You can live like a king in a hyperinflated nation if you are not a citizen of that country.
Posted by John Reed on
I said here recently that it looked like you could live like a king now in Argentina because vouchers are a foreigner who is allowed to use USD. WSJ today has an article today touting that country and Japan and Hungary for being attractive to Americans for cost reasons. The yen has fallen against the dollar.
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I long ago noted Budapest had a very low cost of living. The reason today is same as Japan. The forint fell against the dollar.
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I was in Budapest in 2018. It creeped me out. I like London. But when you leave London moving east the intrusiveness of government and politics climbs each time you cross a border. And the increase is much bigger when you cross into the former USSR or Warsaw Pact.
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People with knowledge of Budapest told me Hungarian is a very difficult language and that my knowledge of German and Russian would not help. One guy gave a gift to his neighbor. She accepted it coldly without a thank you. The president is Victor Orban who seems friendly toward Putin, hostile to Sweden and Finland joining NATO. Hungary is a NATO nation. I think both Hungary and Poland have gotten into trouble further judiciary not being adequately independent from the politicians.
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I also heard the cost of renting there is low because they have many ancient Soviet mid-rise apartment buildings into which you should not move.
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Some readers here said they went to Budapest and liked it a lot.
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If you want to avail yourself of such low costs in Hungary, go in slowly to check out these various issues.
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Numbeo.com has detailed cost of living figures from all over the world.
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I long ago noted Budapest had a very low cost of living. The reason today is same as Japan. The forint fell against the dollar.
.
I was in Budapest in 2018. It creeped me out. I like London. But when you leave London moving east the intrusiveness of government and politics climbs each time you cross a border. And the increase is much bigger when you cross into the former USSR or Warsaw Pact.
.
People with knowledge of Budapest told me Hungarian is a very difficult language and that my knowledge of German and Russian would not help. One guy gave a gift to his neighbor. She accepted it coldly without a thank you. The president is Victor Orban who seems friendly toward Putin, hostile to Sweden and Finland joining NATO. Hungary is a NATO nation. I think both Hungary and Poland have gotten into trouble further judiciary not being adequately independent from the politicians.
.
I also heard the cost of renting there is low because they have many ancient Soviet mid-rise apartment buildings into which you should not move.
.
Some readers here said they went to Budapest and liked it a lot.
.
If you want to avail yourself of such low costs in Hungary, go in slowly to check out these various issues.
.
Numbeo.com has detailed cost of living figures from all over the world.
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1 comment
John, Hungary is a corrupt place. I have been to Debrecen, Szeged and Budapest several times and stayed in Hungary for months due to a personal commitment but will never live there permanently. I have lived in the UK, Switzerland and Australia so I was in a position to assess the lifestyle benefits but it was not that appealing. If you need to get your teeth done at a reasonable cost it is not a bad place. Very rude retail staff. Coming out of communism slowly. Orban is taking the EU for a ride. He gets a lot of EU grants. I even considered real estate investment but decided the risk was not worth it. This is good for the young westerners who call themselves digital nomads who know how to live cheaply than even the locals. They call themselves entrepreneurs but mostly deluding themselves and are living a hippy lifestyle. One can only call oneself an entrepreneur when an insane amount of money start pouring into your bank account. That is the only definition I believe in. You like Budapest when you visit it as a tourist. Try living there for six months and start dealing with day to day living problems. I lived in Zurich for a long time and didn’t care much for it so definitely not Budapest.