Is Portugal Still the BEST Value for Expats in 2025?

Is Portugal still the best value for expats in 2025? Is Portugal's cost of living still an affordable place to move abroad or retire? Does it offer the best value for expats? In this latest video as a retired couple living in Madeira, Portugal for the past several years, we provide practical wisdom with our yearly cost of living expenses. Watch this video to see how Portugal's cost of living value has changed for expats year over year.

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Transcript

Can you still afford to move abroad and live somewhere like Portugal in 2025? What does it cost to live here on Madeira in 2025? Have prices gone up tons this year? Stay tuned to find out.
Do I have goggle marks on my face from swimming today? They were really tight, actually a little.
I feel like it here. 
Welcome back to Track Us Down! If you're just finding us. I'm Monique. And I'm Doug. Our channel is all about retiring early, moving abroad, but mostly living what we call a better second half of life. And that doesn't have to be in retirement. That can be any time that you choose to make a big move, whether it's working remotely somewhere else in the world or just spending a lot of time traveling or living in different places. That can be your "better Second Half of Life." And a huge part of the better "Second Half of Life" is knowing your costs. And we talked about this before, knowing what it's going to cost you to live in another country and another lifestyle is super important. It was information that we searched for a long time ago and we couldn't find. So we have year after year shared our cost of living for the month of January with you today we are sharing our detailed budget with you so that you can take that information and work it for yourself and figure out if this is something that you would like to do - January, 2025. 
Our first cost is rent or mortgage. Now if you've been following along on our channel, you'll know that we no longer have rent or a mortgage. We owned one property here, which we have sold and we have recently moved to this new apartment that we are absolutely loving and we no longer have that cost, but we do have many friends renting here. So we've chosen one couple that we're good friends with that we know their apartment well. It is a T1 in the heart of Old Town. It's a super cute apartment. It is something that we would consider if we were looking for a first place to land, a first place to spend that first year. If you're looking for an apartment for your D7 and a first home here in Funchal. So back in 2021, when we moved here, our cost for rent per month was around 1200 euros per month and it went up significantly from there just because there was such low availability. We got outta the rental market and we moved into home ownership here, which has worked really well for us. Now we do think that the rental market has changed here a little in the past. There are more new builds going up and it seems that there's a lot more apartments available for rent than there was last year. Our friends are currently in a one year lease and they're paying 1300 for a beautiful T1. When they leave, we are assuming that they are gonna probably boost that rent up just a little. So we are going to adjust that number from 1300 to 1500 for the sake of this video, for a T1 in Old Town. We have seen with the availability of new buildings coming on the market, there's been a lot of building going on over the last three years, so there is more and more availability and it's kind of evening things out a bit. And we have rent prices actually coming down for the first time in a long time. So I think that's gonna be a trend that we'll probably see going forward where they're not gonna rise as dramatically. In fact, they may even come down a little bit. And of course there's rent prices from this point way up. You can spend quite a bit more on rent if you want, if you want a newer building and in a fancier location. But if you are also willing to move outside of Funchal a little outside to other beautiful parts of the island, rents are of course a lot lower. For the sake of this video, we're gonna go with the T1 and Old Town at 1500. 
Up next is an old favorite - Wifi, Data and TV. This actually hasn't changed a whole lot since we first moved here. We get 5G high speed fiber in-home wifi. We get unlimited data on our phones all over Europe and we also get over 200 channels of TV here with MEO. Except for Switzerland, which we found out the hard way. Our recent trip to Slovenia, we did a quick stop over there and our phones activated connected to their uh, local network. Of course they are part of the European economic zone but not part of the EU. So our sim cards are MEO SIM cards from here in Portugal, work everywhere in Europe but not in Switzerland. So we got dinged for I think 50 euros each on our bill. So I had a lot of begging and explaining, to do with the MEO people, but they were good enough to waive that fee because they could see that it was a one-time thing. And we're not abusers this year. We're back down to about 67 euros per month for all those services, which is fantastic. Of course, if you are traveling anywhere in the world, we highly recommend rather than switching out your sim card at the airport to go with an e-SIM, we use Airalo, which is absolutely fantastic. Very low cost, great plans and if you use our code in the description box below, you get three euros off your very first download of an e-SIM. We love these e-SIMs and they work great all over the world.
Alright, our next category is dining out. In January, we headed out to dinners with many people. We had such a good time. There's so many beautiful restaurants here in Funchal and Madeira in general. We vowed I think last year that we wanted to cut down on restaurants and we said the same thing this month in January when you get to know so many people here, we end up going out so much more than we normally would expect to. How did we do this year? We did all right this year we spent 316,37€ on dining out in the month of January, which was a little lower than last year and about the same as the previous year before. So we're, we're ranging about that much. But we do think that this is an area that we can cut down a little more. But one thing to note with that, that is a lot of dining out. I think if you were going out anywhere North America or other places in Europe, that might be one or two meals. This was a lot of meals out, probably close to eight, nine or 10 meals out over the course of the month. So for all that, for all those times visiting with all those people to only come in just over hundred euros is still pretty incredible and that includes coffees and pastries as well. If you are interested in our take on restaurants and all things Madeira, please check out our Patreon. If you would like to speak with us directly through direct message there, if you would like to see all of our trusted links, our contacts and our favorites including restaurants, please join us there.
Our next category is utilities, water, electricity, and we include house insurance in this category. Water has remained roughly the same at 16,93€. Electricity has remained relatively the same at 37,43€ and our house insurance has gone up just a little bit to 34 euros and 62 cents per month altogether. Utilities for this month, January, 2025 for us comes in around 89 euros and 2 cents. Now this is after our move from where we used to live higher up in the mountain down here to more of an urban cosmopolitan apartment style living. So maybe we're using a bit less water, maybe we're using a bit more electricity, but overall I think it's around the same as last year. So what is not included in this category is property tax. And obviously we're not paying property tax this month, but do you know what our property taxes are in our new place?
I do not. So many things to look after and to think about when we move in somewhere. New condo fees, we're still waiting for our first condo fees, which I think are gonna be somewhere around 30 to 70 euros a month. Property tax, I have no idea. But considering for our house that we had, uh, it was around 300€ a year. So actually I have no idea what our property taxes are gonna be for this new place that we're in, but I don't think, I think they're gonna be nominal. So that's our take on utilities. There may or may not be some property tax at some point, but uh, it won't be just for the month of January and there may or may not be a condo fee at some point. Oh, of course there's condo fees, we're just not sure what they are. Now let's get to the fun category and that is groceries. 
Groceries is something that people always ask about. We've done entire videos just on grocery prices, but lately groceries have been on our mind as well. When we went back and looked at our cost of groceries for the past three years, there is a huge up. So the first gear that we were here in January, 2022, we spent 319 euro on groceries. The next year in 2023 we spent 401 euro on groceries and only another slight rise to 2024 at 409 euro for groceries. But this year in 2025 we've spent 623 euros and 70 cents, which is a double what we were spending just three years ago. So that's pretty incredible. It is. I don't know why that is. I guess that's just a global trend. Are we buying more expensive things? I don't think so. We're buying the same things we always buy at the grocery stores. That includes everything that we would purchase at a grocery store. That is a significant price increase. We will keep our eye on that, but for now it is still significantly less expensive than it would be anywhere in North America and we are still managing just fine with the cost of that grocery bill.
All right, our next category is subscriptions and memberships. In here we have things like Netflix, like Spotify, like Amazon Prime, our gym, memberships, small things, some bigger things. But overall some really fun things. 
Do your category like your life depends on this is your one chance to shine, do the category. I don't care about this. I know this is the last year we're gonna tell you people are costs. Finish up and I make you a coffee. Okay, okay, finish up. So all those sorts of things. This year our total for subscriptions and memberships came in at 122 euros and 2 cents. It does fluctuate from year to year depending on how much Netflix goes up or Amazon Prime or gym memberships, those sorts of things. So it might be a little bit more than last year, but overall it's still within the same kind of area And Netflix has been going up lately, hasn't it? It seems like it goes up every six months lately.
Our next category is healthcare and as with the previous years, our cost for healthcare this month was absolutely zero. When you are applying for a D7 on the first year here, you definitely will have a healthcare cost in this category to apply for D7. And we've just recently met people who said that their healthcare was coming in around the one 20 euro mark for two people per month, which is still extremely reasonable. And that cost of 120 euro for two people is for the private healthcare. After our one year was up, we decided to let go of that cost. At this point, we don't have any real need for private healthcare care. Maybe that'll change in the future. Right now we're just focusing on staying healthy, eating well, exercising as residents, though we are part of the public healthcare system, some people are confused by that and say that you need to be a citizen but you don't. As a resident, we do get updates on our phones, we get called in for exams and we have participated in the healthcare system in that way. We are very pleased with the healthcare that we are receiving and our cost for this category is zero.
Next up we have transportation that is gas, parking, car insurance, and now we've added bus as well. Now that we live down in Funchal, 
we take the bus everywhere and I think with the bus card it works to about a year or 10 per trip, which is absolutely fantastic and just so affordable. We also find that because we live down here, we're not driving nearly as much except to school in a different town twice a week. Once that's done, I don't know that we're gonna be driving hardly much at all. Maybe in the summertime when we're going to different parts of the island. But overall we walk a lot more here and we take the bus once in a while. So our car actually sits quite a bit unless we're going somewhere outside the city. So our mileage is staying very low on our car, but our mileage on our feet is going way up and our health benefits from that. So our cost this month for gas, parking, bus and auto insurance was 114 euros. Now that is more than last year, but we did up the level of car insurance on our car from last year to this year to the highest level, which also includes vandalism or if somebody hits you in the middle of the night, which happened to us at our other place and that wasn't covered by the insurance level we were at. So now we moved up a level. So our car insurance went up a little bit as well. So all that together, 114 euros pretty good.
Next step is activities. Now the last few years in January we reported zero spending in activities and that's quite honest as mostly we are doing hiking, walking, and just out and about. Doug did mention sometimes paying for tennis courts, sharing that kind of uh, expense with a friend, which is just very nominal, a Euro or two. This month we actually spent 118 euro on activities here in Madeira, in Funchal. 
They have an amazing Madeira orchestra and we went a couple times and we really enjoyed it. So we have bought a sort of little membership where you prepay the 100 euros 50 each and we are entitled with that prepayment to go to three different shows. So we paid for that in January and we're gonna select uh, what we're gonna go see If you are in cia, do check out the Madeira orchestra. They're amazing. I think it's called The Friends of the Madeira Orchestra does have great perks. All Beethoven or Mozart or maybe even the Star Wars and those kind of movie themes to see all those people and all those instruments up on stage and hear it, it is just so incredible. It's not something I thought that I was gonna be interested in, but here in our second half of life we are discovering new things, new joys and we really enjoyed it the first time we went to it. So much so that we bought a membership. The other cost in this category is swimming. So we've been going swimming weekly at the Olympic pool and also going swimming down at the Lido and into the ocean. And there is a very small fee of a Euro 50 for both those locations. And so our cost for this month was 18 euro for our swimming activities. So all in all at 118 Euro for the month of January for our activities that will see us into other months as well. And that I wouldn't give up the swimming, whether it's in the ocean, the Lido or the Olympic pool ever. 'cause those are amazing places to swim. So again, those are paid activities. Those are in addition to all the other activities that we typically do every month that just really don't cost anything. 
The last category is other. Now this one is kind of a dog's breakfast of, it's a catchall. It's a catchall.
I don't know, let's just kind of hammer into this one. And,
what do we have for other, what kind of things? We have hair and nails, getting nails done, getting our hair done. We, 
we have clothing. If we're purchasing clothing, we have things for the house if we're purchasing decor pieces or little items for the home. And of course we have Mr. Leo and in January we do like to take him to the vet for a full checkup and that is something we did. So we do have a cost for that. So all those things together, things that are not food, that is not dining out, that's not transportation, just things that we purchase fall into this category called other. We spent 447 euros and 41 cents. I just wanna say that that amount includes mobility, food, the special food that we need to feed Leo at 13 years old. And that big bag of food is over a hundred euros almost per month, every month and a half or so. So it definitely factors into that. His food's pretty expensive and all his vet needs. So in grand total, our cost for the month, January of 2025, our cost of living for our better second half of life living here on the beautiful island of Madeira Portugal, three and a half years in is 1,897 euros and 73 cents for us to live a great and enjoyable uncomfortable life here on a monthly basis. And if you were to add in that nice T1 apartment that we said was approximately 1500 euro, that would give a grand total of 3,397 euro and 73 cents for one month of living here on the beautiful island of Madera. So my main takeaway from that is overall I would say the cost of living hasn't changed a lot since last year. No, I think we're only about a hundred and a bit euro different from last year. The costs were different. I mean we've spent more on groceries and less on other things, but that's what you do when your budget right, you, you figure out how to maintain those costs. I think some of the takeaways, uh, the biggest one is the groceries have gone up and that there there is more rentals available. I think those are the two big takeaways from this month for me. What about you? My big takeaways are if this is something that you're looking to do, you've worked your whole life, you're looking for a change, you're looking for somewhere beautiful, safe, good weather, great people, and just a great way of life. And Madeira might be for you. I think those costs are beyond reasonable. They haven't changed a whole lot year to year, not any more than they might back where you are right now. And it's so subjective month to month what you're spending. But overall, if you look back at our cost of living for the last three and a half years in our past videos, you'll see a gradual increase, but overall very manageable. And you're interested in all things moving abroad, retiring early, or just living what we call a better second half of life, whether it's in Portugal or anywhere else. Please give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel. We really appreciate your feedback and leave us a comment down below on how the cost of living compares to where you are right now. Thank you so much for spending some of your time with us today. And as always, check back in, and,
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