How much Russians earn? Cost of living and wages in Russia - YouTube

Hello from Russia.

My name is Nikki.

I live in Saint Petersburg City, and this video I'm going to show you how much an ordinary

Russian person can make for a living in this city, and what our typical monthly expenses

look like.

I hope you will understand what's life like in Russia a little bit better after watching

this.

I received some interesting comments about my last video.

Someone from Canada and Australia were surprised to see that grocery prices are much lower

in Russia compared to their countries.

Someone from Germany and Belgium says that prices are similar, but it's important to

take one thing into account: people's average income.

If I, or my mother, or any other random stranger in Russia will buy, let's say a kilogram of

tomato for five dollars, it would feel so much different from getting a kilo of tomato

for five dollars in another country.

Let's say somebody from Germany will spend about three percent of their daily income

and someone in Russia might spend 30 percent of their income for exactly the same thing.

Today we are going to talk not only about food.

I want to show you a bigger picture.

But first, let's go grab some coffee and the celebration cake.

I'm celebrating my first serious YouTube paycheck.

I quit my job in November 2019, and it took me one year to start earning something on

my content--basically on my TikTok channel.

Before the war and before all the sanctions, I earned something about average income in

Saint Petersburg City, and I was alright with that.

Then TikTok banned Russians' PayPal--banned Russians.

Patreon said they will still be working with Russian creators, but they will hold all funds

because there is no way to transfer money into Russian bank accounts for them right

now because Russia simply cannot use Swift as before.

So I kind of faced this situation where I technically can keep earning money as usual,

but I had no way to transfer it into good old cash.

Two months later, I'm feeling relieved about this.

YouTube continues to pay normally, so all ad revenue and all your donations are not

stuck anywhere--and this paycheck is huge.

If last time YouTube transferred me 40 dollars, now it's like having an average New York City

salary.

So cheers, guys!

I'm really happy to have such opportunity to share my daily life with you, and really

happy to see that it actually pays off.

I talk a lot about money and cost of stuff on my channel simply because we live in the

world where money matters, and if you want to tell me something like, "Hey Niki, money

doesn't buy you happiness.

They don't buy love, health, (etc.)."

Money buys you a better lifestyle, and better lifestyle leads you to having a better health,

to have a better relationship with people because you don't have to worry about minor

things, and money leads you to general stability.

Only after reaching a certain borderline, money doesn't really matter.

I would estimate the absolute majority of people in Russia living under this line as

well official average wage in my Siberian hometown Omsk is around 500 American dollars

per month after tax, and here where I live, in Saint Petersburg, the average official

wage is about 900 American dollars.

But what about the real wages?

Imagine me being not really fortunate enough to make a living as a blogger.

What kind of job could I find here in St. Petersburg, taking into account my personal

skills, and how much will they get paid here?

Without any specific skills, I could try finding a job of a delivery guy, hotel receptionist,

or a barista.

I'll try searching job offers online and give you a breakdown of what real salaries are

in Russia for my potential jobs and for other major professions.

So what I see from online job offers...there's a lot of barista positions in Saint Petersburg:

various kind of coffee shops and restaurants.

And they basically offer anything starting from 30,000 rubles, and it's not like the

salary is fixed.

Looks like one part of the salary is indeed fixed and another part is just a percentage

from what a barista sells during the day, but this I don't really understand because

the barista doesn't have a control of how many people come over to see a coffee shop

and what they buy so...don't know how it works in real.

I found really interesting offer that is a tiny coffee shop very close to the place I

live.

I think I pass it every single time when I go to Subway.

Among all these stuff they write, they say something like: "Your salary will be above

average," "absolute minimum is the average income in St. Petersburg," and "the average

income at our coffee shop is 3,605 rubles," which is interesting because official average

increments in St. Petersburg is around 70,000 rubles per month, but apparently the "real"

companies.

The "real" job market.

Shows the "real" average salary.

But what if I try to apply the skills that I learned within the

last few years?

Like, my English is good, and I have a TESOL certification, so perhaps I can find the job

of an English teacher or maybe English translator.

I also have some video editing skills, so perhaps I can find the position of a video

editor for a local company or maybe for another YouTuber.

I would say I might earn about 45, 50, maybe even 60,000 rubles as a translator.

And talking about video editing positions, perhaps about the same money.

The good thing is that it's scalable.

There is a lot of room to improve your skills and improve your salary--your potential salary--as

a translator or video editor.

Thinking about this, I actually realized that I'm not that hopeless, and I could actually

do something instead of being just a YouTuber if I wasn't fortunate enough to get such a

huge audience to watch my videos.

Talking about other jobs' income, here's a short list with salaries per month after taxes.

That's how we count it in Russia.

This is info from real job offers I found on a few websites in Saint Petersburg City.

I think I also should mention pensions for our elderly people, and here's an example

of my own grandmother, my mom's mom, every single month she gets about 10,000 rubles

from our government, which is clearly not enough for comfortable living.

If my granny doesn't have any support from my mom, most likely she will be having like

really poor kind of life.

It's actually a very important thing to talk about, about the pensions and life of elderly

generation in Russia.

I don't have any videos about this thing yet, but here I want to mention one channel that

you might be familiar with already "Vasya in the Hay."

Perhaps some of you already watched his videos because it is the second time I'm mentioning

this person.

Vasya in the Hay is basically a channel about people who live in remote places in Russia;

about people who are far away under that borderline that I mentioned previously in this video.

Every time I watch videos from him, I learn a lot about what's life really like in Russia

far away from places like Saint Petersburg and Moscow.

Most of the stories that you'll see there are simply heartbreaking, but also very real.

The latest video he uploaded is actually very much suitable for the things that I previously

mentioned.

He literally went on the streets to talk to our grandmas and also to help them.

I'll put a link to this video in the description and guys, I really encourage you to check

out Vasya in the Hay channel because guys, once you do it you'll understand why I say

words like this.

Now let's talk about the expenses because life in a bigger city is not a cheap thing

especially here in Saint Petersburg.

Talking about expenses, there are two things that you spend the most of money in Russia.

First is accommodation.

You basically have to have a place where you live, and second thing, obviously the food

you eat.

I would estimate the average expenses for recommendation in Saint Petersburg City to

be anything around 15 to 20,000 rubles a month.

For this amount of money, you will get a normal, quite convenient place to live.

Talking about the place to live, let me show you my tiny serviced apartment.

A year ago when I arrived to St. Petersburg City, I found this place and that time I was

paying 23,000 rubles for one month of staying here.

Then I moved to Lisa's apartment, and I came back here and currently this place costs 33,500

rubles a month, which is a little bit above average in St. Petersburg, but I find this

place really comfortable.

Here is the place I sleep.

Here's a nice picture of Russian bear.

Here's one and two windows.

My working station.

I'm editing the video, and I just realized that I went too random talking about the money

stuff.

Here's the place I cook food, and here's the place I take a shower and go to the toilet.

Talking about other expenses of living in St. Petersburg...

For groceries, I typically spend about 15,000 rubles a month, and I consider it to be about

the average.

Of course, you can go really cheap surviving let's say for one two or three dollars a day.

I actually made a video about surviving in Saint Petersburg for two dollars a day in

terms of food, and it was all right the food was actually even delicious, but it was not

healthy of course.

It's very common to a Russian family to spend about 30%, 40% of their monthly income for

getting accommodation.

Another 30%, 40% spending for their monthly groceries.

So spending a lot of money for recommendation and food makes many Russian families--the

majority of Russian families--worrying a lot about surviving from one month to another

month and having less energy less desire and even less coverage to worry about bigger things,

let's say about the madness that is happening between Russia and Ukraine.

The reason I'm making this video and talking about this is not to cry about low Russian

salaries, but to show you a bit of reality of life in Russia, so you possibly can understand

me and other Russians a little bit better.

And I find this quite important and interesting thing to share because there is a real correlation

between how much people earn for a living in Russia, how much they struggle to survive,

and how much they support our government, or I should say how much they are afraid to

do anything against it.

Thank you for being with me.

Спасибо (Thank you) and Пока (Bye)!