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Comment by claudius | Hacker News Reader

I used to live on 700 €/month for three years, where I spent 310 €/month on rent (including warm water and heating for a 1-room + kitchen + bathroom flat of 40m²) and saved a further 100 €/month, plus ~50 €/month for university fees (~250 €/6 months).

So I lived off (700 - 310 - 100 - 50 = 240 €)/month, which I found to be no particular problem – ~150 €/month on food, toothbrushes etc. (general groceries), 30 €/month on telecommunications, 35 €/month on electricity which left me with 25 €/month for eating out once or twice plus clothes.

Hence, I’d say that 7 £/day is perfectly possible, provided that rent is covered by other means (as it is for German long-term unemployment benefits of ~350 €/month).

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Did you have a similar mix and quality of clothes at the end of tht period as at the start? Similarly, was you washing machine (if you had one) of similar quality? T.v, computer?

It is relatively easy to live on a budget starting from a position where you have all relatively new stuff, and where you have a full closet of relatively new clothes.

Also: €25 for eating out once or twice plus clothes?

You can get jeans for 10 €, lasting about four months (so a year if you have three), shoes are roughly twice the price, three t-shirts usually come in at 5€ (Aldi is wonderful at that – thinking of which, I mostly bought my clothes there, including them in the general groceries category[0]). I bought a used washing machine when I moved in for 90 €, which had to be replaced after two years, so this would be 3.75 €/month. The oven came with the flat and worked fine, I got an old fridge from my grandparents which was still functional when I moved out, but likely sucked up far more energy than necessary.

Tech was relatively decent (used X300, used X41, a weird desktopy-mediacentery thing) when I moved in, I got a T410s after two years from the money I had saved when the battery in the X300 failed and sold the latter for 500€ (350 after replacement of said battery). Trips to my parents were usually paid directly by them, but they obviously weren’t strictly necessary either.

You can get a döner and a drink or two for ~8 € – surely not eating out, but not eating in either.

[0] I spent about 25 € there per week, which would give 120 €/month for strictly groceries and a further 30€ for extras (cheap pans, clothes, paper etc.).

You could do much better on clothing. A single pair of Gap jeans on sale for $40-50 will last me over a year wearing them almost daily. Or go to a thrift store and pick up a pair for $5. You can get free swag shirts at any tech event.

Three 10 € jeans lasting a year in total is still less than one 40 € jeans lasting a little more than a year – not to mention that at least two jeans are usually a good thing to have.

I also didn’t mean to imply that I had found an optimal solution, but merely a solution satisfying the constraints.

It's really not that difficult. I live on basically the same budget (also a student in Germany), as do many others I know. I have a washing mashine which is over ten years old, but still works fine. Got it from somebody who bought a new one for free. My tv is really old, I got it from a friend who got it some years before that from their grandmother. About once a year I buy a new jeans and 1-2 tshirts.

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