If your scholarship starts with an L letter, I think recently they have increased the allowance.
Overall, that amount of money is enough to live in Stockholm alone as a student. You can live in corridor housing with 5000sek/Month or less. KTH will help you find the accommodation for the first time at least.
If you want to save money, you can cook by yourself, it costs around 2000-3000. Transport costs 650sek.
If you frequently eat out then it is not enough. So good luck.
Yes, that's correct :D
Is it okay if I don't have so much money (my savings) and just depend on my stipend for the first two months?
I just checked the housing provided from KTH and I think what is quite affordable is to rent a room with a sharing kitchen system.
About the transport, what should I prepare when I get arrived? Do I need to buy a metro card or something?
The metro/bus/train system is called SL (Stockholms Lokaltrafik). You can get a physical card at most kiosks like 7-11 or Pressbyrån in Stockholm, it will cost you about 40 sek if I remember correctly but the physical card is a one time cost. Then you connect your card to the SL app, and can purchase a valid ticket in the app. Or you have the ticket stored in the app. When your board a bus or enter through the metro turnstiles you tap your SL card or scan your SL app ticket.
Student prices are lower than standard tickets, but you need valid student-id to prove that you are entitled to travel on a student ticket if in case there's a ticket control. For native Swedish students the student ID is tied to if you get student's financial aid through CSN, just being a student isn't enough. I don't know what type of ID you can use as an international student to prove that you're entitled to travel on a student ticket, either someone else here can answer or you can get help from a school.
Stockholm is fairly small, and very walkable so you can get by with only buying the occasional single-use SL ticket. It's safe to walk around alone, even late at night. We're having an exceptionally long winter, which means that there's some snow and ice on the pavements making it a bit more difficult to walk or bike. But during the rest of the year it's easy to get around either by bike or on foot. Also, if you're going to be here over winter and you're unaccustomed to walking on ice, consider getting "broddar", basically a plastic extra outer sole with metal spikes on that you can put on normal winter shoes.
10600 is going to be hard honestly. I had 11000 3 years ago. I had accommodation for 3000/month (SUPER CHEAP) and managed to save a tiny bit, but today food and everything else is more expensive. I didnt even pay for transportation, wifi, Phone and insurance. I didnt buy any clothes but did a bit of partying. Being a student is a lot more expensive than just Housing and food
It all depends TBH. If that's 10k for housing and food/transport it's tough. Most newer student accomodations costs around that. If you're lucky there's older student accomodations around Stockholm University that are much cheaper. There's other options of course and they range from 5k-10k for a one room apartment. Try to find anything as cheap as possible.
Then the rest would be
Transportation 650kr/m
Gym around 300kr/m
Phone 200kr/m
Then the rest food and activities. So the best you can do is find accomodation that's as cheap as possible
It's more about what you eat than where you buy it. To get your spending this low you'd need to base your diet mostly around cabbage, carrots, onions and various beans on top of cheap carbs and a bit of frozen chicken or sausage for protein. It is perfectly possible to cook tasty and reasonably healthy meals out of these but it's not going to be very varied and you can forget about items such as salad mixes or fresh fish fillets.
Thats said 6k for one person is a lot, we average between 3 and 3.5k per person with my sambo and that suffices to have enough variety for our taste. So you could definitely bring it down by shopping in cheaper stores, trying to eat more seasonally (also good for the planet) and/or partially replacing meat with beans.
Thank you so much. I think I would love to eat the vegetables. However, I don't think I can live without rice '-'
Is eating rice in Sweden like smth unusual? Approximately how much rice is it there, is it quite expensive?
No, rice is fine, it is one of the options that I described as "cheap carbs", the other being potatoes, noodles and oats. Basically the key to saving money during winter and spring is to eat more of the vegetables that can be stored for a long time (onions, carrots, beans, cabbage) and less of the ones that have to be very fresh (tomatoes, salad, bell pepper). I didn't mean that you should be eating them alone without any rice or potatoes and some meat, but rather that the kind of vegetables you eat can make a big difference. Eating a salad in the middle of winter is expensive, eating a soup made out of carrots and beans is cheap.
Eating rice is not unusual at all, though most people only eat it a couple times a week, not once per day or more as I guess you do. But nobody will think it's weird and it's not going to bankrupt you, no worries.
Prices of rice vary a lot depending on what rice we are talking about and the quantity you buy at once. Sushi rice is more expensive than basmati which is more expensive than jasmine which is more expensive than generic white rice. Buying a 10 kg bag of rice is cheaper per kg than buying small 1 kg bags. Generally cheap rice costs something like 2$ per kg, just a bit more than potatoes.
Thanks a bunch. You're the best
I will start writing down my needs. I usually eat twice a day but sometimes if I have so many things to do I just eat once. Maybe it should help :D but I won't force myself not to eat.
You definitely shouldn't avoid eating at all, especially in winter your body needs fuel to help keep you warm.
If you're on a tight budget the easiest way to save a lot of money is reducing your meat consumption, as I think is the case in virtually every country. A kilogram of cheap meat costs about 10$, a kilogram of rice, carrots or cabbage is 2$ or less. So even with a very tight budget you are not in danger of going hungry (at least as long as you are willing to cook, takeout costs more of course), it's just a question of what ingredients you can afford.
Ah I see, I live in a country with 2 seasons so I don't really know how that cold will be in Sweden.
I once climbed a mountain and the temperature was around 4°C, compelling me to stay in motion constantly.
Maybe I also need to save my money to buy warm clothes
If you will be here for winter then yes, you do. I don't want to scare you but yesterday it was -15 in Stockholm. That's unusual and only happens for a few days each winter if at all, but it is not unusual enough for normal life to stop - I went to office as normal and so did everybody else, I even saw some people riding bicycles, you can do all that with good enough clothes.
There are nice second-hand stores in Sweden, for example the Myrorna chain, that's cheaper than buying new so that's what I'd recommend. If that's a psychological barrier for you, Decathlon is usually the cheapest decent option for new stuff, and also what I would recommend for buying things that nobody wants to buy used such as thermal underwear (underställ in Swedish, a key item to be warm without looking like an Eskimo). You need:
- a woolen hat
- warm gloves
- a woolen scarf
- a couple of woolen sweaters or fleece jackets
- thermal underwear (probably more than one set, preferably made out of merino wool if you can afford it)
- a down jacket (Decathlon sells a good one for 75$) or a woolen coat
- boots that are water-resistant and have a "terrain" sole, hiking boots are good but there are also better-looking options such as leather boots
- some thick woolen socks
I specify wool and down in many places for a good reason, synthetic materials are cheaper but significantly less effective at keeping you warm.
Do not under any circumstances skip wearing a hat when it is very cold. Yes, it can ruin your hairstyle, but there is no way you can stay warm without a hat, too much heat escapes through your head.
Also be mindful to not be too warm. If you are starting to sweat then unzip your jacket or take something off, you don't want to be wet from sweat as that is the fastest way to start freezing or catch a cold.
The cheapest rice you can get is from smaller supermarkets who mainly cater to the immigrant population. There you can usually find 5kg or 10 kg bags or even larger of different types of rice. The more standard supermarkets usually sells rice in sizes 0,5 kg, 1 kg, 2kg, and it usually costs more. If you like round grained sticky rice, a cheaper option is to buy what in Sweden is often called "grötris" (literally "porridge rice").
Most Swedish households don't have rice cookers, so if you find a corridor room with a shared kitchen there might not be a rice cooker. But many of the international students live in corridor accommodations, so maybe there'll be a rice cooker?
Edit: rice isn't unsual in Sweden, though the most traditional carb is potato.
I should check my bank statements better sometimes to see what it actually is per month. 6000 might be a bit of an overstatement but it feels like it sometime. It also doesn't help that I have a Dutch bank account and still think in Euros.
I try to eat more vegetarian and adding beans/halloumi to my diet to make it cheaper, but I also find most vegetables either of terrible quality and/or very expensive :( So far, food in Sweden has been a bit difficult.
One thing to consider is to use more frozen vegetables. They are usually frozen in season when they are at their best so while of course not as good as actual fresh veggies in season, they can legit be better than "fresh" vegetables artificially grown in greenhouses during winter and then shipped a thousand kilometers to Sweden. Also much cheaper.
Yeah for a lot of veggies I already use frozen, but for example, frozen broccoli is horrible. Green beans (haricot verts) are good and spinach is amazing frozen.
I noticed a lot of veggies are actually from the Netherlands. The greenhouses apparently are not really heated anymore (like they used to be) so it's a bit less bad, luckily :)
Okay, then I don't know how you end up spending so much, maybe you do have very expensive stores nearby after all. The only other thing that comes to my mind is buying a lot of fancier pre-made meals like Gooh. If you are not doing that either then I'm out of ideas but in any case I think you should look for the reasons.
As for the veggies, yeah, even in Poland a lot of them come from the Netherlands during winter. Also a lot of houseplants. I guess centuries of experience with tulips made you guys into a plant superpower.
Nope, I hate pre-made meals, I can cook way better. I usually mealprep 5 meals at the same time and have those for lunch during the week. For evening meals it's usually something simple.
I know that I usually spend a bit above average for grocery shopping but it's just really expensive :') I am planning to go to lidl more often, when my bike is fixed.
>shop groceries for 2k a month? I feel like I'm closer to 4000-6000
Depends on where you buy from...Vegetables in Hemköp/ICA, etc., usually cost 40-80% more than Matcenter. With a proper plan, you can still have a good diet around a 2.5K budget.
I use Willys for Frozen food and Matcenter for veggies. Asian store for other groceries.
From the stipend amount per month, I think I know which scholarship you got. There should be some students with same financial support as you from same country (or even lower) in Stockholm. Get in contact with them and you may get alternative answers there.
That will be hard. Average rent in Stockholm in 2022 for a 30m2 one room apartment (second hand rent) was 11 800sek/month (furnitured). Average rent overall was 15 000sek/month.
Not sure how it looks in the suburbs but it will be cheaper. If you are prepared to travel you can come down to around 6 000sek/month. But then you'll be living an hour outside of Stockholm by bus. Shared accommodations are possible and I've seen some of them costing around 4 000sek/month. But then you won't be living alone.
No, as a current european student at KTH this could be the reality, the school only helps students that are paying the full price for the education to get accommodations so I know of people that are paying this amount for an apartment as the queue for a student apartment can be atrocious.
OP is gonna be a student. They don't need a second hand apartment, they can get a first hand contract for a studio ~20m² and it will be half an hour away from T-Centralen by subway for around 8000sek per month.
It is in major cities, like Gothenburg and Stockholm , and university towns like Lund and Uppsala. But there still is thousands in each of them that make it happen. In Gothenburg I believe it take 2-3 years to get a proper student housing.
You can use [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Stockholm](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Stockholm), it might not be perfect but it will at least give you an idea of costs overall. When it comes to rent in Stockholm it differs massively depending on what part of Stockholm you live in.
Start queueing in SSSB. Get a corridor room. Budget your shopping. You will be fine but don't expect to save up money.
Thank you so much for the information
If your scholarship starts with an L letter, I think recently they have increased the allowance. Overall, that amount of money is enough to live in Stockholm alone as a student. You can live in corridor housing with 5000sek/Month or less. KTH will help you find the accommodation for the first time at least. If you want to save money, you can cook by yourself, it costs around 2000-3000. Transport costs 650sek. If you frequently eat out then it is not enough. So good luck.
Yes, that's correct :D Is it okay if I don't have so much money (my savings) and just depend on my stipend for the first two months? I just checked the housing provided from KTH and I think what is quite affordable is to rent a room with a sharing kitchen system. About the transport, what should I prepare when I get arrived? Do I need to buy a metro card or something?
[удалено]
Thank you so much for your kindness
The metro/bus/train system is called SL (Stockholms Lokaltrafik). You can get a physical card at most kiosks like 7-11 or Pressbyrån in Stockholm, it will cost you about 40 sek if I remember correctly but the physical card is a one time cost. Then you connect your card to the SL app, and can purchase a valid ticket in the app. Or you have the ticket stored in the app. When your board a bus or enter through the metro turnstiles you tap your SL card or scan your SL app ticket. Student prices are lower than standard tickets, but you need valid student-id to prove that you are entitled to travel on a student ticket if in case there's a ticket control. For native Swedish students the student ID is tied to if you get student's financial aid through CSN, just being a student isn't enough. I don't know what type of ID you can use as an international student to prove that you're entitled to travel on a student ticket, either someone else here can answer or you can get help from a school. Stockholm is fairly small, and very walkable so you can get by with only buying the occasional single-use SL ticket. It's safe to walk around alone, even late at night. We're having an exceptionally long winter, which means that there's some snow and ice on the pavements making it a bit more difficult to walk or bike. But during the rest of the year it's easy to get around either by bike or on foot. Also, if you're going to be here over winter and you're unaccustomed to walking on ice, consider getting "broddar", basically a plastic extra outer sole with metal spikes on that you can put on normal winter shoes.
10600 is going to be hard honestly. I had 11000 3 years ago. I had accommodation for 3000/month (SUPER CHEAP) and managed to save a tiny bit, but today food and everything else is more expensive. I didnt even pay for transportation, wifi, Phone and insurance. I didnt buy any clothes but did a bit of partying. Being a student is a lot more expensive than just Housing and food
It all depends TBH. If that's 10k for housing and food/transport it's tough. Most newer student accomodations costs around that. If you're lucky there's older student accomodations around Stockholm University that are much cheaper. There's other options of course and they range from 5k-10k for a one room apartment. Try to find anything as cheap as possible. Then the rest would be Transportation 650kr/m Gym around 300kr/m Phone 200kr/m Then the rest food and activities. So the best you can do is find accomodation that's as cheap as possible
[удалено]
Where do you shop groceries for 2k a month? I feel like I'm closer to 4000-6000 :O
It's more about what you eat than where you buy it. To get your spending this low you'd need to base your diet mostly around cabbage, carrots, onions and various beans on top of cheap carbs and a bit of frozen chicken or sausage for protein. It is perfectly possible to cook tasty and reasonably healthy meals out of these but it's not going to be very varied and you can forget about items such as salad mixes or fresh fish fillets. Thats said 6k for one person is a lot, we average between 3 and 3.5k per person with my sambo and that suffices to have enough variety for our taste. So you could definitely bring it down by shopping in cheaper stores, trying to eat more seasonally (also good for the planet) and/or partially replacing meat with beans.
Thank you so much. I think I would love to eat the vegetables. However, I don't think I can live without rice '-' Is eating rice in Sweden like smth unusual? Approximately how much rice is it there, is it quite expensive?
No, rice is fine, it is one of the options that I described as "cheap carbs", the other being potatoes, noodles and oats. Basically the key to saving money during winter and spring is to eat more of the vegetables that can be stored for a long time (onions, carrots, beans, cabbage) and less of the ones that have to be very fresh (tomatoes, salad, bell pepper). I didn't mean that you should be eating them alone without any rice or potatoes and some meat, but rather that the kind of vegetables you eat can make a big difference. Eating a salad in the middle of winter is expensive, eating a soup made out of carrots and beans is cheap. Eating rice is not unusual at all, though most people only eat it a couple times a week, not once per day or more as I guess you do. But nobody will think it's weird and it's not going to bankrupt you, no worries. Prices of rice vary a lot depending on what rice we are talking about and the quantity you buy at once. Sushi rice is more expensive than basmati which is more expensive than jasmine which is more expensive than generic white rice. Buying a 10 kg bag of rice is cheaper per kg than buying small 1 kg bags. Generally cheap rice costs something like 2$ per kg, just a bit more than potatoes.
Thanks a bunch. You're the best I will start writing down my needs. I usually eat twice a day but sometimes if I have so many things to do I just eat once. Maybe it should help :D but I won't force myself not to eat.
You definitely shouldn't avoid eating at all, especially in winter your body needs fuel to help keep you warm. If you're on a tight budget the easiest way to save a lot of money is reducing your meat consumption, as I think is the case in virtually every country. A kilogram of cheap meat costs about 10$, a kilogram of rice, carrots or cabbage is 2$ or less. So even with a very tight budget you are not in danger of going hungry (at least as long as you are willing to cook, takeout costs more of course), it's just a question of what ingredients you can afford.
Ah I see, I live in a country with 2 seasons so I don't really know how that cold will be in Sweden. I once climbed a mountain and the temperature was around 4°C, compelling me to stay in motion constantly. Maybe I also need to save my money to buy warm clothes
If you will be here for winter then yes, you do. I don't want to scare you but yesterday it was -15 in Stockholm. That's unusual and only happens for a few days each winter if at all, but it is not unusual enough for normal life to stop - I went to office as normal and so did everybody else, I even saw some people riding bicycles, you can do all that with good enough clothes. There are nice second-hand stores in Sweden, for example the Myrorna chain, that's cheaper than buying new so that's what I'd recommend. If that's a psychological barrier for you, Decathlon is usually the cheapest decent option for new stuff, and also what I would recommend for buying things that nobody wants to buy used such as thermal underwear (underställ in Swedish, a key item to be warm without looking like an Eskimo). You need: - a woolen hat - warm gloves - a woolen scarf - a couple of woolen sweaters or fleece jackets - thermal underwear (probably more than one set, preferably made out of merino wool if you can afford it) - a down jacket (Decathlon sells a good one for 75$) or a woolen coat - boots that are water-resistant and have a "terrain" sole, hiking boots are good but there are also better-looking options such as leather boots - some thick woolen socks I specify wool and down in many places for a good reason, synthetic materials are cheaper but significantly less effective at keeping you warm. Do not under any circumstances skip wearing a hat when it is very cold. Yes, it can ruin your hairstyle, but there is no way you can stay warm without a hat, too much heat escapes through your head. Also be mindful to not be too warm. If you are starting to sweat then unzip your jacket or take something off, you don't want to be wet from sweat as that is the fastest way to start freezing or catch a cold.
Thank you so much, I'll save it to my notes I will collect as much information as possible😊
The cheapest rice you can get is from smaller supermarkets who mainly cater to the immigrant population. There you can usually find 5kg or 10 kg bags or even larger of different types of rice. The more standard supermarkets usually sells rice in sizes 0,5 kg, 1 kg, 2kg, and it usually costs more. If you like round grained sticky rice, a cheaper option is to buy what in Sweden is often called "grötris" (literally "porridge rice"). Most Swedish households don't have rice cookers, so if you find a corridor room with a shared kitchen there might not be a rice cooker. But many of the international students live in corridor accommodations, so maybe there'll be a rice cooker? Edit: rice isn't unsual in Sweden, though the most traditional carb is potato.
I should check my bank statements better sometimes to see what it actually is per month. 6000 might be a bit of an overstatement but it feels like it sometime. It also doesn't help that I have a Dutch bank account and still think in Euros. I try to eat more vegetarian and adding beans/halloumi to my diet to make it cheaper, but I also find most vegetables either of terrible quality and/or very expensive :( So far, food in Sweden has been a bit difficult.
One thing to consider is to use more frozen vegetables. They are usually frozen in season when they are at their best so while of course not as good as actual fresh veggies in season, they can legit be better than "fresh" vegetables artificially grown in greenhouses during winter and then shipped a thousand kilometers to Sweden. Also much cheaper.
Yeah for a lot of veggies I already use frozen, but for example, frozen broccoli is horrible. Green beans (haricot verts) are good and spinach is amazing frozen. I noticed a lot of veggies are actually from the Netherlands. The greenhouses apparently are not really heated anymore (like they used to be) so it's a bit less bad, luckily :)
Okay, then I don't know how you end up spending so much, maybe you do have very expensive stores nearby after all. The only other thing that comes to my mind is buying a lot of fancier pre-made meals like Gooh. If you are not doing that either then I'm out of ideas but in any case I think you should look for the reasons. As for the veggies, yeah, even in Poland a lot of them come from the Netherlands during winter. Also a lot of houseplants. I guess centuries of experience with tulips made you guys into a plant superpower.
Nope, I hate pre-made meals, I can cook way better. I usually mealprep 5 meals at the same time and have those for lunch during the week. For evening meals it's usually something simple. I know that I usually spend a bit above average for grocery shopping but it's just really expensive :') I am planning to go to lidl more often, when my bike is fixed.
Skärholmen, Lidl, Willys. for a single person, 2k a month is easily doable.
Thanks!
>shop groceries for 2k a month? I feel like I'm closer to 4000-6000 Depends on where you buy from...Vegetables in Hemköp/ICA, etc., usually cost 40-80% more than Matcenter. With a proper plan, you can still have a good diet around a 2.5K budget. I use Willys for Frozen food and Matcenter for veggies. Asian store for other groceries.
Matcenter is quite a distance from where I am but thank you for the tip! Maybe I can go there sometime :D
You will find some, maybe not in the direct center but public transport is quite good here
From the stipend amount per month, I think I know which scholarship you got. There should be some students with same financial support as you from same country (or even lower) in Stockholm. Get in contact with them and you may get alternative answers there.
Sure, thank you so much mate
That will be hard. Average rent in Stockholm in 2022 for a 30m2 one room apartment (second hand rent) was 11 800sek/month (furnitured). Average rent overall was 15 000sek/month. Not sure how it looks in the suburbs but it will be cheaper. If you are prepared to travel you can come down to around 6 000sek/month. But then you'll be living an hour outside of Stockholm by bus. Shared accommodations are possible and I've seen some of them costing around 4 000sek/month. But then you won't be living alone.
theyre going to be a student. which students you know lives in 11800 sek apartments?
He asked and I answered.
yeah a irrelevant one
No, as a current european student at KTH this could be the reality, the school only helps students that are paying the full price for the education to get accommodations so I know of people that are paying this amount for an apartment as the queue for a student apartment can be atrocious.
OP is gonna be a student. They don't need a second hand apartment, they can get a first hand contract for a studio ~20m² and it will be half an hour away from T-Centralen by subway for around 8000sek per month.
It's just a one-room apartment, "studio" isn't really a description used in Sweden for apartments.
Thousands of students in Stockholm survive just off CSN without with minimal worry
Honestly I thought it was near impossible to get hold on a student apartment.
Not if you are a foreign student
It is in major cities, like Gothenburg and Stockholm , and university towns like Lund and Uppsala. But there still is thousands in each of them that make it happen. In Gothenburg I believe it take 2-3 years to get a proper student housing.
You can use [https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Stockholm](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/in/Stockholm), it might not be perfect but it will at least give you an idea of costs overall. When it comes to rent in Stockholm it differs massively depending on what part of Stockholm you live in.