What other bills should we expect!!

Obviously there are the normal utilities i.e gas eletric, water, phone,sky,internet. But what other bills can we expect.... i assume we will have to pay into some sort of health insurance...and are they any bills like the council tax we pay here in the U.K and i would of thought we would need  house insurance.

Council tax, called IBI tax is payable, it is a fraction of what we pay here in the UK though!

Water is the most expensive bill, water meters are all over Spain.

Most places only have water & electric, bottled gas is only used for room heaters and heating water in some villas/casa (bottled gas not allowed in apartments though).

Health insurance seems to run at 240€ per month, make sure it's a family policy though.

You will also have to pay income tax for Residentes. Details can be found on the web.

Contents & buildings insurance is not too expensive, depending on what type of property you have and also if your contents in cluded the crown jewels!. shop around for quotes, there is a thread on here giving various companies to choose from.

most inportant bill of all is the wine bill! Very cheap, good white cheap wines are Lyria & Emperada @ 1.25€ per bottle, has to come top of the shopping list!

Rgds,

Then there's the "bin" tax (basura is it called ?) as well as the council one (Suma)  & I've been reliably informed residents as well as non residents have to pay wealth tax, Fibby, although rather less than residents. Check out http://www.expatfocus.com/expatriate-spain-taxation  Read the third paragraph."Spain also levies a wealth tax ('patromonio') on both residents and non-residents."

Then you really need to Spanish make wills @ around 150€ each. (Hope you've made your UK wills !) Then you'll no doubt have all the bits & bobs associated with owning a car. You'll need NIE's. The list goes on & on, Kerri. Depending where you choose to live insurance can be bought from www.easycover.com where we have just bought ours (Fibby note we got it even cheaper for great cover than www.saltsbay.com unbelievably.)

Check out Which insurance company (Costa Blanca) ? Help offered in here !

http://www.eyeonspain.com/Secure/ForumPosts.aspx?thread=864&dev=FB44&name=Forum%20help

BUT, all in all, cheaper it would seem than in the UK. Go for it.

KEZ74.  So you now know that there are lots of bills to pay in Spain, just like UK.

But don't worry too much about it.  When you add up your bin tax, wealth tax, property tax, community charges, water bills, electric etc etc etc it will still be less than you are paying in UK for your Council tax and water rates.  Probably the only thing to take you over these costs will be your TV and running a car although car tax varies from £30 to £80 a year depending on where you live (like everything else in Spain, the charge varies according to your local council).  Private health insurance is a cost you won't be used to in UK so check out what you are entitled to first.  Again, depending on where you live, you will either get it free or you will have to pay the full amount (no such thing as Spain-wide health cover, Catalonia and Valencia and the only ones I know of which provide it free at the moment with Murcia promising to bring it in soon).  You can use the emergency services free if you have an EHIC and are visiting for less than 3 months.

All in all, your household bills will be far less in Spain than UK.  It is also cheaper to eat out but be careful on this one.  Many people say it is more expensive in Spain but, when pressed, they admit that in UK they eat out once or twice a month while in Spain it is once or twice a week.  No wonder they spend more on eating out.  Prices in bars are going up, especially for beer.  Some local bars now charge €3 a 1/2 litre for beer and the tourist ones even more.  Considering it is about €1 litre from supermarkets, have lots of BBQs and drink at home.  The same for spirits.  Although the measures in a bar in Spain are much larger than in UK (my wife tends to buy 1 Vodka, 3 tonics and 2 glasses and sits there all night decanting from one to the other), a spirit and mixer for €5 in some bars equates to a litre bottle from the supermarket.  We also got charged €1.50 for a glass of wine in one bar last year, diabolical when you consider a hotel we went to only charged 50 cents. 

TV can be a big initial outlay (say 5 to 7 hundred euros) but monthly costs for satellite are far cheaper in Spain (although you won't get the 600 odd channels on Sky unless you pay for a Sky card) at around €12 to €20 per month.  And there's no TV licence.

My neighbours, who live there permanently, have given me a ball park figure of about £1,000 a year for all household bills (not counting health insurance) which compares with my £1,800 in UK for council tax and water alone.