Personal experience. How much is a month of living in Chicago

Photo: from the personal archive of the author

“Well, how much, approximately, do you spend on life in a month?” Is the most important and frequently asked question of friends from Ukraine, and just people from communities and forums about life in America who plan to move here and are looking for useful information.

I want to answer this question for everyone at once and tell you how much our family spent over the last month. There are three of us: my husband, me and our nine-month-old baby. We moved to the USA from Ukraine, the city of Dnepropetrovsk, 10 months ago. We live in the town of Elmwood Park - it's 30 minutes by car from the center of Chicago.

Only my husband works. I stay at home with the baby, we don’t have a nanny. We have not yet experienced particularly large expenses for a child, since for the baby shower I was given children's clothes and toys for the year ahead. The baby still eats little “human” food - only baby purees, and, basically, I prepare them myself, so I will simply take into account the cost of ingredients in the total amount of food expenses.

We rent a two bedroom apartment. We have one car. At work, the husband is not fed, so he has breakfast at home, I give him lunch with him, as they say: first, second and compote. We have supper, basically, also at home, but at least once a week we like to pamper ourselves with some kind of new kitchen, establishment or just delivery of something tasty to the house.

I keep records of expenses from our very first day in the USA. And that's how, on average, our expenses look like on the example of April.

1. Rental housing

Rent eats up almost half of our income. We pay $80 per month for our apartment of about 850 square meters (950 square feet). This amount includes all utilities except electricity and internet. We have regular parking - on both sides of the street along the houses.

2. Electrician, Internet, laundry.

We pay for the light almost the same in winter and in summer - around $ 25. The Internet costs us $ 30 monthly. The speed is average, we have enough. Washing machine and dryer we have a shared 3 apartment. They are located in the basement. The cost of one wash is $ 1,5. Drying costs the same. Usually, we only erase, hang up to dry things without any problems and you can downstairs. For a month, I erased 5 times. Accordingly, and spent - $ 7,50.

3. Mobile telephony

In order to save money, we use communications together with our friends, uniting our 4 lines into a common “family”. Unlimited calls, unlimited messages and 2 GB of high-speed Internet for each cost us $126 per month for all four of us with all taxes and fees. My husband and I have a monthly share of $63.

4. Products

On average, we spend $400-450 on food per month. I don’t know if it’s a lot or a little, but we eat decently. I cook all kinds of meat and fish dishes all the time. We love fish steaks and shrimp. And, of course, sweets and fruits. We mostly buy groceries from the Polish store Rich Fresh Market. What you need to buy in large quantities - flour, sugar, butter, cheese, mayonnaise, ketchup, tea, spaghetti - we buy at the Costco wholesale store. It is five minutes away from home by car. For my child, I make purees from everything organic and buy it along with all other products.

5. Child expenses

So far, the only monthly expenses for our baby are the purchase of wet wipes, diapers and vitamins. Occasionally we can buy some small toy, but we already have enough of them - friends constantly give them to us. I buy diapers on Amazon in large packages and pay up to $35 per box. It lasts us about 2 months. That works out to $17.50 per month and 800 wet wipes for $17. Total for April $34,50.

6. Car expenses

The car in our family is only one. We pay him one-way insurance, which in the event of an accident it is our fault that only expenses related to payments to other participants are covered.. For six months, such insurance costs us $300, that is, $50 per month. We spent $65 on gasoline in April. Total - $115.

7. Household chemicals

We buy chemicals exclusively at the Dollar Tree store, where everything is sold for $ 1. We tried to buy expensive detergents, but the result was the same. Therefore, we spend per month up to $ 15 on 15 units, which include detergents, garbage bags, scourers, brushes and the like. In April, $ 12 was spent on this item.

8. Leisure and entertainment

Here we usually record all our walks, trips to cafes and get-togethers with our friends. My husband always goes to the bathhouse with the guys once a month. And April was no exception. The sauna, including food and drinks, costs him $70. We also went for a walk to the zoo. Admission was free, but we spent $12 on snacks and $11 on parking. Also, at the end of the work week, my husband always pleases us and himself with something tasty. This month he ordered pizza home twice, spending $21 on it, once we were in a Mexican cafe, spent $20 there, and once we ended up in a Lithuanian restaurant, where we left $60. The total for April is $194.

9. Personal care

Once a month my husband goes to get his hair cut. In April, as usual, he spent $20 on his haircut along with a tip. I bought eyebrow tweezers, deodorants and cream. I paid $30 for all this. And just this month, a friend “lured” me to an eyebrow correction procedure - when they pluck your eyebrows with threads and make a beautiful shape. This popular procedure here cost me $12. The total was $62 per month.

10. Shopping

We do not go shopping very often, but in April it was just the thing. My husband bought a t-shirt and socks, and I saw a beautiful dress and just could not resist. For all this, we gave $ 40, because we usually buy things in not very expensive stores, such as Ross Dress for Less and Burlington.

11. Кредиты

For the New Year, my husband and I bought ourselves new phones - so to speak, we gave ourselves gifts. We bought them on my credit card, under the terms of which, for the first 12 months, the funds on the card can be used without any interest or overpayments. So we took two phones, paid $900 for them and divided this amount into 12 equal parts - 12 months of interest-free payments. Well, now we pay these payments in equal installments monthly. In April, as usual, we paid $75 for the loan.

So, according to my calculations, in April we spent $ 2018. I always keep records of our expenses in a regular Excel spreadsheet. This is what my table of expenses for April looks like, if you translate it into a chart.

April Expenditure Chart

And remember: if, for example, we in Chicago spend a little more than $2000 a month on living expenses, and another family in another state spends $5000, this does not mean that life is cheap in Chicago. Everyone just lives within their own means.

See also:

Personal experience. How much is a month of living in California.

How much is a comfortable life in the largest cities in America 50.

How much does it cost to raise a child in the USA.

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