Living Costs in a Stockholm Suburb, part 2
Here’s a follow up of my living costs, compared to the previous year. I track my living costs only out of curiosity, and I don’t make budgets or such. Since I live alone in a small apartment 26 mins from the central station, I don’t have very high living costs (for living as a single in Stockholm). Here’s a summary of the costs for this year:
Apartment costs
Apartment fee: on average 2500 SEK/mo just like the previous year, but it is at the time of writing 2600 SEK/mo so it’s increasing.
Mortage interest: 970 SEK/mo after the 30% tax deduction, down from 1100 last year, mostly thanks to lower interest rates and because I changed my loan into variable rate. I’ve also amortized quite a bit but most of the difference is from the lower interest rate. In the graph the tax deduction is not taken into account, and the bank decided the move this quarters’ payment date ahead in time so that payment is not included in the graph.
Apartment refurbishment and maintenance: 550 SEK/mo, down from 870 SEK/mo. Most of this cost was for a new combo refrigerator/freezer which costed approx 5000 SEK including delivery, installation and removal of the old one. The old one was quite old, it was installed 23 years ago and was even made in “FR Germany” i.e. West Germany(!). New tiles for the entryway is also included in the 550 SEK/mo average for this year (the previous year’s blog post is wrong).
Electricity: 250 SEK/mo, up from 200 SEK/mo only due to some payments being lumped together. In reality there’s no change at all.
Total housing costs: 4300 SEK/mo, down from 4600 SEK/mo mostly due to a lower interest rate on the mortgage.
Basic costs
Food: 1800 SEK/mo, up from 1500 SEK/mo. I make the same buying descisions as last year, but there have been more organic food to choose from in the stores this year so I’ve been able to buy a greater share of organic food than before. That’s probably the main reason for the increase.
Misc. household: 500 SEK/mo, down from 1300 SEK/mo. Perhaps because I have most of the kitchen utensils and tools etc. so now it’s mostly sporadic purchases, e.g. replacing old light bulbs with LED lights etc.
Furniture: Included in “Misc. household”. I bough a wooden table for the sofa for 1500 SEK. It looks nice but it’s really sensitve to water because it was not properly covered with protective oil in the factory. According to the manual you have to do this yourself, which I still have to do (for now it’s covered with a cloth for protection).
Public transit: 690 SEK/mo, unchanged. I extended my 1 year card with another year and the price was still the same.
Insurance, social security, etc: 600 SEK/mo, up from 300 SEK/mo. One of the fees was “free” during the first year, hence the increase. There was a small price decrease during the year, so it’s not 700 SEK/mo that I expected initially.
Internet: 250 SEK/mo, down from 310 SEK/mo on average because I had to pay for the cable modem the first year. Still on the same ComHem subscription that I’ve cancelled starting from september (a week left on it). Then I’ll either use a smartphone to share my unlimited data subscription or get some subscription from Bredbandsbolaget.
Mobile: 90 SEK/mo (under “Other”), up from 60 SEK/mo.
Radio/TV receiver tax: 170 SEK/mo, unchanged.
Total basic (non-housing) costs: 4600 SEK/mo, down from 4900 SEK/mo. This doesn’t include the 600 SEK/mo which is still unclassified but mostly belongs to this category.
Leisure costs
These are the things that are indeed nice, but you can live without:
Travel: 50 SEK/mo, down from 1700 SEK/mo. No trip to another country this year, hence the big decrease.
Eating out: 700 SEK/mo, unchanged.
Total leisure costs: 750 SEK/mo, down from 2400 SEK/mo.
Total cost
There’s still 600 SEK/mo missing from the three categories above. Most of that belongs to the “Basic costs” category. Includes dentist visit, clothes, hairdresser, weekly newspaper (Fokus), etc.
The total cost including everything above and the uncategorized stuff is 9 800 SEK/mo, down from 12 600 SEK/mo. Most of that change is because I didn’t go to another country this year.
© Samuel Lidén Borell