Comparing Costs Of Beach Living
We spent a year in Puerto Vallarta Mexico and enjoyed it immensely. The warm weather, new and old friends, fun things to do, great restaurants, excellent shopping... all added up to a wonderful place to live. Even so, we originally set out to have an adventure for the first few years of our retirement and decided that we needed to carry on with our plans. We said "adios" and see you later to PV so we could continue to experience living in other great places before settling down.
And now here we are in the Caribbean spending time in beautiful Barbados. All of the elements of life that made Puerto Vallarta special and wonderful can also be found right here in Barbados, and perhaps even more so regarding fabulous white beaches, sunshine, and laid-back tropical life. And a bonus, everyone here speaks English - we are regularly told that we have an accent! It might be a bit difficult to do a straight across comparison in so many words, but the bottom line to the “feeling” we get in both places is about the same – they are wonderful places to live.
However, there is a significant difference in the cost of day to day consumables. Everything here in Barbados is more expensive and we have found that we really need to spend time shopping to get the best price for things. Groceries, pantry items electronics, furniture / appliances, cars, gas, all consumables... much more expensive in Barbados. Even a man's haircut. In Puerto Vallarta we paid 60 pesos – about $4.50 Canadian. Here in Barbados we have found the least expensive place to be Bds$50.00, or US$25.00 – about $38.00 Canadian.
On doing a little research it appears that all of the Caribbean islands are in the same boat (so to speak), as all of these items are shipped in and the cost of shipping and handling is passed on to the consumer. Plus, being a world renowned number one tourist destination, inflation is hitting hard – 18% in the last 6 years (Canada is 8%).
Cyndi and I kept track of day to day grocery costs in Mexico and prepared a spreadsheet that compares those costs to shopping in Barbados, and to our former shopping that we did in Canada. Almost all items in Barbados are double, or triple, the cost of shopping in Mexico (some are even higher) and perhaps 25% to 50% more in Barbados than we paid in Canada.
So far, the only things we have found that is not over the top expensive is the cost of renting an apartment, and the cost of buying rum. Both are about the same or perhaps a little less than what it cost us in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. So, I suppose we should focus on rum and a hammock....
Even though Barbados gets at least 8 or 9 hours of sunshine every day, they still run old fashioned diesel generators for much of their electricity demands. They do have some experimental privately owned solar energy fields providing power to a few lucky recipients, but the management and development issues are bogged down in politics. The government is insisting the solar generated power be added to the existing grid, to help reduce costs of the old system, rather than moving forward and just replacing the old one.
The cost of electricity is split into three categories to calculate your bill:
base / flat rate customer service charge (which covers office overhead and meter reading) - rate varies depending on amount of consumption,
actual Kwh usage by customers (covers the cost of maintenance for the system) - 15 cents to 20 cents per Kwh, and
fuel charge (which pays for running the old diesel generators) - 34 cents per Kwh.
....and they are all added up to arrive at your monthly billing. For a small apartment with a/c in the bedroom, the monthly bill amounts to about 3.6 cents (Canadian) per Kwh consumed. The warm climate requires us Canadians to run our a/c every night and that adds up to about 300 Kwh per month, or about $110.00 Canadian per month. In PV we used an average of about $120.00 to $140.00 Pesos / month; about CAN$9.00 or $10.00 / month. We are finding that we use more power here in Barbados and we are also charged a much higher rate.... I suppose it's still a little less than what we paid for electricity (with electric baseboard heaters) during the winter in Vancouver.
Eating out is WAAAAAY more expensive in Barbados than in Mexico. Tourists arrive here on a constant basis and they come from rich families in rich countries who are expecting 5 star meals and 5 star service. Restaurant owners want to take advantage of the tourist money coming in (I would if I was an owner) and they also have to pass on the high cost of importing foods to their restaurant patrons. Typically, restaurant prices in Barbados are double of what we would pay in Vancouver and perhaps four times what we would pay in Puerto Vallarta.
We have been to several bulk buy stores and big box grocery chains. There are deals to be had at all of them but we have generally found that “Price Smart” (a big box club similar to Costco) offers the best deals. Being a retired couple, it's difficult to buy 20 pounds of cheese and 40 rolls of toilet paper, but we are finding some deals in these outlets that are definitely worth paying the Bds$50 annual fee for membership. We do like the A1 Carlton Grocery Store in Black Rock as it reminds us of shopping at Superstore in Canada, and we can find almost all the same things.
We are learning (trying to learn) to live on more of a budget and shop / eat like Bajans. It's difficult to shed our north american consumer mentality when we have enjoyed it for so long. There are things that we simply cannot afford and have had to say goodbye to some of our favourite brands (eg: Smuckers strawberry jam Bds $22.00 per 500 ml jar, which costs about $3 in Canada).
Some of it sounds a bit bleak but we thought we should share as many of our friends have been asking about it. We didn't know any of this until we got here, and perhaps others can benefit from knowing. We have traded off some grocery items and have gained others while trynig to avoid overspending. Then you learn that you never really needed those northern "luxury items" anyway. It's definitely a change in life style to live in Barbados and it will take a bit of time for us to sort out our new / modified shopping needs.
Cyndi and I are taking a closer look at Grenada and eventually hope to have a bit of fun there too. It will be interesting to see if a slower / less mainstream tourist destination also means lower costs. Neither Barbados nor Grenada have current on-line information for grocery costs and so we have decided it would be best to visit as many white Caribbean beaches as possible. :-)