I was talking to a friend of mine over the MSN recently. She is a teacher back in Hungary and earns £270 a month! It was hard to believe that nowadays you can manage your life living from that money. Hungary is not much cheaper place than in the UK, and £270 seems to be a seriously low wage.

And this is being payed to a teacher with a college degree. Also Mrs. Smith was earning £260 when we were at home as a Physiotherapist. 

Isn't this ridiculous? People with college/university degrees are earning almost nothing.

With Hungary's current income taxing system, if you can get a net salary around £800 as an engineer, you can consider yourself as "well-paid" worker.

I know the rental prices are cheaper in Hungary than in the UK, however let me give you an example:

1 Bedroom cheaply furnished apartment prices in South Budapest, nothing luxurious: £195,  in the city centre they could be £240-£500

This is of course WITHOUT utilities. If you go to the old panel buildings (communist heritage) you are ending up paying an additional £100 for the heating/hot water

I made a compariton with some price examples below. 

 As you can see prices are cheaper than in the UK obviously, however not that much cheaper. Salaries are way below the european average, and still, prices are getting higher every day. 

The food prices I picked were from the Hungarian and UK Tescos, so I did not go for the most expensive in any case.

As you can see a teacher in the UK can take 4.8 times more money home in a month than a "hungarian colleague", however the prices in Hungary are not the same rate cheaper. This makes me wonder how people can afford to have a good quality of life in Hungary if they only try to live from their monthly salary.

Well, obviously they can not, that is why the majority of the people are carrying huge depts. And still, politicians are raising taxes, squeezing people, reducing social benefits etc, to avoid the total financial crash of our country.

Let me demonstrate the taxing differences in the UK and in Hungary in a well paid job.

The ammount let's say 30K for a year which is a good salary in the UK, and a "perfect" salary in Hungary. Of course the ammount of 30K is only being payed in high management positions in Hungary, such as Directors, Financial managers, etc., however this ammount is good to demonstrate the differences in the income taxes..

Analyzing the above makes me even more sad about the future of Hungary. We either need something radical change as other Eastern-European countries did in the last couple years or Hungary will go down big time.