It's 190€ till age 26(!) in Germany but you get other benefits (most significantly a large income tax break, and 14 month parental leave).
Childcare is about 0-400 depending on your income but you have to be outrigh wealthy to get close to the latter (we pay 128€/m with a high 5-figures €/year household income).
If you're ready to compare salaries between U.S and Germany, you should also discuss free healthcare, free childcare from 12 months, and the ~100 euro a month cost under 12 months.
Now compare to the "rich" American ~$4500/month for childcare until age 5, and lets not start with healthcare, and average cost of an apartment
80k€ would net you between 40-50k€ after all taxes, health insurances and a basic retirement fund. The exact number depends on you having a family or not and many other factors.
In addition your employer pays an amount equal to about 10-15% of your gross salary into your health and retirement insurance. And this pay is on top of your salary. (Arbeitgeberanteil)
Holiday is always included with a minimum of 21 days a year for a full time job. And Germany has paid parental leave included if you start a family.
Say, an average tech Joe from Munich is getting home only 3 to 4 thousands of dollars after taxes (48%, it includes social security, etc.), but renting a studio costs almost the same as in San Fran. All other costs are similar or more expensive in Europe.
Even healthcare is more expensive in Germany: if both parents are getting more than 3k USD after taxes each, then each of them need to pay around $900 (!!!), thus $1800 per month HEALTH INSURANCE per family. Good thing is that your employer pays around 50% of that costs, but even $900 health insurance is not as cheap in comparison with USA, right?
Day care, kindergarten - costs depend on your income. The more you earn the more you pay. On average it's around $800-$1000 per month/child for public kindergartens (assuming your net monthly income is over 3k USD) or $2000-$3000 private.
Harz 4 I think adds up to about 800 or 900 euros per month with all benefits combined, which is a lot less than 3000.
Our rent is 490 euros net per month (in Berlin) for a 1BR apartment but we're looking for a 2BR at the moment so our kid can have his own bedroom. This will probably end up costing about 800 eur/m net (not a central or hip location, but close to transit).
Also, while Germany has high income taxes it has lots of tax relief for being married and having kids. I think we ended up paying maybe 15% income tax last year (1 kid, wife earning minimally). Plus lots of subsidies for childcare & education (in Berlin even more than in other places in Germany).
You can definitely easily support a family of 3 or 4 with a single wage in that range.
Child care or kindergarten is pretty affordable, around €300/mo. If you're a legal citizen (e.g. European or w/ work permit) public schools are free, you just pay for the food, which is around €50/mo, buy materials and uniform.
If you want to pay special attention to their education regarding foreign languages and having higher chances to move elsewhere after school or at some point during school age, there are British, American, German and French schools. All of them are private or semi-private and cost up to €500/mo.
If you're considering moving here in the mid/long term, the biggest issue is work. The job market here very bad at the moment, with really high rates of unemployment.
You shouldn't care about this if you're able to work/freelance remotely. In this case, working for UK/Germany/Northern Europe/USA clients will leave margins better than any job you'll find locally and you'll be able to make a good living.
I run a company employing 8 people in total (incl. founders) and we have clients from Spain, Germany, USA. We've been doing this for 8 years.
If you or your partner are looking for a job in the local market, the biggest areas are tourism (many million visitors / year) but you can also make a good living teaching English lessons if you're native and stuff like that.
That’s one of the many reasons I’m glad that I live in, and had my kid in, Germany. The year I was off work wasn’t paid anywhere near my pre-baby post-tax salary (those payments are capped at 1800 EUR/mo), but because they cover up to 65% of previous net, and there are very strong legal protections for your job, taking that year is pretty much expected, followed on by a further two years part-time.
That said, I was also amazed at how reasonably-priced formula is here. I had other issues and ended up supplementing for awhile, and it really wouldn’t have been that big a deal - about 2-3 EUR/day using Hipp (midrange) powder if we’d had to feed it exclusively.
As a German software engineer that used to work in the USA, do I pay more taxes in Germany, yes. But, I don't have to worry about going bankrupt from medical issues. In Seattle where I used to live daycare is 30,000$ a year per kid. In Germany it's at most like 200-300 euros a month. Plus you get kindergeld too(200 euros per kid). We don't go into 10s of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for school. Even with my "good" benefits I had at my job in the US, I would never move back.
My experience in Germany may not be typical. But with the EU's higher taxes, 80% indeed goes down to 50%. However if you have kids, the numbers climb up again because, at least in Germany, you get "Kindergeld" and "Elterngeld" and state-sponsored day-care (Kita) for your kid(s). Plus, 30-days a year vacation standard, you get walkable cities, very good public transportation (so, no car costs) AND you get to take inexpensive weekend trips to Greece, London, Prague, or wherever you want to go. It's up to you to compute that value.
50k per year pre tax in Germany, would end up being 30k after taxes. If you're married, you'd get substantial tax benefits and there are also benefits, if you have children.
They may sound low, but compared to the USA, Germany has public health care, free education (up to graduate level), a long, paid parental leave and a lot of other social benefits. This really sums up if you have to pay for all these things yourself.
13th salary?.. It’s actually Austrian thing being taxed less in Austria. Never had this in my dozen jobs in Germany. Xmas bonus yes.
Health insurance is expensive and low quality. One must pay for all modern treatments despite being insured. Or have another expensive additional insurance. Cancer will be treated for free, that’s right.
Tax refund is a bad joke. Spending 5000€ to get cents back. 50% taxes and mandatory insurance plus 19% value added tax (food less, fuel with additional taxes). So 2/3 earned go to the government. Nice!
No company from dozen paid for childcare. I know, that it might happen, but it’s rare. Some companies have on-site kindergartens. But well… the waitlist is long unless you are important manager.
Government retirement will be about enough to live in extreme poverty trying to save every cent.
Just got intrigued and opened immobilienscout24. No houses for 2000€ in Hamburg and Berlin for a family of 5. Rather old Reihenmittelhaus for 2500€ with current electricity and heating prices.
There is nothing comfortable about 100k€ annually. Especially for a family of five. It’s like 4500€ after taxes every month paying 2500€ rent and living from 2000€. Belarus freelancers also make this and have really comfy lifestyles.
Edit: with 3 kids it’s closer to 5000€ after taxes. Still does not provide any luxury.
Germany is also disproportionately generous with tax deductions and benefits for getting married and having children (not to mention childcare is free from 1 year of age in Berlin).
It isn’t easy to compare apples to apples but generally I’d guess in Europe highly paid professions are subsidizing the poor relative to the US.
If Germany started handing out 480 days of parental leave per child and virtually unlimited "stay at home with sick child", plus a culture where everyone contributes equally to parenting, then I would definitely expect the overall German (net) salary to go down.
2. What's the rent for nonprofit apartments , or are they free and provided by government ? decent size , reasonable quality neighborhood , or small apartments and shitty
neighborhood (junkies , etc ? ) ?
3. What's the starting age for state provided kindergarten , what happens before that age , do women get social security ?
4. In short could german people earning those minimum salaries have a stable living with all the basics provided ?
Unless you're spending all your income, you cannot use Numbeo and other CoL calculators to make comparisons between gross salaries in different countries.
I'm Swiss and I worked in Berlin, I guarantee you absolutely don't need to make twice the salary to keep your standard of living. Taxes alone mean that above a certain salary, you actually need to make more in Germany.
And while the situation is better than in Switzerland, Germany isn't some kind of paradise for parents with young kids. All the people we hired and relocated from overseas had trouble finding Kitas.
100k€ for 15 years of experience seems about right for me. If you factor in all the freebies and tax refunds and stuff, that's roughly equivalent to earning 1000€ per billable day as a German freelancer, or the equivalent of about $150 per hour in the US.
Typical freebies in Germany include:
- 13th salary as a Christmas gift (so +8.3% salary)
- only half of your health insurance costs are included in the nominal salary
- tax refunds if you buy a PC, do courses, or drive to work with your car
- company pays for children's daycare
- government-backed retirement fund with generous payouts. If you pay in 83€ per month now you can expect to receive at least €450 per month later.
Also, with a bit of searching, you can rent a house with garden for €2000 per month even in large cities like Hamburg or Berlin. As a result, an 100k€ annual salary will be enough for you alone to comfortably bankroll a family of 5 - something that's almost impossible in the bay area due to high rents and insane costs of living.
I see via google that minimum wage in Germany is 1473 euros per month for a full time worker.
According to [1], food, housing, necessary household items, and public transportation look like they could reasonably total less than 800 euros per person. Add another 100 for having fun and for the occasional wardrobe expense, and you still get to save nearly 40%.
Having children ruins all of this, of course, but that's pretty easy to avoid.
Childcare is about 0-400 depending on your income but you have to be outrigh wealthy to get close to the latter (we pay 128€/m with a high 5-figures €/year household income).
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