<p>Hi,</p>
<p>I am planning on moving to Berkeley and going to live off campus. I can't seem to find what the expenses are like over there- food, phone bills, etc. I don't need apartment costs or anything, I seem to have that under control, but apart from that what would my monthly expenditure be like?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance for your help!</p>
<p>Any help at all will be appreciated! If anyone could at least point me in the right direction that would be great!</p>
<p>I don’t have any specifics, but I live near the bay and my friend grew up in Berkeley. He’s told me before that the cost of living there is high. Wish I could help more!</p>
<p>Phone and internet costs you can easily find yourself at the websites of your favorite service provider. There was a discussion on city-data.com last year where people from San Francisco said they were paying $20-$80 for electricity per month. </p>
<p>It’s kinda hard to give a monthly estimate for food because it depends a <em>lot</em> on what you eat. (veggies are more expensive than pasta, eating out is more expensive than cooking from scratch, organic food is more expensive than the stuff from Walmart, etc) Here’s what the university estimates as the average expenses of a graduate student, based on an annual student survey: [UC</a> Berkeley Financial Aid and Scholarships Office: Graduates Cost of Attendance](<a href=“http://students.berkeley.edu/finaid/graduates/cost.htm]UC”>http://students.berkeley.edu/finaid/graduates/cost.htm)</p>
<p>Thank you,b@r!um! That really helped a lot. I understand that costs vary, I just needed a rough estimate before I get there.</p>
<p>Did you notice that the estimated expenses for food changed by $200 per month between 2010-11 and 2011-2012? I wonder what happened there! </p>
<p>I recently moved from Philadelphia to Stanford and did my first big grocery shopping trip this weekend. Trader Joe’s seemed 10%-20% more expensive across the board in the Stanford area. I also strolled through Walmart and was extremely surprised by the prices there. Some items were incredibly cheap ($1 for a pound of strawberries or a quart of marinara sauce) while others struck me as rather expensive ($3.50 for a half-gallon of milk). If I tried, I could probably eat pretty well on a grocery budget of $200 per month if I only bought staples and fresh produce and cooked from scratch.</p>
<p>I assume that grocery prices around Stanford are similar to grocery prices in Berkeley but I don’t know that for sure.</p>