What are the household bills like in Spain

Something that gets asked and answered a lot.

Obviously your bills will depend on your lifestyle but we have a 3 bed house (all electric) and our bills are about as follows.

Electricity averaging around 50 euro a month. Bit higher in summer and winter with aircon cold and hot but some months as low as 38 euro.

Water bills about 17 euro a month but we don't have our own pool.

We don't have gas except for mobile bottles for a gas fire and the BBQ. We use maybe 2 bottles a year at around 20 euro each.

Council tax for our house is 250 euro a year but will vary depending on your municipality.

Shopping. Depends greatly on your choice. Some things dearer other things cheaper. If you stick to stuff like you do in UK, such as baked beans, pies, lamb and so on you will find it more expensive. Chicken, pork, haricot beans, pasta, rice and so on a little cheaper than UK depending on if you pick brand names or not. We buy fruit and veg once a week from the local market and is much cheaper than UK except for potatoes. Not a staple in Spain so work out around a euro a kilo from the market. Salad stuff etc can be more expensive here even though it's grown here but cheaper on the market. 

Then there's things like rubbish collect tax which is about 80 euro a year (but going up next year), car tax, much cheaper than UK but not the same as the council sets the level. Our 1.6 SUV was 32 euro a year but over 80 in the bit town near us.

Car insurance used to be more expensive but now cheaper here with the huge rises in UK. Home insurance about the same as UK (just over 200 euro a year for our 3 bed including 50,000 euro contents insurance). 

Other things, like alcohol, eating out and going to shows etc are much, much cheaper. You can eat out for two with wine for around 30 euro and there is no duty on beers, wines, spirits and cider. For the smokers, they are putting prices up but a pack of twenty around 5.50 to 6.50 euro.

Petrol prices. I have diesel and it's now down to 1.30 a litre (a bit less than £1.15 a litre)

Anything else you can think of? You won't have rent to pay so that doesn't count but would be much cheaper than UK.

Thank you very much. Appreciate it ! The gas water and electric bills are amazing. In UK our gas water and electric is £330 per month, so much cheaper in Spain. The car costs are much lower too. Good news. We wil have to pay private medical so thats going to increase our costs but at least Spain has a NHS… no longer exists in England !!!!!

There was an article in the UK press the other day (linked by Darro on the sister site to this one) that claimed it was 700 pounds a year cheaper to live than UK. However, they only looked at a few things and didn't include things like council tax, fuel bills and many other things. Just leisure, grocery shopping and a couple of other things).

Most seem to be of the opinion that if they'd included other things the saving would be more like 700 euro a month. I might not go that far but I save 2,000 pounds a year on council tax alone. Eating out in UK is something you save up for as a treat, here we eat out if we are getting a bit skint as it can be cheaper than cooking at home. My wife enjoys a bottle of wine once a week (well, it lasts her a couple of days) and even the good stuff is less than 3 euro a bottle. 

Yes, some things are more expensive. White goods, TVs etc used to be well more expensive than UK but are now fairly similar although still more expensive here but you don't buy them every week. We also find using tradesmen here is also far less. Plumbers, electricians, painters and decorators and general building work to a high quality is cheaper. Even gardeners, if you need them, work out very reasonable.

Second hand cars here are much more expensive in UK as they don't have all the fleet cars coming on the market a couple of times of year. Good if you're selling but not so good if you're buying. New cars used to be cheaper here (remember the rip off Britain reports?) but with the decline in the pound against the euro not so much now. 

Income tax is also more here mainly due to the lower tax free allowances. However, in UK, I was paying about the same as I do here so not that much difference. (that last bit will, of course, depend on your personal circumstances). 

To compliment marcliff's indepth analysis you may find the contents of the following link helpful:

https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-living/country/comparison/spain/united-kingdom

Overall, despite the cost of living, Spain is much cheaper. I have no affiliation to this YouTuber whatsoever but I found it interesting and accurate 

I can’t post the link but the photo shows the YouTuber but you could always search on YouTube , but they do a really accurate line by line cost analysis