You Are Not Bad With Money: You Are Just Paying European Prices
European pricing is not normal but you have been conditioned to accept it
There is a specific moment that occurs for most Europeans after they’ve been living in the Gulf, Southeast Asia, or East Asia for two or three months. It arrives at a market, or a restaurant, or the moment they glance at their electricity bill at the end of the month. The moment is this: they do the conversion in their heads and experience a brief cognitive malfunction because the number is too small.
Not suspiciously small. Not developing-world-poverty small. Just the correct price for the thing, in a country where the cost of living has not been inflated by decades of European tax policy, social contribution overhead, housing scarcity in legacy cities, and a cost-of-labor structure that has made everyday services either a luxury or a state-provided afterthought.
“European pricing is not normal. You have been conditioned to accept it.”
Household Help
In Bangkok, a full-time live-in housekeeper someone who cleans, cooks, manages laundry, and is a professional in the truest sense earns €350–500 a month. This is above local market rate in many neighbourhoods. In Dubai and Doha, a domestic worker with visa, health coverage, and accommodation factored in costs a household €600–1000 a month all-in. In Kuala Lumpur, the same arrangement runs €300–500.
In Munich, a cleaning service that comes twice a month costs €280–380 (could be even more depending on the hours worked). A full-time housekeeper, after social contributions, minimum wage compliance, and employment taxes if you can legally structure it at all approaches €3,000–4,000 a month. Most Munich families don’t have housekeepers. They do it themselves, or they don’t do it. It is not framed as a financial decision. It is framed as the way things are.
In Doha or Singapore or Chiang Mai, the professionally managed home is accessible to households earning €70,000 a year. In Germany and other European countries, it is a privilege of the genuinely wealthy and even then, it comes with paperwork.
Food and Groceries
The morning market in Chiang Mai opens before dawn. By 7am, you are buying a kilo of ripe mangoes for €0.50, a whole grilled fish for €1.20, and enough fresh vegetables to feed four people for three days for less than €4. The food did not travel far. It was grown nearby. It tastes like what it is.
Weekly grocery basket for a family of four in Bangkok: €60–80, eating extremely well. The same basket, fresh produce, quality proteins, good variety, runs €180–260 in a Munich supermarket.
In Bali a great dinner at the beach with proper tablecloth, multiple courses, good wine or beverages costs roughly €40–60 for a family of four.
In Munich, that same dinner is €120–150 before tip. On a Tuesday night. At nothing particularly special.
Healthcare
A GP visit at a private clinic in Singapore: €25–45. Same-day appointments, no referral chain, clear billing. In Dubai, Doha or Riyadh: often free with basic employer-sponsored insurance, or €30–60 out of pocket at a walk-in clinic. In Bangkok’s internationally accredited private hospitals, the kind Europeans fly to specifically for medical treatment, a specialist consultation runs €40–90.
A broken arm in Kuala Lumpur: X-ray, setting, cast, and follow-up. Total cost, private hospital: €150–200.
In Germany, statutory insurance theoretically covers most of this but the system extracts 14–15% of gross income in contributions, waiting times for specialists stretch to weeks or months, and the experience of navigating it is one that every German over 40 has a story about. For those on private insurance, the monthly premiums for a family of four can reach €800–1,200 comparable to a rent payment.
The numbers don’t just represent savings. They represent a fundamental shift in what daily life feels like.
The Math for a German Family
In Munich, a €150,000 household income is a household under meaningful financial pressure. The apartment is fine, but the rent or mortgage is extraordinary €2,800–4,200 a month for something appropriate for a family is standard. The grocery shop is fine, but it always comes in above expectation. Childcare costs are real and not fully subsidized until age three. There is no domestic staff. Holidays require planning months in advance to be affordable. The savings rate is modest at best.
In Dubai, Singapore, or Kuala Lumpur, a €150,000 income or €100,000, or even €80,000, depending on the city produces a life with genuine slack. A housekeeper. Restaurants whenever the mood strikes. Healthcare without a second thought. A savings rate that is actually a savings rate. An investment account that is growing, not treading water.
The same person. The same income. A completely different life.
The Beautiful Absurdity of It All
Here is where it gets funny, genuinely, structurally funny, if you zoom out far enough.
Americans move to Europe for lower prices.
Right now, thousands of Americans are writing relocation listicles, Substack posts, and TikToks about how they moved to Lisbon, Barcelona, or Palermo and discovered that groceries are cheap, coffee costs €2, and they can see a doctor without financing it like a car purchase. They are not wrong. Compared to San Francisco or New York, Southern Europe is extraordinarily affordable. The math genuinely works. They moved, and their lives are better for it.
And meanwhile, Europeans are moving to Dubai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Bangkok for exactly the same reason.
The Germans who packed up and moved to the Gulf aren’t there purely for the tax advantages (though tax-free income is a remarkable thing). They’re there because the housekeeper they could never afford in Frankfurt is now a normal part of household life. Because the dinner they’d budget carefully for in Hamburg is a casual Tuesday in Dubai. Because the private school their children attend better-resourced than anything available in their home city costs less per year than the Munich nursery.
The French in Singapore. The Dutch in Thailand. The Italians in Bahrain. The Swedes in Malaysia. Every single one of them will tell you, if you ask, that they miss certain things: the culture, the architecture, the specific light of a European autumn afternoon. They are not wrong to miss those things. But they will also tell you, without hesitation, that the financial freedom changed something fundamental. That they stopped counting. That they started saving. That they feel, for the first time in their adult lives, that the salary they earn and the life they live are in reasonable proportion to each other.
It turns out that “affordable” is not an absolute. It is always relative to where you started.
The American moving to Lisbon and the German moving to Dubai are doing exactly the same thing. They are arbitraging the cost of their lifestyle against the place it is being lived. They are all chasing the same feeling: the moment you realize your income is enough. The moment the number makes sense.
European prices are not a law of nature. They are the output of tax structures, housing policy, social contribution systems, and labor market regulations that have made Western European daily life among the most expensive in the world while delivering, in many categories, less quality of life than the same income buys in a dozen cities to the east and south.
You are not bad with money. You are just paying European prices.
YES! This is me!
We moved from Spain to Riyadh last fall because it gave my Spanish husband, a civil servant, a chance to make more money and give us more financial freedom. I could quit my job, too, so we opted to not get a nanny or housecleaner or driver.
We seemed to never get ahead in Spain, despite raises and not living beyond our means. I used to survive off of 700€ a month as a teacher ten months of the year. And I had some pocket change for travel.
We haven't changed our spending habits much, outside of the basics. In fact, we are saving money on food (we average around 200€ a week with two boys) and telecommunications, as his government is paying for some of these things. We don't eat out often, do most of our socializing on compound.
This year is all about saving. Of course we miss Europe and some of the luxuries we had there, like WALKING somewhere or cheap coffee.
It‘s funny how much culture comes into play here, too. Living outside of Munich, I know very few families that regularly hire babysitters. While all of my American friends have a pipeline on standby. It doesn’t seem to be so much about the cost, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t about the money. Although they could likely afford babysitters, it’s just not something that is commonly. If the grandparents aren’t available, you change your plans. Interestingly, however, Aupairs are fairly common.