How much does it cost to live in Italy? Cost of gas, groceries, eating out, cars, and auto insurance

How much does it cost to live in Italy? Costs of groceries, gas, autos, insurance, and eating out. Can you afford to own a home in Italy? How much do you pay for food where you live? We retired early and moved to Italy- was it the best choice for us? Is it the best choice for you? Join me today to discuss costs of living in Italy. Are you a workaholic? CAN you retire? We renovated our new (old) Italian home in Galatina in Puglia Italy! We purchased this property sight unseen and renovated this historic building built in the 1600’s ! This video shows our final product of our renovated properties. We hired electricians, plumbers, builders, tilers, and painters through Edil Casamia here in southern Puglia. This project began in July 2022 and we are now moved in to our renovated Italian home. A big thank you to Pietro at LUBE kitchens for our beautiful kitchen and making our dreams a reality! We are New York natives who moved to Florida then to Italy for a better quality of life! We live here year round thanks to Dennis obtaining Italian Citizenship. Want to retire early and move to Italy? We show through our videos that it is possible with just a little help along the way. This amazing project couldn’t be done without Salento with Love. Davide and the team have been amazing with all the coordinating and direction on this project. We are so grateful to be able to do this with them helping us every step of the way! @salvesalento @salentowithlove3314 ​

Hi I’m Jennifer and welcome to salv salento today’s video we’re going to talk about U one of the questions that some of the people were asking in the comments about how much it actually costs to live Every Day in Italy so the big things that people worry about are

You know how much is it going to cost me to have a house or how much is it for rent an apartment and you know if I need to rent a car if I’m staying there for a few months or something but if you’re planning on spending an extended amount

Of time there and you really want to be able to plan out your expenses because there’s really nowhere you can find this information unless you’re actually there so we were in the south of Italy the the very south in the heel in salento and the the restaurants and supermarkets and

Things in that area were not super expensive because it’s not a main city or a main tourist area so yes there’s a lot of Tourism that’s there but it’s not as busy as up north uh our choices probably aren’t as much as up North but we could

Pretty much find anything that we needed um except for some specialty things which weren’t really very important that was um one of the things that we always told people to bring when when they came to visit we’re like you can stay with us if you bring us you know something this

From the US so other than that um you can pretty much get anything and the quality of everything is really really great so I’m going to start talking to you about the cost of things that are in Italy so the first one was gas so a lot

Of people were worrying about the cost of gas and it’s well known that the cost of gas in Europe is a lot more expensive than in the US it’s probably over double so it when we left and actually it’s been hovering around the same amount right now it’s about $189 a liter which

Ends up translating to about $715 cents a gallon and if you TR you transfer that over to American Dollars um the euro compared to the US dollar right now is about 108 109 so it’s not that much different um it is expensive but the cars use a lot less gas so our

We had a minivan and it’s an automatic and a Volkswagen so our minivan had a normalized gas tank that you would have I guess it’s about 15 Gallons 15 and a half gallons and it used to cost us about 85 EUR to fill the tank up but we got a almost 1,000

Kilometers out of that tank which is about 621 miles so the cars are very very fuel efficient so so even though the gas costs a little bit more you know over double more but you’re probably getting almost double the miles out of the car and that and we had a minivan

They have a lot of other cars that are much more fuel efficient than ours was so you might even spend a lot less than that on gas and not use as much because you know you’re not stop and go and traffic it’s not like that the towns are

You know a little bit further away from each other but there’s not really a lot of traffic lights there’s roundabouts and Country Roads and things like that so you’re not stopping and going like you would be in a city um you don’t go through a lot of gas our tank would last

Us even in the summer driving all around way over a month so you’re not really filling that tank up too much okay so auto insurance was the other one um someone asked about auto insurance I don’t know if I covered it in one of the other videos but we pay a little bit

More than the normal because we wanted to make sure that when our guests or our our kids visited that they were able to drive the car um I didn’t want them to be excluded from it just in case of an emergency and we wanted them to or they

Just wanted to be able to take the car so we pay about $100 a month which is seems high but compared to what some auto insurance is in the United States and what some people are paying for younger children to be able to drive their car um it’s nothing so about

Hundred euros a month averaged out and we did you know pay in full policy we paid it all up front and it works out divided to be about 100 a month and that includes if we lend it to our friends um if we let our kids drive it or whatever

So that was easy for us um we didn’t want to have to worry about any of that so buying a car now one of the other videos I did was on how to buy a car in Italy but someone said well how much do cars cost um there

Are a lot more models of cars available in Italy than are available in the United States they have different agreements different countries that they have um agreements with where the United States doesn’t and there’s a lot of cars that they get there that we would not

Get in the US so I I actually checked and now the Fiat Fiat has the Fiat Panda which is the most popular car in all of Italy they’re everywhere um old ones new ones and now it’s about 15,000 to buy one brand new so you can actually just

Buy a brand new car for 15 ,000 and you don’t have to worry about leasing a car or you know spending a lot of money on a car Ed cars are very easy to come by also um there’s a lot of websites online when you are in Europe in Italy because

You can’t buy a car before you’re actually a resident um if you’re actually already a resident and you want to be able to purchase a car go online and do some used car searches and there’s a lot of places that do online car delivery uh so many more than when

We were purchasing a car so they’re really coming up to be up with the times which is not always the case but um we were really impressed with the list that we saw so we being in the South food is a lot less expensive but um some of the

Things that would be comparable everywhere um milk so I remember we were paying about a120 a liter for milk um that probably is about the same as what you’re paying in the US it’s probably a little bit less eggs eggs are very inexpensive in Italy I think the

Last time we checked a half dozen was a165 or something and I get the big extra large eggs I like to use those especially like you know cooking and things like that um and they were inexpensive so that would be what $3 a dozen a little over $3 a dozen Euros a

Dozen which is not bad at all um vegetables are very very inexpensive so where especially where we are they grow everywhere there’s Farms everywhere and a lot of the produce that you find in the supermarkets is all local um they get deliveries of this produce um we’ve

Actually seen the farm trucks pull up in front of the supermarket bring out the crates of the lettuce and whatever is in season and um that’s another thing so it might be difficult to find certain things at certain times of year because they do eat seasonally uh they do get

Things from other places but most of the time you’re getting things that are in season that are very very fresh and abundant so it is very inexpensive um so that you can make whatever is in season at that time and it won’t cost you a lot

To cook with that meat was one of those things that we realized after we were actually living in Italy that Italians eat a lot less volum volume of meat than Americans do so America I I noticed that in America everyone’s buying pounds and pounds of chicken and meat and steaks

And things like that they don’t really have packages like that in Italy they have smaller packages um you mostly shop fresh for the day or the next day and this meat that you purchase does not have anything added to it it will not last a week in your refrigerator um you

They really don’t freeze anything like that they always want to get everything fresh um so the meat packages were very very small amounts but we actually learned to eat a lot less meat and we felt better when we weren’t eating so much meat um I guess you know it’s per personal

Preference but they don’t eat large volumes of meat they eat more vegetables more pastas more bread things like that and they have all of that together instead of just eating you know a lot of a large quantity of meat and one of the things that was really

Really important for us when we first arrived was alcohol not that we’re alcoholics or anything but um alcohol wine beer things that we were normally used to paying a lot for in the United States were very very reasonable in Italy so a lot of the times where the

Some of the restaurants that we go to they’ll have house wine and that would be a local wine that someone’s producing that they sell to the restaurants and then the restaurants serve that that we were getting five about5 a liter which is nothing and um bottled wine so commercially bottled wine would run

Anywhere from for a good bottle of wine you would expect to spend maybe between six EUR a little over6 EUR to maybe 15 18 year old anything over that it’s not necessarily better it just may be a different brand or just a more expensive vintage or something but Mo most of the

Time the wines that we get would get in the supermarket and if you wanted to go to the wineries actually you could take trips to the wineries and purchase your wine directly from them um because we did a lot of bicycle riding while we were in Italy we noticed there were a

Lot of wine that you didn’t really see advertisements for there weren’t big Billboards around you might see a little sign when you ride into the town that says you Cantina or you know Winery the name of the Family Winery or whatever up this way make a right and you’ll find it

You know right off on the country road and there’s so many of them you could actually spend an entire lifetime going to all of these wineries in Italy but there’s a lot that are in Cento so if you like wine and you like to go visit wineries that would definitely be a

Great destination for you to go to kind of settle in the middle you can stay in leche or outside leche in one of the other towns and be able to visit all of these wineries because you could they’ll give you tours and all kinds of things

Like that and tastings and it’s a lot of fun it’s been a lot of fun we had a lot of fun with our friends and um bringing our guests that came to visit to the places and they were like this is so great I didn’t know and I was like well

We didn’t know we didn’t know either until we showed up um there’s really a lot to explore so alcohol is probably comparable to what’s in the United States cost they don’t have a lot of taxes added that’s much different than the US um and you know depending on

Where you purchase it you might get something that’s you know one or two EUR less a bottle or something’s on special but other than that it’s pretty comparable and all of a lot of the things that you’re able to get in the US you can get there it’s kind of the same

Um beer so there’s a lot of breweries that are you know small micro breweries that are in this area all different you know private labels there’s a lot of imports to um German because you’re in the EU there’s no premium put on German beer um and Italian bruise there’s all

Different brands of Italian beers that you can get and they’re all very reasonable so you can get beer bottled beer in the supermarket probably from 65 Cent Euro a bottle up until you know could be three EUR a bottle maybe a special beer might be four a bottle or

Something like that but um German beers are also this about the same maybe a few cents more but not really much difference to mention um ALS also I remember when we were in the supermarket and they had a special one time of one of those mini kegs of German beer and I

Think it was 15 for a well-known mini keg of you know German beer so I was like that’s a really great buy like well I don’t I won’t be able to drink all that but next time I’m G to get it I’m gonna have a party we’re GNA invite

Everybody over um so those things are very reasonable and again in Italy they don’t do in excess so you won’t really find people drinking a lot um if you do see people drinking a lot most of the time it’s people people from America um but Italians usually will not drink a

Lot of alcohol at once they might have a little something a a little appara TV something after dinner but they’re not drinking bottles and bottles of alcohol or wine um so the next thing is food so ual food that you would purchase every day to make your meals your cheeses your

Cold cuts Meats things like that um so bread and bread and cheese and those kinds of things are all they’re in pretty much every store that you’re going to visit you they might have special stores for cheese um we had one right near us that was an actual Dairy that made the cheese

And then sold it in their in their you know dedicated store um all amazing the any of these products even stuff that you get in the supermarket is unbelievable because there’s no preservatives in it they don’t put they don’t add anything to it and when you

Get it it’s fresh so it they also have a different way of preserving things so some of the cheeses may be in water and sealed a special way and they might last for two weeks like that and they don’t have to worry about it you don’t have to

Add any chemicals to it which I don’t know how they do it but they’ve been doing it for so long that they’ve perfected it so whatever you get is all everything we’ve ever gotten was always amazing you know even Supermarket stuff is like a thousand times better than

Anything that you would get maybe in a special shop in the US because it is so fresh it really is made right there um bread again everybody has different kinds of bread you might find a different bread shop that you like to get special bread at we had a few in our

Town um the range of prices you can get a regular baguette for maybe A50 to a big loaf of bread if you want a lot of bread for you know whatever um that might be $6 six EUR for that um depending on where you go they have

Different fakas all kinds of stuff but bread very reasonable and again everyone’s making it it’s all great so no matter pretty much no matter where you go it’s delicious it’s just you know fresh and they won’t they won’t have anything less than that it’s the quality

Standard there is so so high that if it’s not good no one will buy it and then they won’t be able to sell it so that’s really just the way that it goes so every place that we’ve really ever been everything’s been phenomenal um so those are like your everyday things cold

Cuts and remember if you’re actually looking at prices of things online say I’m searching for the price of this online they list those prices in kilograms so a kilogram is 2.2 pounds so if you took the amount that you would pay for a pound in the US and then you

Multipli that by 2.2 that’s what they’re charging per kilogram a lot of times that kilogram price that we would see in Italy is less than what we would see for a pound in the United States and I’d say how could they sell this for so you know cheap they’re not charging anything this

Practically giving this to me for free but especially esally like a lot of vegetables when they’re in season you’ll see trucks on the side of the road vegetables fruits things like that that they’ll be selling from their farms and so reasonable and really fresh like just

Picked so that you know those kinds of things if you can see that those places and you want to take advantage of that I definitely would because that is better than picking it yourself you know you don’t have to you don’t have to go out

And do it um so dining out we have gotten a lot of questions about dining out and how much it costs depending on where you are if you’re in a regular town if you’re in a tourist town the cost of restaurants will vary but if you’re looking at normal casual dining

Restaurants um we notice that in these types of restaurants the family owns them and the family works there so a lot of the costs are less than they would be if it was a large commercial restaurant which there’s not too too many of them but in the touristy areas you will see

More of them um you’ll see the mom and the kids working there the dad’s working there everyone’s helping together they’ll have other employees obviously because they need more help but these are businesses that they’re building and their legacy businesses that they can pass on to their children that they can

Continue with the Next Generation so we always really tried to use family businesses when can you know give them the business rather than to give it to a big Corporation um because these people are actually building their business and then they’re going to they want to continue and give their children

Something that they can make a livelihood out of which is really nice um in restaurants in Italy you don’t tip you don’t have to tip it’s not required they don’t expect it and your taxes and everything are already added into your price of your item that you order so if

You’re ordering a pizza pizza and you say it’s €1 that pizza is 10 there’s no tax there’s no anything else added on to that so you can actually look at the menu and determine what you’re able to order depending on how much money that you want to spend for the evening so

There’s no surprise at the end say oh I didn’t realize there’s a tip in TX and all of these things it’s all included um pizza if you get a pizza like a casual or takeout restaurant you could run around six EUR for like a regular cheese

Pizza margarita pizza um if you go to a restaurant and you want a special pizza or a dinner pizza someplace that’s you know sit down where you’re going to you know have wine and you know sit down at a table formally um pizzas could run maybe €1 higher for special pizzas with

Different meats and cheeses and things like that on them 15 but even then the portions are more than really you know you can eat I mean some people probably have two pizzas but they’re very very large and everything is so fresh and delicious it’s unbelievable so what you’re paying for

You’re getting so much more there’s so much V added value in that um and what’s really really nice is everything is made Fresh So they do not use things from packages everything it’s all picked fresh prepared fresh made fresh doz fresh everything so really uncom no comparison to

Anywhere that we’ve ever had pizza um we could compare to Italy so we we’re ruined completely ruined for pizza now that’s why we’ll have to go back and have some soon because we haven’t had pizza in a long time um steak so if you’re a meat you love meat and you love

Big Steaks near us we have a butcher called machai and they can cut like Florentine steaks big ones like three inches thick with the bone that they put on the flame um which I know are really expensive in Florence uh if you want to order that because it’s a

Special steak that they cook it a certain way then they cut it up pour salt serve it on the hot plate and then you eat it right from there they usually prepare that rare um some they might just sear it depending on how you like

It but we had a party of four of us and maybe three people were going to be eating the steak so I said I we wanted to get a steak for four people and it was huge so it was like this thick this big and this high right this

Much crazy then they cut it around the bone so there’s a bone in the middle but that steak I think was only 85 and they cooked it and they brought it to the table and three people had this beautiful steak so that’s not a lot if you go to to a

Steak restaurant that could be something that’s very very expensive um we used to take pictures of it and anyone we knew that loved meat that wasn’t with us we would send it to them and they would all send us bad messages back saying how

Could you send me that I want to I want to jump through the video and eat it um really and the quality unbelievable so again all fresh um and definitely worth it you could get cheeseburger and french fries there they love french fries and you love cheeseburgers all things like

That €1 you can get cheeseburger and fries if you’re in a different you know restaurant a little more formal maybe 12 or 13 but not much of a difference to mention um very inexpensive if you like that regular dinner Entre so like your pastas a meat entree something that

Comes with a salad or whatever that can run maybe 15 EUR 25 to30 EUR depending on what you’re ordering and where you are so obviously if you’re in a big city and you’re in a busy place and they have you know fancy restaurant you’re going to pay more for your Entre obviously if

You’re ordering special Seafood you’re going to spend more that you would but the prices are not really anything compared to what they are in the US they’re they they are a lot less and the quality that you get so much more so even if you did say you know what I want

To go out and I want to spend you know get a really nice dinner that dinner is going to be you know phenomenal most of the time you know always check your Google reviews we do um we have a lot of people that we know now in the town that

We’re regulars kind of when we are in Italy and um we like to visit them and say hello and then they remember what you like they’ll bring you certain things um especially in the coffee shops too if they know that you like a certain coffee you go there two or three times

They’re already saying is you know do you want a cappuccino today you’re like oh how did you know it’s like because I remembered because you get to know them and uh everybody’s really friendly there so I hope that this video helped you out

A lot um I know that a lot of people do go to the north and there are areas up there that are not so expensive if you’re not in the major major cities it will be comparable to where we were in the the heel of Italy in the you know

The very south of Italy but if you are in those cities you’re expecting to pay those prices but if you’re you really want to try to stay on a budget and you know that you have a certain amount of money allotted for your eating out groceries things like

That you want to be able to do the things that you want to do and be able to stay within your budget so I think really think that if this is something that you’re interested in this is the area that you should be in because the quality and everything is just second to

None so I hope that this video helped you out today again if you like this video please click on the like And subscribe it really helps us out and we glad to help you today again take care ciao