Cost of Living in South Africa for family of 6?
18 May 2011
My family are moving to White River, the Mpumalanga region of South Africa. We are a family of six. What can we expect the cost of living to befor a family our size?
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Stephanie's Website
I think you'll find the cost of living in South Africa super reasonable, though I'm not sure where you're moving from.
The cost of housing in White River will be significantly less than in the big urban centres like Joburg or Cape Town, but you'll have to pay hefty school fees - as you'll most likely want to send your kids to private schools in the area. If you have 4 school age children this can get expensive. Depending on the age and school of you kids it can up to 42,000 ZAR per annum, not including supplementary fees like school lunches, trips and uniforms. If you're moving here with an expat package, see if you can negotiate education costs in you contract.
On the other hand the cost of food is super reasonable, there's not a ton of expensive eating out options in the area (though Oliver's Restaurant is fantastic), so you'll most likely be cooking at home - count on a grocery bill of about 1200 to 1500 ZAR a week.
You'll also need to buy a car, maybe even two. Public transport in the area is not an option, and you have to drive to get anywhere - it's quite rural. The cost of a car in South Africa depends on whether you go new or old, and pay cash up front or take a lease.
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Dave's Website
Thank you Dave and Stephanie. We are moving from North Carolina, USA.
Also, we are trying to get specifics on how much the items below might be monthly:
Price for a used Van:
Car Insurance:
Auto Gas monthly:
Food for a family of 6 monthly:
Full time housekeeper monthly:
Utilities-phone:
Internet-
Cell Phone-
Thanks again for being willing to help!
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Stephanie's Website
I'm also from NC! Born and bred in Charlotte :) I live in Cape Town, but I've been to White River twice, so though I can't advise on expact prices, I can give you costs according to life here - most likely they'll be a bit less in a small, rural town like White River:
Price for a used Van:
Car Insurance:
Auto Gas monthly: 1200 ZAR (if you fill up with 300 ZAR once weekly)
Food for a family of 6 monthly: 2000 ZAR weekly
Full time housekeeper monthly: 750 ZAR per week (5 days a work week)
Utilities-phone: Depends on your payment plan - most of the mobile companies have first-time user contracts that offer a bit of a discount, I pay 200 ZAR per month for a Blackberry with 140 minutes of talktime, all Blackberry services included and 200 text messages. Suits me perfectly, but then again, it might not be right for you. You can install a landline for 283 ZAR from Telkom and then buy pay-as-you-go vouchers to top it up. Calls to the landline from other sources are free. I have a landline solely to make and receive international calls and communicate with my family.
Internet- You can buy a Dongle (Mobile Broadband) from Cell C for a once off fee of 3000 ZAR. This gets you 5GB of data per month for 12 months. If you're a family of six though, you may want to consider installing something more permanent. To do this you'll need to have an ADSL line installed through Telkom and then you can choose your service provider and the package you'd like. Costs vary depending on how many GBs of data you'd like per month. For an unlimited package at the fastest Internet speed expect to pay around 500 ZAR per month.
Stephanie,
Thank you very much. This helps alot. Good to know their is a fellow North Carolinian there. How do you enjoy Cape Town? I hear nothing but good things about Cape Town and how beautiful it is there.
Bless you,
Eric
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Stephanie's Website
Cape Town is an amazing place. In my opinion, it's one of the most beautiful places in the world and one of the most interesting. Some people from western nations initially struggle with the wealth disparity. Having such glaring poverty within a close proximity can certainly be unnerving, but ultimately, you just have to set boundaries for yourself about what you can and cannot do. Other than that though, there's few negatives to life in the Mother City.
Please let me know how else I can be of help, and if you've not already checked it out - you should have a look at the Expat Arrivals South Africa guide.
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Dave's Website
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Sine's Website
I get a lot of cost of living questions through my blog and always have trouble answering them. It so depends on your situation. But you might find our family pretty comparable to yours. We live in Joburg and do find it's more expensive than NC. As Stephanie said, school fees will be adding up, as will fees for extracurricular stuff like sports and music, though all of that is quite reasonable here. Maybe your company will pay the school fees? The things you will also pay more for: gasoline (though not as bad as Europe - I'd get a Diesel for more fuel efficiency), food (if you insist on buying what you know from home), travel (everything is on a per person basis and families of 6 don't do well in that respect, let me tell you that! And Africa, contrary to what you might think, is very expensive to travel in, with the possible exceptiong of Cape Town). Electricity is also more expensive, we pay about R2000 to R2500 per month in the summer and try to stay below R3500 in the winter (underfloor heating is very expensive and it is often cheaper to get a couple of gas heaters). Water is about R1000 per month. And we've already adapted our expensive American habits quite a bit! Insurance for your household goods and car will add another R1000 to R1500, and then your typical stuff like phone/internet (R1100 or so for us), cell phones (R850), cable TV (R560) etc. I can't think of anything else at the moment. The one thing we find cheaper than in the US is going out to eat, and there are plenty of nice restaurants to choose from here, though I don't know about White River.
Let me know if you have any other questions!
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