Job Discussion Forums

[lennon146]

Can someone tell me roughly what kind of start-up costs I'd be facing in Bogot�? I have certs and plenty of experience and would be looking for work in a language school, but I'm wondering about initial costs just to get going (apartment, living expenses for a month or two, etc).

Thanks

[jdealla]

Lennon,

I just spent a month in Bogota. It depends on what kind of work you are looking for.

Assuming that your Spanish is good and you can job search fairly well, this is what you can get (all money in Colobian pesos COP):

You can find work fairly easy depending on your certification. If you have CELTA or Trinity you can find work at a colegio without much of a problem, and with a little luck at a uni (yet you will have to spend more time and wait for this more than likely).

The easiest is a language institute. You can easily find something at one of the many in Bogota, where you would be teaching BZ English. For these institutes the average is around 25.000 COP an hour, working the normal early morning/late evening shifts.

Privates are fairly easy to get and you can make 30.000-50.000 per hour.

Initial costs depend on you, but I would say the average is around 1,000,000 COP a month being somewhat conservative to around 1,500,000 COP being very liberal.

You can find a decent room in town for around 400,000 to 500,000. A private apartment will be more expensive obviously, but something small could be around 500.000 or 600.000, plus whatever utilities you have. A night in a hostel dorm will run you 20.000. A private room around 40.000

A plate (soup, rice, meat, beans, little bit of salad) will run you about 5.000 in a typical hole in the wall kinda place. A nice meal is around 10.000 in a restaurant. A beer is 2.500 at a small place and can be quite expensive as well. I've seen it up to 6.000. As with most places in Latin America, at the grocery stores the fresh stuff is cheap and the stuff in boxes is expensive.

I spent around 1,200,000 my month there, without trying to hard to be frugal, but with keeping somewhat of an eye out on expenses. I lived in a small room in the Candelaria (estrato 1, lowest utilities payment).

I hope it helps.