look forward to my move to Poznan.. :)

1) A decent flat in the current climate will cost around 2000 pln and about 300 pln per month for bills. Avoid Wilda, Jezyce and Lazarz as they are pretty rough. If your budget can stretch to it look at "City Park" on Wyspianskiego street, Its awesome and the flats are becoming reasonably priced now. 2700 pln gets you a 1 bedder with access to the on site swimming pool, gym and sauna. Also its a 3 min tram ride from the centre.

dom.gratka.pl/tresc/401-24700071-wielkopolskie-poznan-grunwald-wyspianskiegocity-park.html
dom.gratka.pl/tresc/401-24727449-wielkopolskie-poznan-grunwald-city-park-okolice.html

2) Budget 300 pln per month for utilities and internet although some flats include this,

3) A good meal out will be about 70 pln per head, There are cheaper places but the price reflects the quality. We spend about 150 pln per week on shopping between 2 of us but we do eat a lot of meat, beef etc.

4) Average salary here is ****. I'm not sure what an IT manager will get as i've never worked for a Polish company. I'm guessing you want to aim for 10,000 pln per month.

5) You'll be fine, I've intentionally refused to speak Polish and i've found that anyone worth speaking to can speak English.

Finally when you get here be on your guard for people trying to rip you off. Polish people are generally very un trustworthy and you can find yourself paying double for things as they assume that as you speak english you must be wealthy. This is very common so be on your guard and when getting in a taxi always agree a price first.

Hope this helps.

Hi is 11k netto in Poznan good?

Great info thank you very much... Salary will be about what u have indicated and it is a U.S. Company in Poland ....

£600 a month??? :0

Or you could get a WHOLE HOUSE in a decent area round by me :)


Judging by those prices, you need to be wealthy even if you only speak Polish!

Yes you could get cheaper places but if you're a foriegner living in Poland you might as well get the best you can afford. You can get a house somewhere in the city for that but the chances are it'll be a commute from the centre or in a **** area. Personally city park is the place I would choose if i was staying here. we pay 1800 a month for a place in the suburbs that doesn't even have a pool.

I assume that you'll be staying in a hotel when you first move here - if so, feel free to give me a shout when you come, I'll happily help you find somewhere decent to live. There's some choice - but if you tell me where your work will be based, I can give you a reasonable idea of costs and prices. The city centre is quite spread out, so it does depend on the exact location.

TRASH, im sorry dear fellow over here we speak the Queens, so that'll be rubbish.

Hi guys, Ive been here 1 week now but am scheduled to be here for 2 years. My employer is suggesting an appartment in Warta. Is this area OK?

Get something in the area called "Polanka" - that's probably the best area for someone like you :)

I have a flat for rent at the moment in the centre. 58sq mtrs, brand new with parking space, no one has lived in it yet. I would like to think it is done to a high standard. It has just been placed on the market for 2000pln monthly plus 490 admin czyncz. It is fully furnished and equiped.

pm me if interested and I can send you more details.

the development is kazimerza wielkiego, about 5-10 mins walk to old town and stary browar.

Cheers, Ill request apartments in this area.

Merged: COST OF LIVING IN POZNAN

Hi everyone!

I am planning to move to Poznan soon. I wanted to know how much do I need to carry with me if i want to move there. I don't have a jobs at the moment but willing to be registered at an address there and then go for 'hunting'..

I am currently living in a small town with my wife and I've got some savings which is around 2-3k PLN....

Can any of you please tell me the monthly cost of living in Poznan? I would be grateful to you if you could break it down for me!

Regards!

Karl

You are not very clear about anything in your post but maybe this will help a little.

Rent (small studio flat) aprox 1000zł
Bills (electric, cable tv, internet etc) 200zł

Litre of beer in a pub 8zł
Cheap meal out for two 50zł

Can't really help with food shopping as I don't have a clue if you can cook or what you eat! But I would say for two people absolute minimum would be 300zł per month.

In regards to looking for work I don't know what kind of work you are in but if it is teaching then this is one of the worst times of year to look and also from what I have been told it is getting harder and harder to find teaching work in Poznan. What do you do now maybe if you let me know I might be able to sugest some places you could look.

Your savings may get you through two months at a push but if you have to find somewhere to rent don't forget most places will want a deposit which take a large chunk out of your savings.

In short you will find everything more exspensive in Poznań than in a small town.

10 zlotys a day for two people? What does 'absolute minimum' mean?

That would be based on the op being able to cook and then freeze stuff and eat the most basic stuff you could think of, I have argued this point on here before and I'm still not convinced 300zl would be possible but apparently it is!

My partner and I don't eat anything special and yet we spend about 1000zl per month.

So why are you telling this guy that a person could make it on 300 a month?

Just about, with very careful shopping. Plenty have to, including pensioners on 800zl a month.


That's more realistic.

What kind of work will you be looking for? If the answer is "teaching", you need to understand that this is not a particularly good time of year to be looking for teaching work. While there will be a few new classes at the start of the second semester and a couple of teachers who don't come back after the inter-semester break, if you are there in a few weeks from now, there will be little in the way of work to pick up. Also, you are going to need at the bare minimum 1,500zl per month to live on (assuming you do it on an absolute shoestring) and need to remember that you won't be getting paid for four weeks after you start working, so you need enough to last you the time it takes for you to pick up work and then a month after that. You don't want to be in the position where you have to take the first job which is offered to you because you can't eat unless you do: schools are very good at smelling desperation and screwing the desperate down to the lowest possible wage.

Frankly, you'd probably be best off sucking it up and staying where you are, doing whatever work you can (can you not get the bus into Torun and work there?) and saving as hard as possible until August and then move in the middle of that month.

it is possible not to starve: bread 2.50zl, milk 1.50zl, potatoes 4zl

14zl for a kg of chicken breast, 4zl for a kg of frozen pierogi, 4.50 for tomatoes, yogurt pots at 99gr a throw, pasta 6zl a kilo, you can just about live on 350zl for two people and not eat too badly. Not that I'd like to try it (I like food a lot, to the extent that I dropped twice that much on a meal for two last week, food and two drinks each!).

1000zł a month on food? :) Are you shopping daily in Piotr i Pawel? We don't eat anything special either, but we certainly don't starve and we probably 'eat out' as it were maybe 4-5 times a month. I don't budget particularly well so I couldn't tell you my exact expenditures, but it's likely between 400 - 600 a month for two (plus two cats).

It would be nice to know what you plan on doing here - as others have mentioned above, lessons dry up this time of year. Due to cancellations and rescheduling in the last two months alone - both with schools and private lessons - I've earned only around 60% of my usual salary, not that it's a major problem - it's given me a lot of time to get ahead with preparing lesson materials. That being said, I did move to Poznań in October 2010 and didn't start searching until mid-December. By mid-January 2011 I had around 5 classes a week, so enough to scrape by.

@Peter - how many potatoes are you buying such that it costs 4zł? I bought enough potatoes to make 3 meals for 2 people for around 1.20zł in my downstairs delikatesy (I don't weigh them, I just shove the best spuds in the bag). It's certainly possible to survive cheaply here in regards to food, However, it depends on your ability to lower your standards. Carrefour makes for cheap shopping - jars of typical foods (gołąbki, pulpety, klopsiki, bigos) and packets of other things such as krokiety, kopytka, kasza, etc. My weakness is that I live directly opposite a McDonalds, so on those long days where I've been working from early morning and I don't get back home until gone 20:00, it's awfully tempting to indulge on the fatty goodness of a cheeseburger.

(p.s. the hyphen did not offend me)

handy sack of course :)

I said the bare minimum and it would be just about possible if you ate cheap produce and could cook.


Not daily but I do shop there,

Thank you all for replying. ;)




Well, same answer to you three guys- Actually I am not into teaching. Because teaching I believe requires a talent which I don't have. No matter what qualification someone got, but if they don't have that talent its hard to share knowledge. And I don't want to mess with those kids future. But I'd say my field is Accounting, Management, Service industry (Hotel, restos, bar, clubs, call centres).

But I'll give preference to Accounting and Mgt first because I am an ACCA student and been working at supervisory level in a care setting in UK for 3 years.

Well from what you all have been posting I can assume that for the first month:

Rent +deposit= 1800PLN
Bills= 200PLN
Travel= ??? (assumed 100PLN)
Food= 700 PLN
Entertaiment & Clothing= 100PLN

Which sum up to : 3900PLN.

Am I correct ladies & gents?

The norm is a month's rent as security deposit (which you don't often get back). You also need to factor in agency fees, you might be lucky enough to find a place which doesn't have an agent but you probably won't. So you're looking at more like 2000 without an agent and 2500 with. You also need to factor in initial accommodation: where are you going to be staying while you look for an apartment?


So teach adults.


There is call centre work in Poznan but I understand that it pays rather badly.

Blimey. How the other half live! 700 for a meal? What did you have?


Sounds reasonable, but you shouldn't assume you're going to walk into a job within a month. I'm inclined to agree with Harry's idea of sticking around for a while and saving up a bigger stake so you can look for a job without living on the bones of your arse, as Mother Theresa was fond of saying.

I'll stand for 2000 zl.
Don't ask me why so low.
I'd survive.

atelieramaro.pl

the five-course menu, absolutely blinding, best meal of my life.


Yes, one can survive on 2,000zl per month. But it's not going to be much fun. And the thing is, one needs to have month for more than just one month: it takes a month after finding a job to get paid.

Merged:Coming to Poznan in January. 2800 net zloty an ok salary?

Hi everyone,

I recently accepted a job in Poznan and I start upcoming January.

I have been lurking in this forum for quite some time now, and I am getting really confused with all the information. So I was hoping someone could tell me what to expect.

The job pays 4000 zloty gross, so with tax reduction it would be around 2800, it is an entry level job with nice benefits including health care and great prospects. Some say this is good, others say it is way to low, I am doing to get some work experience etc. The place is near Malta Park, so I am looking in that region. My boss said that Polanka or Katowicka is good but Stare Miasto is also ok.

As I am not really a party going person getting drunk every weekend, I reckon I might be able to have a decent life there.

So with this information.

Can anyone tell me a bit about Poznan in general.
Is it regarded as a nice city to live in?
Is the 2800 net zloty an ok salary to work for and have a good life there.
As for housing, I expect to pay something between 1100 to 1500 zloty furnished. Is this an ok estimate?

Thanks for anyone responding to this post. I will be monitoring this thread.

Hey,

it seems for you it's better to live near Stary Rynek ;) it's easy to get to Malta Office from Old Square. And flats are cheaper than in Polanka (but not so modern then). You'll find sth by 1500zl with eveyrthing (I mean rent and bills). And if you like partying you're in the right place :P

Cheers