If you’re moving to Germany, **and you have never been there before**, what is the best way to know what salary to ask for, and what standard of living it can afford?

I am not asking this for myself, but for the people I help. I’m trying to find a good way to answer the question.

This is what I’m thinking:

1. Look at the minimum wage (9.82€/hour) or median income (47,700€/year).
2. Use the [Office of Statistics tool](https://service.destatis.de/DE/gehaltsvergleich/beruf.html) to find average salaries for your job
3. Put your expected salary in a Netto-Brutto calculator to know how much you actually keep
4. Get an idea of the cost of living in your area. Rent could be harder to measure.
5. Build a rough budget based on this.

However, that’s a lot of work to get a rough idea of what is and isn’t a good salary. I’m thinking that a quick and dirty scale that puts salaries in human terms: “very low, low, average, high, very high”. Would that help better?

How would you approach this?

8 comments

  1. 2000 Netto is what most ppl have in average.
    Thats about 3300 Brutto.

    With 2000 Euro month you can actually live and save some money or go on vacation etc. unlike in the US you still randomly die from month to month with 5k $

  2. Yeah, there are so many variables and it’s hard to give super specific answers, but I think your idea of giving rough ranges of what an unlivable/low/average/high/princely salary is in Germany (or in specific areas) is probably most helpful. Idk if there’s like a bell curve for income in Germany published, but that would probably be helpful in visualizing it

  4. As Thatcher said: No, No, No!

    First thing is about what you can do, what your profession is and your level of seniority.

    Second, look at the rents statistics, and how hard/easy is to find those apartments at those prices.

    Third look at the MCD menu prices, a rule of thumb is that one MCDonalds Big Mac menu will cost as much money as you will need to buy food/day i.e. a Big Mac is about 8 Euros that means about 240 EUR/month for food

    internet and electricity is like, depending on the area about 150 E/month

    Now you have rough budget.

  5. “Good” is relative. You can’t judge if something is “very low, low, average, high, very high” without details of the situation. Family size, location, expected lifestyle. Those are all individual and all influence what someone considers good. If you want to really know how decent your salary is for your specific situation, then you need to do the research.

  7. The new government has committed to raising the minimum wage to €12 by the end of 2022.

    That said, working full time for minimum wage (168 hours x 12 EUR/h = 2.016,- EUR per month) is barely enough to live on. After deductions (health insurance, unemployment, etc.) you’re probably taking home about 1.500,-. Depending on where you live, that may just barely cover your living costs (apartment, transportation, food, clothing, …). If you live in a city like Munich or Frankfurt, you might not even be able to afford rent…

  8. Well… the question is always **what job** do you do and how much expierence you have.

    Also the **area** is important, in Munich the sallary is much higher, but living costs are exorbitant too.

    btw: the link you provided showed that I should earn nearly 1000€ more, lol 😉 They are kinda optimistic.

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