E-Paper
Indian woman breaks down soaring cost of living in California with family of 4. Video
An Indian woman in the US shared her family's $10,000 monthly expenses in San Francisco.
An Indian woman residing in the United States has drawn attention online after breaking down her family’s monthly expenses while living in California's San Francisco Bay Area. Shivee, the woman behind the viral clip, shared a detailed video on Instagram offering a glimpse into her household budget as a family of four.
(Also read: US woman living in India uses simple math to show why rupees offer better value than dollars)
In the voiceover accompanying the video, Shivee narrates, “Here is how much we spent living in the San Francisco Bay Area as a family of four. Renting a two-bed, two-bath apartment in the East Bay, $3,300. Full-time daycare costs for our toddler, $2,400. Grocery expenses, including Costco, Walmart, and Indian grocery shopping, $1,000. Utilities, such as phone bill, internet, electricity, $500.”
She continued, “Gas expenses, we still do not drive our car much, but the gas is expensive here, $200. My transport to San Francisco for work, $150. Gym memberships and group workout classes, $200. Car insurance, which is $1,600 a year, so $130 a month. That’s a total of about $7,900. I’ll add a 10 percent miscellaneous because I’m sure I missed something. That’s a total of $8,700 of fixed expenses. Our monthly variable expenses, including eating out and shopping, is still about $1,000. Total expenses of about $9,000 to $10,000 a month. Our travel budgets are separate from the above presented expenses.”
The clip, overlayed with the text “Expenses for a family of 4 living in the San Francisco Bay Area”, is captioned: “Expenses for a family of 4 in Fremont, California”.
Watch the clip here:
Rupee vs Dollar: A Different Perspective
This is not the first time such comparisons have gained attention online. Previously, an American woman named Kristen Fischer, who has been living in India for four years, sparked discussion on Instagram after explaining why the Indian rupee offers better domestic purchasing power than the US dollar.
Take a look here at the video:
“Rupees in India stretch further than the relative dollars do in the USA,” Fischer wrote in the caption of her video, which has received over 139,000 views. “Sure incomes are higher in the USA, but everything costs more there too.”
She added, “The average cost of a haircut in India is around 100 rupees. The average cost of a haircut in the USA is 40 dollars (3,400 rupees). This means you could buy 34 haircuts in India for the same amount of money as one haircut in the USA.”
