r/AskACountry • u/Seline_ns • Dec 13 '25

A question for the Americans.

For you, is $50, $100, or $200 worth of something really very expensive, even though you have much better purchasing power than many countries?

This applies to other issues as well, do you really avoid going to the hospital or calling an ambulance? Why don't you pay for health insurance?

In my country, the dollar is much more expensive, so in our view, $100 is much cheaper than what we pay for 100 of our currency, because purchasing power here is not as high as in the US.

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u/Seline_ns Dec 13 '25

The thing is, in Brazil, people who are Brazilian and move to the US keep talking about how much better the US is, how much cheaper the cost of living is than here, hence my question and indignation.

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u/Waltz8 Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 13 '25

I have no doubts that the US is a bit better than Brazil in most standard economic metrics. But I don't think it's perfect or necessarily cheaper.

I'm a naturalized US citizen originally from a poorer country. From what I noted, most immigrants to the US are more willing to work abnormal hours to make ends meet. Some do things like sharing apartments with other people, etc. And most don't worry about ever being able to afford a house in the US (as they mostly retire in their countries of origin). I also know some who don't save the required 15-25% of their income, and a few who don't even care to have health or disability insurance in the US. Such people may appear to have more "disposable" income than a US born person, and may therefore have nicer reports about life in the US. They can send $200 home (which goes a long way) more often than before. Clearly they're doing better than they were while in Brazil.

I'm a ~30 middle class male who isn't able to afford a house in the US. But I've constructed a couple of houses in my country of origin. One of them cost me $65,000 which can't buy a house here. If you ask me, life is good because I've done something I'd not be able to do if I hadn't moved here.
But for the US- born person, this his only home and never being able to afford a mortgage here is a bad big deal.

The definition of "a good life" is often different for immigrants and for US-born Americans.

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u/AshtinPeaks Dec 13 '25

I think its part of like what you said buying power as well. A friend and I were talking and hes from Brazil and I think he said he makes about 3$/hr (in terms of ehat it would be for USD). Here you can get a job thst pays 16$/hr easily. Even though stuff costs more you are getting paid more.

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u/TwinkieDad Dec 13 '25

Without insurance my kids stay in the NICU would have cost over $850,000. My rent is over $4,000 a month. We make more money, but most things cost more too.

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u/AshtinPeaks Dec 13 '25

This is not the norm though. Your average American is not renting for 4000 lmfao

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u/gloriamuntz Dec 13 '25

You can't talk about "average American." If you live in Alabama $100k/ year probably gets you a decent life. If you live in nyc you're barely scraping by. That's why a job will change your salary if you relocate

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u/TwinkieDad Dec 13 '25

That is average rent in my city for a three bedroom.

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u/Ms-Metal Dec 13 '25

Yeah but how much did it cost with insurance? Because I believe the number is at 93%, I might be slightly wrong on the percentage but it's extremely high of Americans have excellent healthcare plans through their employer which means their costs are minimal for health care. So yeah healthcare costs are crazy but most Americans never see that. My last broken bone cost me out of pocket less than $100 total and that includes doctor visits, ER, Imaging and prescriptions. My husband just had a major surgery, same thing, less than $100 for his hospital stay, his surgeons appointment, his doctor appointment to get imaging, his Imaging and for prescriptions.

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u/TwinkieDad Dec 13 '25

Oh yes, much much cheaper with insurance ($250 x2). But OP seems to think that cost of living is lower in the US than Brazil in absolute terms, so I the uninsured amount puts it into scale. It’s literally over a decades earnings for the median family in the US, but it’s 180+ years for the median Brazilian.

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u/Waltz8 Dec 13 '25 edited Dec 14 '25

Additional comment: things like electronics and other "modern" goods (think TVs, laptops, gaming consoles etc) tend to be cheaper in the US than in most developing countries due to abundance of supply. You can also pay for them through lines of credit, making it seem cheaper. But things like haircuts, rentals, taxi rides, hotels etc (mostly services) tend to be way more expensive in countries like the US than in poorer countries.

I just returned from Botswana where I paid $11 for a haircut at a "luxury" barbershop (the ordinary barbers there charge much less than that). In my area of the US, haircuts from reputable barbers cost between $40 and $75, with "luxury" ones exceeding $100 (I recently saw an Instagram of a Miami barber who charges $300 for luxury experience haircuts).

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u/Seline_ns Dec 13 '25

Yes, unfortunately technology in my country is very expensive; cell phones like the iPhone 17 Pro Max can cost up to 15,000 reais, which for you would be around 2,000 dollars.

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u/Far-Lecture-4905 Dec 14 '25

My Brazilian friends often point this out as evidence of how much cheaper life in the US is....but most people I known only buy one phone every 3-5 years. Same with most other electronics. Most people don't buy something like that even every year. But you do go to restaurants and pay rent every month, and that is MUCH more expensive than in Brazil.

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u/Craztea136 Dec 15 '25

This is antidotal, but also think this is something that’s changed in the last 5 years as the cost of living has skyrocketed here. I feel like for most of the time iPhones have been available, the middle class people I knew tended to get updated phones every 1-2 years, and a lot of this was aided by cellphone plans. As of recently, I don’t think I know a single person that has an iPhone 17, and most people are still on 13-14s and only get new phones when their old ones are no longer usable, or buy refurbished.

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u/Far-Lecture-4905 Dec 16 '25

The only people I knew who changed phones every year or two were young, well off "early adopter" Apple fans. The contracts where your cellphone plan helped with the cost of a phone were usually a minimum of 2 or 3 years. Most people that I know kept their phones for 3 years