A Lidl of what you fancy

If you do not count Metro, which is a bit like Cash & Carry in the UK and so you must have a membership card, then there are three supermarket chains in Bulgaria: Billa, Kaufland and Lidl. My dear wife, Irena, flatly refuses to shop at Billa. She says that it is way too expensive. This means that Irena and I are always going to either Kaufland or Lidl and sometimes we go to both on the same day. My dear wife loves the chicken and the pork at Kaufland, as well as the special offers, whereas Lidl rarely seems to have any special bargains. However, the cheese is a lot better in Lidl, she says, and generally Lidl is the cheaper of the two.

I was therefore very interested in a video I saw on YouTube, entitled What is the cost of living in Sofia? This video is on the YouTube “A Taste of Bulgaria” channel and here is the link, so that you can watch the whole video for yourself and then decide if you agree with me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdRkrNxfvX0&t=215s

In order to make a fair comparison with the prices in the UK and prices in the UK, this video only looked at supermarket prices at Lidl, a Lidl in Bulgaria and one in the UK. I thought that was a very sensible and fair way to compare prices.

Yes, it is probably true that a tin of baked beans or a jar of instant coffee might cost you a bit more in Bulgaria. If we are talking about imported items or the things that many Bulgarians probably would not want to buy, then yes, you will probably have to pay a bit more for them here in BG. No surprises there. The video also points out that some things in your Bulgarian Lidl are actually going to be a bit cheaper than in their UK-equivalent. The video gives lots of examples of prices for quite a wide variety of items, in Bulgaria and in the UK. 

On the whole, supermarket prices do seem to be significantly higher in Bulgaria, although this does of course depend on what you are buying. Not surprisingly, locally-produced items tend to be cheaper than they would be in the UK and imported items are more expensive.

There are, however, one or two little problems with this misleading and lop-sided video.

Yes, it is true that quite a lot of people in Bulgaria do actually live in Sofia. But many expats (the sensible ones) do not live there. The fair thing to do, therefore, would be to compare the cost of living in Sofia with the cost of living in London, but the video does not really do that.

Many people in the UK pay a relatively small amount of money for their supermarket bills, compared to how much they are paying in rent or for a big mortgage. However, quite a lot of Brits pay cash when they buy their properties in Bulgaria, so they are not burdened with large mortgage payments or rent each month.

Oh yes, and let us not forget that quaint and quirky British tradition called “Council Tax”. In the UK, you might easily be paying two or three hundred pounds a month for your Council Tax, whereas in Bulgaria your “danak” might only be the equivalent of twenty or thirty pounds a year. So who really cares if your tin of baked beans in a Bulgarian Lidl is going to cost you an extra twenty stotinki?

Yes, I suppose that some young expats might want to work and live in Sofia, but many expats are older and probably retired, so they do not need to live in Sofia. Expats who work online can do their online working anywhere there is a good Internet connection. The financial situation of someone who has bought a house in the Bulgarian countryside is very, very different to that of someone who is renting an apartment in Sofia. Let me give you some real-life examples.

According to Google, the average cost of central heating for a typical house in the UK is between £400 and £500 per month. So let’s suppose that at that the beginning of October you turn on the central heating of your typical British house and then you do not turn it off until the end of March. Heating your house is going to cost you something like £3000. 

Now let’s suppose you have a country house in Bulgaria. Sensible people have a chat with their kermit (no, I am taking about the local mayor, not the character from The Muppet Show) and you ask him (or her!) about some cheap (or free) firewood. Maybe you have an old wooden fence that needs to be replaced or some unhealthy fruit trees that have passed their "sell by" date. Whenever you see a tree that has lost a branch or two or a tree that has been blown over in a storm, you get out your chainsaw and, after a bit of time and effort, you will have a woodshed that is full of logs. (Of course, you are supposed to ask the permission of the landowner first.) And so how much will it cost you to keep your house warm during the winter months? £3000? Probably not even £300.

Most houses in the UK have “gardens” that are so small that they are more like postage stamps. Our country house in Daveri came with 3000 square metres of land. That is probably the average size for a country garden in Bulgaria, so you could have plenty of space for a polytunnel and you could grow all of the veggies and the fruit bushes you could want.

There used to be something called "the National Health Service" in the UK. Nowadays, many Brits have given up on the NHS because they do not want to wait a year for an operation and so they are "going private", even though private medical care is very expensive. Doctors and nurses in the UK also seem to go on strike fairly often and lots of Bulgarian doctors and nurses have left because they do not feel welcome after Brexit. What a mess! 

Here in Bulgaria, I did not have to wait a year for an operation. I saw my GP at the hospital in Veliko Tarnovo on the Tuesday and I had the operation on the Thursday. Oh yes, and most hospital carparks in the UK will cost you about £5 an hour for the privilege of parking your car. Here in Bulgaria, I have never had to pay anything to use the carpark at the hospital.