deepad | What does 40 USD buy for you?

I was re-downloading the trial version of Scrivener today and out of curiosity, clicked on the 'buy' link just to see how much it was. (I've been using Scrivener since it released public beta versions for Windows, and have liked it enough to stick through its initial crash-ridden betas to its free trial versions. The corkboard outliner has probably been the most significant gamechanger in the way I write since typing became easier than hand-writing.)

It costs $40, which is ₹2181 according to current exchange rates. The website actually offers a choice to be able to buy it in INR, and have priced it at ₹2,406.

Which is around half a month's rent for me. On the other hand, $40 was nowhere close to half a month's rent for me even when I was sharing a room in a pretty cheap apartment back in the US. (It was half a month's groceries, though.)

I remember when I first went to the US I would constantly convert all the prices to rupees, and in addition, try to figure out how much bread I could buy with the amount. It was a sort of easy comparison because at the time $1 = ₹45, which was around the price of a fancy whole wheat loaf of bread from a bakery in Delhi. On the other hand the only way I was able to get a similar price of bread in the US was scrounging in the past-expiry date bins at the co-op grocery stores, and even then I think the lowest prices were around $1.50 or $2.

I've been trying to read up on purchasing parity, and economic indices, and ways to compare wealth and lack thereof across different currencies and nations and economies and classes in a way that makes sense to me. So far the only way to make money seem real is to figure out what it can buy. In general, for instance, the same amount of money will get me a higher-end and more up-to-date electronic item in the US than it will in India. On the other hand, the amount of money with which I can buy a bunch of methi in Delhi will get me triple that amount of methi in my grandmom's village, but not even a leaf of methi in the US.

And then there's earning capacity to compare, which makes the whole thing even more hard to figure out, especially since I've never worked per hour in India the way I have in the US. (And being a freelancer means you have to factor in the days you don't work along with what you make in the days you do.) I was paid between $10 to $20 per hour depending on the job I was doing, which means $40 is between 2 to 4 hours work for me. (Remembering that this was between 7 to 2 years ago.) Minimum wage in the US seems to be between $5.15 and $7.25, so that means the software is equated to around 7.7 hours of work. Meanwhile in India we don't even have standard minimum wages, but going with the labour ministry's recommendations, that's a minimum of ₹166 per day. So it would take 25 days of work to be able to earn the amount needed to buy Scrivener. (Hah. This comparison becomes all the more farcical once you start thinking about comparative literacy rates, and also that there is no non-English Scrivener version.)

I know there are lots of sensible economists and whatnots who have probably written about this in many places (and if you have links or book recs I'd love to know), but especially when it comes to the anglophone internet which tends to price instantly deliverable stuff like software and music and ebooks in dollars, I'm very curious about what $40 means to people outside the US.

I know there are writers in the US who found Scrivener desirable but unaffordable, but I also know there are a lot of USian writers who have found it buyable, and not all of them are professional writers to the degree that they are living off of their writing.

I also can't think of a single person I personally know in India who I think would buy this software, though I know several professional writers and students for whom it would be potentially very useful. Some of them definitely have ₹2,400 to spare, and I can see them spending it on a dinner at a fancy restaurant, or jewellery, or some clothes. But paying for software is... not something I see the people around me often do. So I'm not even sure what affordable software really is; what price it starts and ends at. (See also, ebook pricing and my previous discussions thereof.)

What does $40, or ₹2,400 mean to you, where you live, in terms of what you spend on rent, or food, or, I guess, software? How many loaves of bread can you buy with it? (and is bread something found at every corner store, or one of those exotic things you have to locate a bakery for since everyone normally buys atta from the kirana shop and makes phulkas?)

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From:

delfinnium

40 USD is almost 50SGD (yay the lower USD!)

For about 50SGD, that's about 2 weeks' worth of 'lunch' money for when I am at university.
~S$2 buys a large loaf of bread, which can last me about a week if it doesn't go bad first, so that makes about 25 loaves of bread.
S$3- 4 buys about a plate of bbq pork & rice, so that's about ~12 plates of rice?

~S$11 buys about a 5kg bag of jasmine rice.
I wouldn't put $50 for a piece of software unless it's a game. :| and even then I'd prefer it to be $30 or $20.

If it was Scrivner... I dunno I really would have preferred $20 and below, $50 seems way too high, even though it is only about 1/12 of my rent at the moment.

Still, $50 can buy quite a bit, though not as much as in India or China. SGD50 can buy about ten times the amount of stuff I can buy here in Singapore.

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deepad - Date: 6/12/12 06:44 am (UTC) - Expand

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From:

marina

40$ is about 160 shekels, which for someone like me, working a job that pays just a bit less than the average national paycheck (but is practically the lowest paying white collar job you can get in Tel Aviv, which is the cultural capital and the most expensive city in the country), it's about 4.5 hours of work. Food is much more expensive in Tel Aviv than it is in say, the impoverished, working class city my parents live in (and where I lived until recently), so back home 160 shekels would buy me at least 2 weeks' worth of groceries (for one person) but in Tel Aviv (especially in the affluent area where I live) it buys a lot less than that, especially if I'm buying fruit and veg (which apparently is FUCKING EXPENSIVE in this city compared to where I come from, and is often less fresh/delicious).

My rent, on the other hand (for one room in a two room apartment), is closer to 530$, which is still considered ridiculously cheap in Tel Aviv (and I consider myself very lucky to have gotten the apartment that I did, everything else I looked at for weeks was more expensive). So, 40$ wouldn't make a dent in that.

Generally Israel is one of the poorer developed countries, so our purchasing power is pretty low compared to Europe/North America/Australia/etc, shipping is a nightmare so we pay twice as much for electronics as they do in other developed countries, and cars, especially are a luxury in a way they aren't in almost any other developed country. The cheapest, smallest car here costs at least 25,000$. The culture is definitely one of "why pay for software/music/movies/books" when that stuff is so ridiculously expensive compared to our salaries (again, I have an amazing salary by the standards of most of the country, for a first-job-out-of-uni, and a ridiculously low salary by the standards of Tel Aviv). Our food is pretty cheap though (again, unless you're eating out in Tel Aviv) but our rent/property prices are ridiculous, because the country is tiny and the population keeps expanding exponentially. I mean my rent would make sense in some major US cities, which is ridiculous considering the average national salary is a third of what it is in the US.

From:

delfinnium

We have the same mindset for the 'why pay so much for software/movies?' thing, though not so much because there is a strong affluent middle class who are starting to go brand conscious, and prefer to buy things because they CAN. (and there's a little snobbery of 'you just rather steal it, huh?')

These days some people put up ads before movies about 'how piracy kills the movie industrey' which makes me laugh and laugh and LAUGH.

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From:

vacillating

$40 is about £25, which would be between two and four hours' work for most people (the UK has a minimum wage which is about £6, so no more than that). If you bought moderately-priced bread, it would buy about 25 loaves; I spent £25 or slightly more on food each week. On the other hand, it's only 1/16th of my monthly rent.

From:

deepad

Cool, good to know, thanks!

From:

ironed_orchid

USD $40 = AUD $38.17 (Our dollar has been higher than USD in the last 3 years, but it's dropping again.

It's about what I spend each week on groceries.

It's what I spend in a month on public transport (assuming ten trips a week)

It's what I earn from 2 hours work.

It would be about 13 loaves of no brand name plain white sliced bread. Or 7 loaves of organic rye bread, which is what I buy.

It would buy about 12 kilos of white rice.

The national minimum wage for employees aged 18 and over is $15.96 per hour. It is illegal to employ anyone under 14 years.

Edited Date: 5/12/12 11:45 am (UTC)

From:

deepad

Thanks, that does help give me a perspective!

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From:

naath

That works out, more or less, to 25 GBP. Which is roughly 4 hours' work at the national minimum wage; about 2 hours' work for me.

25 pounds would cover a nice meal out for one with wine; it would buy one item of clothing in a mid-market shop or more in a cheap place; I just spent a similar amount on a basic mp3 player.

Supermarket bread prices vary hugely; a cheap loaf might be less than a pound if you shop carefully; a specialty loaf might be about 5-6 pounds.

A month's rent on a room (in a shared house) would be very cheap at 300; for a whole studio flat I'd expect to be paying over 400; for a basic 3-bed house in the bad area of the city (not that my city really has BAD areas) 900-1000. These prices are much higher where I live than in many other places in the country; the minimum wage is not varied to account for housing cost disparities except in London.

From:

deepad

Thanks for commenting. And yeah, bread prices varied a lot in the US too.

From:

silverhare

£24 is just over a week's food for me. I buy bland cheap bread from supermarkets, so it'd get me around 16 loaves.

From:

deepad

Food sounds expensive where you are!

From:

yasaman

I live in Los Angeles, so $40 does not buy me all that much. It's a week's worth of groceries if I'm shopping really carefully and not buying much fresh fruit and vegetables. It's less than 1/20 of my rent, and I think I'm paying a very reasonable price for my room in a three bedroom apartment. At current gas prices, it's what it costs me to fill my car's tank.

I tend to think anything under $100 is "affordable" for software, as in, if I really needed the software, I wouldn't mind paying between $20-100 for it (anything over $50 is really pushing it though). However, having just bought a bunch of software for work on the boss's tab, I've found that most professional software for business use is almost always at least $200 or more. Which seems crazy to me, and is not something I'd ever pay individually. Like, Photoshop is over $500! I do not know a single person who has legitimately bought Photoshop at that price. I think I paid $30 for Scrivener a few years ago, and consider that something of a bargain considering the use I've gotten out of it.

From:

deepad

I do not know anyone who has ever bought Photoshop legitimately, and that includes professional photo studios.
Scrivener is a useful programme, I agree.

From: (Anonymous)

On a different note, one can actually get more powerful writing software for free (legally). A combination of Emacs+org-mode offer a similar but more flexible writing environment: see http://orgmode.org/ (http://orgmode.org/). And it's free (both *muft* and *mukt*).

From:

deepad

Oh, thanks for linking, will definitely check that out. And now you have created a desire in me to have a t-shirt playing on the mufti/mukti terms. :)

From:

thistleingrey

Seems a bit ironic to name bread as a specific metric. $40 would get me about 20 kg of good-quality brown rice in sacks, but I usually buy smaller bags (5 kg at a time) due to lack of storage space. $40 is...about 2% of my monthly housing payment, which is admittedly for a mortgage, not rent. Equivalent square footage rented would make the $40 count as 2.5%, though there's some leeway re: livable quality, because I once shared a reasonable apartment about the same size towards whose rent the $40 would've been 4%. And I bought a Scrivener license awhile ago after some consideration, though I am not a writer of fiction; it's useful for scholarly papers, too.

Scrivener is an interesting example (I like your choice) because even if one has enough money not to have to think before spending $40, Scrivener itself qualifies as something of a luxury. One could write in a similar manner using the built-in text editor on pretty well any computer and thus have spent money only on the computer (still a luxury, and a more expensive item than Scrivener, but useful for so many more things); what Scrivener brings is organizational aid, not specific access to a type of information or production. hmm.

From:

deepad

Well, the reason my brain went with bread was because it was small and tangible enough that I could compare without doing math in my head, and because at the time in that place it matched the exchange rate easily.

And yeah, Scrivener is definitely one of those non-essential softwares that requires a certain consumer mindset to justify buying.

From:

alumiere

I live in the US, so in some ways $40 isn't a lot of money. But I'm also disabled and my only 'income' is $200/month. Luckily my partner has a good job so I'm not homeless.

$40 would buy 10 small loaves of bread I can safely eat, or 5 loaves (a month's worth of daily sandwiches) and hummus and cheese to make them.

But I can only pay for 1/2 of one generic prescription (out of 7) I need each month with that money.

For me that would a totally unmanageable expense - it's hard enough to get the basics covered with help from family.

From:

deepad

I am glad you are not homeless! And yes, I well remember relying on hummus for sustenance many times (because cheese was unaffordable).
And it really sucks that medicine is so unaffordable in so many countries. As

megwrites pointed out in her post I linked to, software vs. meds is a pretty clear cut decision.

From:

zeborah

This reminds me of the Big Mac Index.

Let's see, US$40 is New Zealand$48, which is exactly three hours on minimum wage, except you'd have to pay $8.40 tax on that if you were working minimum wage full time for the full tax year.

If it just got handed to you tax-free, it'd be at least 26 of the cheapest loaves of bread at my supermarket (600g, sliced), or 9 Big Macs, or 2 paperbacks, or about my average monthly electricity bill (but my bill is way lower than people with families or whose cooking/heating is electric), or a visit to my doctor with change for busfare. My asthma prescriptions after the government subsidies *might* reach that amount in a year.

From:

deepad

Yeah, the Big Mac index makes no sense to me as a vegetarian, and given the difference in who can afford to shop at a McDonalds in India vs. the US, but this was sort of my personal variant.

Your government subsidies on medication sound great. I support that sort of governance! :)

From:

rosefox

NYC:

$40 is about 5% of my share of rent.

I don't remember the last time I bought software for my computer, but $40 would get me 20 good apps to run on my phone. (And $40 would pay for about 10% of that phone, but that's because I invested in a top-of-the-line model.)

$40 would buy me 100 rolls from the organic grocery, or 10 loaves of sandwich bread, or the ingredients for baking maybe 20 or 30 loaves of my own bread.

In terms I'm more likely to think of:

$40 is 2/3 of my weekly cash allowance.

It's admission to 2.5 dances.

It's 10 lunches from Rafiqi's food cart (shawarma on a pita or over rice), or 5 lunches from just about anywhere else near work.

It's 200 dumplings from Prosperity Dumpling in Chinatown, which is not near work or I'd never eat anything but dumplings again. (It is astonishingly easy to get really good cheap food in Manhattan's Chinatown.)

It's dinner for one, two, or four people, depending on how fancy we feel. Call it two people on average at most of the places we go regularly near work or home.

It's 5 skeins or balls of really nice yarn, or 8 of tolerably decent yarn, or 8 sweaters from Goodwill to turn into miles and miles and miles of yarn.

It's 40% of what I pay for a monthly unlimited subway pass.

It's $10 more than my copay to see my regular doctor, and $10 less than my copay to see a specialist--but "specialist office visit" covers everything from "take a look at my eczema" to "install a new IUD", as long as it happens in the doctor's office (a very flexible thing when one's doctor works at a hospital outpatient center). I think the most I've ever gotten for my $50 was an MRI to see whether my hearing loss was caused by a tumor (no); close second was endoscopy under anesthesia to see whether my stomach pains were being caused by ulcers or stomach cancer (also no).

It's 2 brand-new turtleneck shirts from L.L. Bean, which is one of the few clothing companies ethical enough for me to buy new clothing from. It's 8 well-loved turtleneck shirts from Goodwill.

It's about the average amount my family of three spends on a trip to the grocery store; we make such trips three to five times a week.

It's less than half of our monthly electric bill.

It's .1% of what I owe to credit card companies.

From:

deepad

Thanks, you just reminded me how much I loved eating in NYC. :)

From:

mirrorshard

I'm in London, and £24 (U$40) would get me 17 loaves of nice supermarket bread, or 40 loaves of fresh-baked Turkish pide bread.

It's 2.5 evenings drinking real ale in my local, four bottles of decent wine, or one bottle of single malt Scotch.

It's just over 1/7th of my weekly rent, or around the same as my weekly food bill.

It's three new paperbacks, two CDs, or ten-fifteen books from charity shops. It's a couple of tubes of really nice acrylic paint, or 15 brushes from my favourite manufacturer. It's about 16 square metres of good-quality art paper.

It's one really nice shirt, two cool T-shirts straight from the artist, or two complete outfits from a charity shop.

It's two trips to see non-free special exhibitions at my favourite museums & galleries, or around the cost of the catalogue for one of them.

From:

deepad

I have not hat Turkish pide bread, it sounds yummy.
London is expensive even for Londoners, I have understood :)

From:

xavie

I'm in the Netherlands. 40 US$ are 30 euros.

That is 44% of the dayly minimum wage in the Netherlands. (Minimum wage is 67 euros per day.)

That's about my weekly grocery money for two persons. I could buy 20 loaves of cheap white sandwich bread or 10 loaves of yummy rye bread.
It also buys a simple meal for two people at a nice, but not fancy restaurant.
I could get 3 paperbacks or take a 2-hour train trip.
It is 1/25 of what we are paying for rent for our 4-bedroom house.
It is four entries to museums or galleries, but only two entries to concerts or plays.
It is 100 bottles of mineral water.
It is also 2/3 of what the mp3 player costs that I currently want and find rather essential, but at the same time rather pricy.

From:

deepad

Ooh, thanks for commenting, it's lovely to hear from countries I know very little about!
Your mimimum wage sounds completely fabulous, to my ears.
And thanks for including the price for concerts and plays, that is Of My Interest.

From:

esmenet

USD40 is about RMB240, which is currently about two days' worth of restaurant and convenience store food (for a vegetarian, so more expensive than most people) or about ten books. Or three shirts from a cheap-ish place like H&M or C&A. Or 27 pairs of socks. Or one-and-a-half lipsticks. Or enough yarn to knit a sweater. Or a shit ton of fresh vegetables/fruit. Those-tiny-oranges-I-forget-the-English-name-but-in-Mandarin-they're-called-ju4zi are about RMB4 per ~7, and I think the price of most fresh fruits & vegetables is similar, in Shanghai at least. But I've only been here a few months, and my parents just keep sending me money, so I'm still not sure I have a good sense of how much RMB are actually worth.

ETA: Oh! And it is nine or ten bags of fresh roasted chestnuts, or about nine pieces of super-good chocolate cake from Awfully Chocolate.

Edited Date: 7/12/12 05:03 pm (UTC)

From:

esmenet

As for bread, I have not bought an actual loaf of bread since I got here (because CRUMBS) but the reasonably-priced bakery down the road sells croissants and soft pretzels for RMB7 each and rye or white rolls for RMB5. (Starbucks sells croissants for RMB15, for comparison.)

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From:

deepad - Date: 10/1/13 04:55 am (UTC) - Expand

From:

amalnahurriyeh

I live in the rural(ish) US, in upstate New York. US$40 is probably one-fifth of our grocery budget for a family of two adults and one child (with a few special dietary needs and we also cook almost all meals at home), or one and a half meals out at a local, inexpensive restaurant for same. It's slightly less than one car-tank of gasoline/petrol; if we aren't traveling far to visit family/do work stuff, that's maybe three weeks worth of gas, but for someone who was commuting for work, it might be more like a week. It's 3% of our monthly rent on a three-bedroom house. It's one-fifth of our heat and electricity bill now, in the winter (where it hasn't hit 40F/4C in a month and is dark from 4:30PM on). It's about 1/3 our cell phone bill for two smartphones. It's 5 months of Netflix or Hulu Plus (we have both, so 2.5 months), which we use to watch TV rather than paying more than twice that for cable.

I recently spent a few weeks in Cairo for work. I generally did non-tourist things, but mostly went upscale places targeting the expat/cosmopolitan class, plus generally paid "expat rates" rather than local rates, so this isn't precisely a good indicator, but. USD40 is about LE250. That was about 80% of my daily charge for my single bed hotel room in a good but inconveniently located neighborhood (which I had to pay in dollars). It was about 15 cab rides to the downtown area or the area where I had to go for meetings; it was 250 rides on the metro (seriously, best deal ever). It's four foreigner admissions to the Egyptian Museum, and 62 admissions for Egyptians. It was 35 good European-style pastries at the bakery across the street from my hotel, and 20 bowls of om ali and cups of plain tea from the patisserie around the corner. It was 60 boxes of Panda Cheese or 125 liters of bottled water or 120 kilos of dried fava beans at the supermarket near my hotel. It was two meals (fresh juice, vegetarian entree, coffee, water) at the really expensive cafe in the really hip neighborhood where I went to do work sometimes, 10 cappuccinos at the Starbucks-like coffee shop near my hotel, 25 bowls of koshary delivered to my door, and between 50-100 sandwiches at the fuul and falafel place near my hotel depending on what I'd order (a step up from a street cart). Oh, and it's 250 20-packs of subsidized bread, which is what the majority of the population lives on (though the price is due to rise soon, due to subsidy cuts).

I think the two most expensive pieces of software I've bought are a rental-license for SPSS (for my dissertation), which cost me $40 for six months, and was incredibly useful except now I don't have it anymore, and EndNote, a bibliographic program, which ran me $100 with a student discount. Both were work-justified, and have proved tremendously useful, but I needed to mentally prepare myself to spend the money. Honestly, the pricetag is one of the reasons I haven't started using Scrivener yet, though I'm sure it would be useful.

From:

deepad

Egypt sounds similar to India in many ways (something that resonates through Amitav Ghosh's In an Antique Land as well). I have heard good things about EndNote too, but yeah, paying for software... not the sort of thing I see myself doing unless my life significantly changes.

From:

yvi

I'm German. $40 is about 30€. That's about 3-4 hours of work for me (calculating based on my after-taxes wage). It's about half of what me and my husband spend on food each week.

Mostly,

xavie's answer applies to me as well, the Netherlands and Germany don't differ in prices that much (except for rent, I think)

From:

deepad

Good to know! (And I'm wondering if this post got linked somewhere, since a bunch of you all suddenly commented out of the blue on the same day. A pleasing surprise!)

From:

misscam

Right.

40 USD come to 223 Norwegian kroner. That's a little bit above an average hourly pay here in Norway. I'd say it's about twice the lowest paid jobs per hour. I think you could buy about 10 loaves of bread for it, 1-3 books, a DVD with some change to spare, a big pizza at a drive through and the top I bought yesterday.

It's not a huge sum in Norway. Our country is very very high on the GDP per capita list and has a very high standard of living, so purchase power is strong but our prices seem very expensive to those visiting. So 40 USD for software to me wouldn't feel like a lot, but I know that's the Norwegian in me.

From:

deepad

I've always known about how high the standard of living in Norway is, but this puts it into stark perspective. Thanks for commenting!

From:

acari

Another European here, this time from Eastern Germany. I'd get a little more than 30€ for $40. We don't have a minumum wage (argh) but my state's average income per person/month is ca. 2400€ before taxes (about 1600€ after taxes).

For that I could comfortably buy groceries for a week for me (vegetarian) without shunning certain brands. I usually spend about 20€ including snacks and impulse buys.
I could travel cross-country by train in 2nd class (specials offers only and booked well in advance).
I could go to the cinema 2-3 times.
Buy 1-2 CDs.
Buy a decent shirt or blouse at H&M.
Buy about 18 l of gas.
That's about 1/7 of what I had to pay for university per semester.
Buy about 50 l of milk.
About 15 kg apples.
14 weekday editions of the daily newspaper FAZ. Or a 10 editions mini abonnement from Spiegel magazine.
2-3 new paperback books on average.
I'd get about 3 entries to the big Berlin museums & galeries.
Use Berlin's public transportation for 1 week (train, bus, tram, subway).
I could go to a nice but not fancy restaurant with someone (drinks probably extra).
It bought a bottle of nice Scottish single malt whiskey recently.
I can get my hair cut.
My MP3 player was less than that.
About 15 vegetarian Döner.
During off-season you could possibly find an inner-European flight from Berlin (tax extra).

From:

deepad

That is super useful information, and now I sort of really want to travel around the world buying bread and apples. :)

From:

beccastareyes

Another USAian here, but I live in upstate NY.

$40 is a bit less than I spend on groceries each week; on years when I paid for a farm-share, $40 was a good average for my groceries excluding the veggies I got from my share. I could probably buy my weekly lunches with $40 on campus, if I was frugal. It's a bit less than 5% of my rent and utilities (my apartment rent covers all utilities except electricity, and pays my internet bill, so comparing rent alone is tricky). If I paid by the ride instead of by the semester, $40 would get me nearly 27 bus trips, a bit more than two weeks' worth. Or 11 loaves of bread from the grocery store's bakery (it would be cheaper if I bought from the bread aisle, and probably cheaper still if I baked my own).

It would get me 5 paperback books (new) if I could find some change to spring for tax, maybe 10-15 used (depending on condition), or 2 hardcovers. I could possible get a new video game (if it was a handheld one and not a new release) or maybe 2 used ones, or maybe a season of a TV show I liked on DVD (again, these vary a lot).

I've actually paid money for Photoshop, but it helps that I can get the academic discount, which is substancial. Also, that I'm no longer an undergrad: I think I would had paid $40 for software then, but only if I lacked a free or cheaper option. (I certainly wouldn't have bought Photoshop when my scanner came with a pared down version.) I'm still not likely to pay more than $50, and I only replace Photoshop when it starts to get so old that upgraded OSs no longer recognize it.

I remember my mother even advising my cousin that across the USA, prices vary -- my cousin was employed in Los Angeles and considering a job about an hour from where I live, and my mother warned her not to compare the salaries directly, since the cost of living in the LA area was so high.

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