Cost of living in Dublin v the rest of Ireland

jakearmitage

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On average how much extra does one need to be earning in dublin to live the same lifestyle in the rest of the country?
 
I'd say for a couple (from my own experience), five or six hundred euro between both should suffice. I'm not quite sure as a single person- renting by yourself in Dublin is an awful lot more costly than having a partner to share the expenses.
 
Recently was discussing this with two friends. Im opting to move down to the country, whilst one is sticking to the Docklands and the other to another Dublin location - we are all going to be doing similar jobs and one friend is being paid about €4k more, whilst the other is being paid €2.5k more.

From what we can see, it really is rent that is the big difference. Im looking at the costs of a 1-2 bed apartment and see €400-€500pm being the typical monthly price in the area im looking (country). Split cost with gf, thats €200-€250pm. If my friend did the exact same thing in similar spec modern developement in dublin, the price would be €1,200-€1,400pm for similar apartment (or €600-€700pm if split). In fact we could rent a full scale house 3-4bed for €450-€550 in some of the areas we've looked! But sure we dont need that much space!

On travel, my parking charge would be €1.50pd. He in contrast simply could'nt afford to drive in the city and would have no choice but to take a combined dart/luas option. That'd be around €5-6pd+ depending on where he lives. (In fairness I will have an intially high petrol bill due to a temporary commute - however this is likely to be short term and rent is much the same in a location 15min from my work.)

So in our case I'll probably save €4k+ on rent and maybe as much as €1k on not having to use dart/luas. So thats about €5k less in those costs alone.

Other things that seem to be more expensive are going out, eating out, haircuts and other 'services'. These costs are all largely discretionary and vary depending on person. As far as we could think there are no major costs that are actually higher outside of Dublin...

So to answer the OP's question, we 'established' in our case that a premium of €4-5k+ is needed to justify working in Dublin on money grounds alone. However we both feel our reasons are much more lifestyle driven - my friends lifestyles are very different to mine and whilst I personally like life outside Dublin - they perfer it there.
 
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