Around two weeks ago, I reached out to Gerardo Robledillo, Founder of Expatistan.com. Recently, we moved our company HQ to Tel Aviv and I was particularly keen on comparing the cost of living between the UK and Israel. The more I learned about the site, the more I liked it. So much infact, I prepared a short interview earlier this week with Gerardo. Here are the best bits:
Our verdict? 5/5. An invaluable website to compare the cost of living. Whether you need to plan a budget for an overseas relocation, deciding between cities or already taken the plunge, Expatistan.com is every expats best friend. The crowdsourced nature of the site keeps pricing fresh and realistic, and undoubtably a hot site to watch out for in 2013.
How are you doing today Gerardo?
I’m doing great, thank you.
Give us a 1 sentence elevator pitch on why every expat should use Expatistan?
Every expat needs to research the cost of living of his new home before moving there. Expatistan was created to provide realistic, accurate and up-to-date cost of living information to expats moving from any city to any other city in the world. In one single search that will take seconds, you’ll get all the info about cost-of-living in front of you.
What inspired you to launch Expatistan.com?
I am an expat myself, and at some point I was changing country quite frequently. In the 4 years period before I came up with the idea to create Expatistan I changed city 5 times. In each of those relocations I found the same problem. To find out what was the local cost of living (and therefore to decide how much money I would need there) I had to spend literally weeks sorting through out-of-date forums, unreliable websites, and dubious answers in Q&A sites. At the end, I would have to aggregate all that info myself, and take a wild guess. I decided there had to be a better way. So I created Expatistan, which collects, aggregates and validates prices for every-day items entered by expats and creates an index of cost of living information focused on expats.
What do the next 12 months hold for the site? Any ‘secret’ surprises?
Nothing secret, really. I will keep improving the site, and adding new features that will make the prices even more reliable than now. For example, it has been a request form users for a long time to add more items and categories to the index, like Education, and specially Taxes. I hope I will be able to tackle the Taxes problem, which is a very difficult, but really important one.
Why is comparing the cost of living so important for a new expat?
There are a few reason. The most important one, in my opinion, is that you want to know the cost of living of your new city before you even move there. You need to know whether you’ll be able to afford living there, and what kind of income you’ll need once you arrive to be able to live a happy life. I’ve heard too many stories of expats that were totally unhappy of their experience because they had unrealistic expectations of how much money they’ll need to live a decent live in their new home. For example, when you are thinking on accepting a job offer, you should really know what kind of life the salary will afford you. If you do not do this research, you may find yourself in a bad spot, running through your savings and being unhappy.
If you could give one piece of advice to an expat regarding adjustment, what would it be?
Keep an open mind, and try to adjust to your local environment. Do not try to replicate your life back home in your new city. One of the beautiful things of being an expat is that it allows you to really know another culture. You should use that chance.
What advice would you give to an expat repatriating back home?
This is a difficult transition, specially if you were a happy expat. Things at home will not be quite the same as they were when you left, and you will not be the same person either, but at the same time they will be all too familiar to enjoy in a different way. So I guess my advice would be to try to create a new life for your new self, including finding a new space for your old friends, routines and habits that were waiting for you back home.
I love the peer to peer influence with Expatistan. This is Wikipedia mentality. What made you go down this route?
It’s the best way to get up-to-date and reallistic prices for the index. Who better than expats themselves that are in the actual city to say how much things really cost? It also allows to get prices for many, many cities that would not be possible to get prices for if it was centralised. We hold data for more than 1,400 cities currently. It would be impossible, specially for a small project like mine, to centrally organise the collection and aggregation of thousands of prices for each one of those cities.
How much data are you collecting on a daily / monthly basis?
We get around 20,000 new prices every month. On average, 1 or 2 users for every hundred that visit the site will enter prices for a city.
How do you normally buy foreign currency? Bank or Broker?
Usually through a bank
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