1) can i bring my wife (how)?
2) is this mony eanough for 2 persons to live in zurich?
I'm going to enroll in a phd job with 38400 CHF a year (gross salary).
Hi ,
Unless this salary includes housing forget it . I am divorced and have a small son and we have about 100,000 per year and we just get by . Of course we pay very high rent .
Good luck,
Mamacass
Don't listen to the previous poster. I'm not quite sure how 1 person with one child can barely get by on CHF 100,000.
That being said,
1) If it's for your PhD, I'm assuming you just recently came from undergrad, which means you're used to not having a lot of money.
2) If you can find a cheap 1 BR place (talk to your future advisors secretary, they'll most likely have experience with arranging cheap housing for incoming PhDs) You both will be able to live on what you make, however, you would have to budget carefully and not have many (if any) frivolous expenses.
3) Your wife will be able to come with you. As you are non-EU, she will not be able to work and her permit will be dependent upon yours.
4) Ask your future advisor if he would be willing to supplement your salary a little as you are married and do not want to have to be away from your wife.
That's all I can think of for now. Hope that helps.
And before anybody goes off about how, there's no way in hell this could work, remember it's for a PhD, and that is the salary that is made, 100's of people getting PhDs in Zurich live on this amount a year and some of them have families.
The leasing rates on Porsches went up, or so I hear.
Regarding a permit for you wife, see these threads (found easily by using the search function with the terms "spouse, student"):
Graduate student and family permits .
Working permit for a wife of an international student .
Basically, see this handbook for new students at ETH . Your question is answered on pages 59-60:
As for money, 38,400 is not much for one person to live on, let alone two!
I've said it before and I'll say it again. It's not a lot of money, but it's totally enough for one person to have a nice life. I see it daily. It is possible to live two people on that amount as well, just very stringently.
Shall I bold this?
CHF 38000 Is the average salary for a PhD student in Zurich, if you want to get a PhD here that is generally what you will make, it's not negotiable (for the most part) and many many many people have nice lives on it. It's not a job, It's a PhD, furthering your education
I agree with Chemgoddess,
I was living in Valais, and I was saving a small amount of money, with a net salary of 24K CHF/year. I feel I can also live with my wife on that amount.
Valais is far cheaper than Zurich, but housing in Zurich is only 1.3-1.5 times more expensive than Valais and Coop/Migros seem to be the same every where in Switzerland if I'm not wrong.
To the author of this thread: I've got one friend who is living with that amount per year, and he's got difficulty inviting his wife to Switzerland. His solution: a proof that his wife have a minimum amount of money of 20K USD in her bank. The total time waiting for a dependent visa of his wife is about 4 months.
Hi BioSupersoul,
I'm here with my eth post-doc'ing husband and in all honesty
it will be very very hard to live on 3200CHF/month for two people.
This is not to discourage you, I think it can be done if you dnever eat out and you move into a studio instead of a 1 bedroom and don't do any traveling.
You do have to think of your spouse's insurance/health bills and transportation costs at the very least, if not a phone and german language classes.
If your wife obtains a B permit, she could potentially get a job.
I guess it's a decision between how much strain your marriage can take a)under difficult financial circumstances or b)with a 3 year separation.
I wish you all the best.
You know, spouses are not pets.
Well, let's do a break down.
Take home CHF 3200
rent and bills:1200-1400/month
Public transport (assuming year abo for both people): 110
Insurance (from one of the cheap insurers for foreign students): 200
Mobile phone: 50
Food: 700
Those are the bare minimums I can think of, things that would need to be paid.
That only totals to: 2460 at CHF 1400/month for rent. Which leaves about CHF 700 for other things.
Of course they wouldn't be living the high life but it is doable. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to get what you truly want outta life and it doesn't always revolve around money.
Dear ChrisW, How much "revenue is high enough" to bring spouse?
Seems I might be the most knowledgeable on the subject as vs. others who have posted I *have* been a phD student in Zurich making 3200CHF a month (gross!). Conclusion - with a wife you will not be happy and neither will she.
Problems:
1) The figure is gross - take off 8-10% for tax and mandatory pension = 2900Fr net
2) There is a minimum space requirement defined by the government for how many people can live in how small an apartment. For 2 people you need at least a 1 bedroom flat and the cheapest (a new foreigner can get) in ZH is ~1500Fr.
3) You need to both have health insurance - the cheapest is 150Fr each (300Fr total)
4) You both need to eat - cheapest, including boxed lunch is say 2fr breakfast, 3Fr lunch, 5Fr dinner = 10Fr per day each = 300Fr per month each (600Fr total)
Fixed costsl before actually doing anything (like buying a tram ticket!) = 2400Fr, so 500fr left as spending money
Can you live on 250Fr for clothes, shoes, entertainment, furniture, travel (fly home 1/year?), books.....each?
Another major problem becomes if she can't work what does she do? Learn german? Thats gonna be several hundred a month potentially. She might want to go out for coffee or take day-trips but quickly for most it gets boring, especially when the money is always a concern and in the end the spouse will not put up with that for 3-4 years. I have seen it more than once in my time at ETH, one very unhappy spouse making one extremely unhappy PhD student - even with post-docs on ~70k with a non-working spouse things are not really luxurious...
So conclusion - 3k/mt is more than enough for a single student (I lived great!), or a dual income family; but for you *and* your wife it is simply not going to work (unless she does!).
Andrew
I like the way you discredited what I said, or I can assume you were speaking of me, and then gave nearly the exact same information I did. If they were able to bring over the amount needed to show he could support his wife (CHF 20,000) then they're life would be fine.
3200 chf is his gross salary, not take home.
You can't do rent and bills for two people for 1200. Stick to the 1400 CHF. Rental deposit? You might get it back but that's 200/month in liquid gone.
Incidentals? Home insurance, getting sick (you still have to pay up to 300 fr/annum and then drop $$ like it's hot for "incidentals" such as BC pills etc), clothing ( No matter how frugal you still have to account for that expense.), flights home maybe once or twice during a 3 year stay? Lunch at work? Furnishing an apartment? Random fees for weird Swiss things, like incoming packages and Drivers' license renewal. What's left of that promised extra 700 CHF/month?
There's a lot of stuff that may not be obvious when you don't live it but it's not fair to be unrealistic. It's doable but it's friggin hard, CH is not a country that makes it easy on people to just "get by".
D'oh, took me a long time to write cause my boss was around so I had to hide in another window for a while so actually didn't see your post! Sorry.
But totally opposite conclusion, Mmm. Yeah, they can probably scrape by, but I've yet to see a couple that has (and I think 4 that have not - in the sense they left, ok that includes a Post-doc couple, and the leaving was less about money and always more about what the heck is she (or he) suppose to do all day with no money?)
Edit - I am happy I eat cheaper than you though - but looks like I need to find a new flat! 1200 would be sweet
I disagree with ChemGoddess, that budget is not realistic both in terms of net income, health insurance (not even considering retention and other such costs) and expenditure as calculated over the course of the three years that you would be here (including expenses like moving in, moving out, and having some form of life outside the lab). Remember, it is not two people doing a PhD here, it is bad enough for the PhD student but since he/she will be working like crazy, that compensates for not having any franc to spare, since he won't have time anyway, but living that life with a spouse in tow it is a different ballgame, psychologically speaking.
Believe me, I have lived this life for too long on less than half a Swiss PhD salary, and it is doable for one person, but if you want to still have a marriage at the end (or not be in debt in case on of you gets ill) this amount is just not enough, sorry.
What would work perhaps is come alone for a year, live cheaply, work like hell, save all you can, and then bring your wife, so you can live much more easily for the remaining two years.
In the meantime, perhaps she could do a cheaper language course at home, as the ones here are ridiculously expensive in my view. But of course, this separation would be a hard decision to take. I wish you good luck whatever you decide.
As a PhD student who brought my wife here, I would like to share some experience.
My salary is about the same as the op. I agree with chemgoddess's cost estimation. I spend about the same, and I am very lucky to get a very cheap apartment. The problem with having 2 people is that you can't save any money.
Another problem is that trying to inviting your wife here to stay with you incase you come first is very hard. It's a long & frustrated process to deal with the Swiss authorities. If you have a bank account of 20,000CHF to prove for your wife, it should be ok.
No it is not enough! If you really want to tak the job, make yourself indispensible pretty quickly and then tell them to up the pay. Or else struggle through until you get a permit that will enable you to transfer to another post.
You can get a cost of living leaflet from the Swiss Embassy but the one I got before moving to CH was out of date. Why not take a trip over with your wife and try to cost it for yourself? Insurance is expensive.
why can't the wife work? I thought the wife of B permit residents could work, in my experience and not Eu
Ummmm. . . . . . as per my previous post and the OP, this is for a PhD. It's not a job, the salary is not negotiable. He would be there on a student permit, not a transferable work permit.
Since he would be a foreign student, insurance is not expensive, it costs around CHF 900-1000/year, with a CHF 300 deductible.