Chile Forum

Hi everyone, this is my first post and I hope you can help me by sharing your own personal experiences.

I and my girl are planning to move to Santiago. We hopefully will be there by january next year. We are from Colombia, we are hard-working people and we intend to improve our quality of life. It doesn't mean we don't live well here, as a matter of fact we do. We just want to try something new and we think Chile may be a good option. We are not planning to make lots of money or live some kind of "Chilean dream", we are just not "happy" here and based on information we have read we consider Chile may offer us better possibilities than the ones we have here.

As far as it concerns to our education I can tell you the following, I am an english teacher with a bachelor's degree in Foreign Languages and 5 years of experience working in english institutes. She is a swimming instructor and is currently getting an international certification.

Now talking about our trip, my father's family is Chilean so I am already working on my documents to present them at the consulate's office. Apparently I will have my citizenship in 6 months so by January or maybe February I will be a "Chilean" citizen (legally speaking).
We'll be staying with a local family for a couple months and we will have to help with house expenses as our food, electricity, water and such. So the housing expenses sholdn't be very high. I am saving some money to buy the tickets, cover all legal and travel expenses and "survive" while we settle there. While making my budget I found out I could have around 2.000 dollars in my pockets when I arrive to Santiago. Of course, we plan to start looking for a job as soon as we get there, but just thinking about the worst possible scenario, what if we don't get one soon?
Well, these are my concerns so I am asking now for your help:
Based on your own personal experience and the information provided, how long do you think we can live with that money?
We are not going on vacation, we just need to have some food, transportation, money to help where we are staying and the basic stuff while we find a job.

Before you try to make me change my mind, this is a decision I have already made. I know there are lots of problems in Chile and it is not paradise, so if you are going to talk about the difficulties and negative things, well, I prefer you save your comments for yourself. If your comments aim to illustrate me about the issue I described I am sure I will appreciate them a lot for sharing your experiences with us.

Thanks for reading.

Your could stretch your $2000 to two months...

You have somewhere to stay...,

2K will be enough if you don’t pay for housing in the first few months. You should search the forum for information on getting your citizenship, it may be easier, quicker and less expensive if you do it in Santiago. Make sure you have the documents you need before you arrive to process it.

2- 4 months for two people. I spent 2k my first two months including rent but wasn't really watching what I spent. I could have stretched it if I was careful and didn't have a rent payment.

gjz333 wrote:2- 4 months for two people. I spent 2k my first two months including rent but wasn't really watching what I spent. I could have stretched it if I was careful and didn't have a rent payment.

It helps if you're vegetarians. Or at least temporarily.

Depends how much your family asks for a contribution, but if you live frugally you could definitely spread it out to 4 months or a bit more... avoiding supermarkets and only shopping at local markets can make your money go a lot further.
Good luck with the immigration process and I hope you will enjoy Chile! You have a beautiful country! But I can understand why you would want to leave.

Kimberley wrote:Depends how much your family asks for a contribution, but if you live frugally you could definitely spread it out to 4 months or a bit more... avoiding supermarkets and only shopping at local markets can make your money go a lot further.
Good luck with the immigration process and I hope you will enjoy Chile! You have a beautiful country! But I can understand why you would want to leave.

Wow 4 months I need you to be my monthly planner

jessicak1234 wrote:4 months for 2 people? I doubt it!!! I think 2 months is a realistic expectation. Good luck finding a job in that time!!

its possible.... chilean families live on that much...

Thank you all for sharing. Here where we live we could live with 2.000 dollars around four months even paying a rent and having a couple of nights out, anyway living here seems to be cheaper due to the conversation rate. Before you wrote anything, my expectations were around 3 months and now I can see I wasn't wrong after all. We really plan to stick to a budget that includes only what is necessary while we find a job, that is to say housing, food and transportation, so I think it won't be that difficult.

Your comments have been of great help. Hope to write soon with some news on the immigrating process.