€80 left. Would you call that a retirement cushion?
That is what the Braga example leaves this couple after rent, local transport, bills, groceries, a health placeholder, meals out, and the rest. If the pension is €2,500 before tax, we need to start with a different number.
I compared Braga, Coimbra, and Caldas da Rainha in this week’s video. What I keep coming back to is how little room some of these budgets leave once you stop treating rent as the whole story.
Know someone asking the same question? Feel free to forward this email.
Before you borrow any of these numbers, check 3 things:
Start with what you can actually spend.
The model assumes €2,500 after tax and currency conversion. The shared monthly costs add up to €1,470 before rent and transport: €220 for bills, €500 for groceries and household items, €250 for health, €300 for meals and leisure, and €200 for clothing, repairs, and miscellaneous costs. That €250 health line is only a placeholder, not an insurance quote.If you want to test the budget against your own household, use the free Cost of Living Calculator.
Look at the actual home, not just the town.
With €850 rent and €100 local transport, the Braga example comes to €2,420, leaving €80. Add €150 to the rent, and it is already €70 over. The rent is a modeled listing, not a promise that a suitable home is available at that price. Check the heating, windows, damp, lift, and the walk to the places you’ll use every week.Price the way you’ll get around.
At €950 rent, the Coimbra and Caldas examples each reach about €2,520, or €20 over budget. In the coastal version that needs a car, the transport line rises from €100 to a modeled €450, and the total reaches €2,870. That car figure is an allowance for fuel, insurance, upkeep, taxes, and depreciation, not a quote. Buying a car would also mean an upfront cost.
The full video walks through the assumptions behind each place.
Watch it here if you want to check the comparison line by line.
None of this says what your retirement in Portugal will cost. It shows why I’d find the kind of home and transport setup I’d actually choose, then test the rest of the budget around that.
If you want help applying these tradeoffs to your own move, start the Portugal Move Assessment here.
If you just have a question, reply to this email, and I’ll get back to you.
See you next week.
Tchau,
Danilo from Remote Life Portugal