This Is Why We Live In Rural Bulgaria

How are people supposed to survive with prices like this? Cost of living in Europe doesn't make sense. For many people, shopping has become expensive. But there is a shared measure called the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices. And right now, the European Central Bank target is around 2%. And Bulgaria sits right in the middle of that. I've turned up at my house and she's asking me to pay a bill right now. Money. We're Fresh Start Sticks, a family of five who left the UK and bought a house in rural Bulgaria. Searching for a reset and more freedom. Bulgaria sits at 2.1 to 2.8%. However, even though the percentage looks similar, the impact is not the same. Because lower wages means higher pain. On average, Bulgaria's wages is below that of Western Europe. But even a 2-3% inflation rate hits harder. Since 2020, a lot of people have left the country. And that's due to many reasons. One of the main reasons has been due to money. A lot of countries have put the bait in there, said to them, come to our country, come and work. And so a lot of them left Bulgaria and moved to countries like Germany, the UK. European countries have been the main countries that Bulgarians have gone to. And they've left their village empty. However, there's been a shift since 2024, where a lot of people have been coming back to Bulgaria. They have been digging more. We found a snake over there. And that was our school lesson for today. Biology. Talking about grass snakes. The plan is to continue digging a little more off the patch. The main plan today is to get this trellis area sorted. We're going to get into all of this. We've got some blooming going on here with the grapes. I'm going to trim that back, right back, and just tidy that up. We've never grown anything before, so this is all new to us. However, that's how you learn. You try, and if you have something that's not working, then you can go back to the drawing board. The trellis area over there is all overgrown, and I need to de-weed it and get it. Pull them out with my hands. If not, you might take the roots out. You won't take the roots out, do you mean? And get the roots out? Pull them out like this. Oh, yeah. Alright, OK. Yeah, that's what I did last time. I didn't want to damage the roots. OK. These are the grapevines. So I'm going to trim them down now. This is another tree. I don't want it neither. I'm clearing this area completely. I'm back. With a tool to do the job. A little bit so you can see it. On the floor, we will plant some strawberries. And over that area there, where we don't have anything crawling yet, we'll probably put some cucumbers or tomatoes so they can crawl up the trellis. But for now, we've got the grapes along these trellises, and we're going to keep that as what it is. What do you guys think about the cost of living where you are? Is it spiralling out of control? At the moment, it is for us. It's crazy. In Bulgaria, things have gone up a lot. Oh, let me show you this too. So we haven't planted anything yet. At the moment, it's just about preparing the ground. Still digging. Nearly there. We've got some compost going down soon. And then we're going to start planting. So, you can see, it is getting there. What's the point of you guys following us if everything is done like that? If it's not going to happen, come together. It's getting there, you know. Obviously, the cost of living has spurred a lot of people on to growing their own food. Right guys, so this morning we found two snakes and a slow worm. If you find one of these, it's very similar to a snake. Our first baby snake. We moved him because we're cutting the garden. We don't want him getting caught up. We're going to release him back when we're finished. Right, look, he's bit my finger. Get off my finger, snakey. He said nothing. He realised he can't bite. He's like, I can't bother him anymore now, look. So, I let him do it now, look. You can't eat my finger, look. He's not letting go, look. First time seeing a snake in our garden now, isn't it? And this is a baby snake. Grits down, though, but he can't bite the skin. He's got teeth, but it's only a baby. The bigger one probably will be to actually bite into. But I don't think it's... There's a few villages in Bulgaria that has nobody in them. When we first came here a year ago, there was hardly anyone here. However, in the last year, I've seen the population triple. And there's kids exploding out of everywhere. When the villages are as empty as this, I don't really understand how they justify those prices that we've just seen in the supermarket. Bear in mind, there's over one million empty, derelict and unused properties in Bulgaria. The good news is, they're building new properties in some places like Sofia and Plovdiv. Thousands and thousands of apartments, so they're still empty. But they've got ambitions to change Bulgaria. But the problem is, they've still got a million derelict properties around in rural and some towns in Bulgaria, which need to be filled. A lot of people come in here on their pensions to buy a property like this one behind me, which needs a lot of work. And you've got to ask yourself sometimes, if you're relying on pension, is it sustainable? And if you don't get a pension coming in, can you afford to even stay here? Bear in mind, things are not like it used to be. Properties are costing a lot more than they did even a year ago because the prices of labour, the prices of materials have doubled. Can you sustain this lifestyle once you've spent all your money building a property and bringing it from that down there to something liveable and paying probably €20,000, €30,000 or even €40,000? Can you afford that? And if you can, then you're doing okay. You've got to remember the future. Things can change. Things are getting more expensive. All these lovely homes that would have been lived in are now sitting derelict. This has been derelict for the last 10 years. That's also given opportunities for people coming from other countries to move to Bulgaria in search of a new life. But what if you get the property and it needs a lot of work? Roofs, windows, doors, no electric, all that kind of stuff needs to be thought of. With the economic crisis going on, the prices of everything have gone up. The prices of food, electricity, water and also materials to build these properties have gone through the roof. We've just come down to the town to check up on what's going on in the energy company, the electricity company. We've done some letters, took some advice from you guys. We're just going to go in there now, give it to them and see what they say. But there are ways to save money. Let me show you. Here's what everyday items costs. Heinz baked beans, €2.45, whereas the shop brand only costs €0.69. Look out for those deals on fruits, like oranges dropped from €1.78 per kilo to €0.99 per kilo. Pasta is often discounted, that's when you bulk buy. But the real costs add up fast. Cooking oil, washing powder and toilet paper. These are items every home needs. To save money, you need to shop smarter. Places like Metro Cash and Carry can be cheaper. So you've got big bags of spaghetti, pasta, and then you've got these big bags of cornflakes. Tons of flour, you've got everything here. But here's the catch. Sometimes it's actually more expensive, so you have to compare prices. This is it, the end of this trip. And these are the things that we've bought. €261 liver, which is €133.90. That's quite a lot of food in there, meats and stuff. It would have been double that in the UK. Some people are saying it's so expensive in Bulgaria. There's no more shopping for the rest of the year, like I said. No more, we're done. You sure? No. I doubt it. We're going to go to the shopping centre in a minute. We had the water bill for the first time. So we don't know where to pay our water bill. And we have been asking neighbours as well. Quite honestly, they told us an area and we thought, we don't know. But where is the area? That's the thing with Bulgaria. A lot of people are like, oh, it's in Lipoponova. Okay, Lipoponova is a big area. So where can people turn over? Anyway, this went on for a few months. And literally, as you guys may have seen in the video, it just happened. I'll just drop it now. The amount I will pay online. Pay? 30 people are trying to put my house. And she's asking me to pay a bill right now. Money, money. No. Give me the bill, I pay online. This money. Yes, no problem. Give me the bill and I pay online. Send it to me properly as a bill and I will pay online. That's how it's going to be. There ain't no other way. You give me the bill? This woman has turned up saying she wants money now. Cash. For the water. No, that's not going to be possible. For the water bill, I think. So... Date? How much? 112 euro. You only came yesterday to take the water? So we came yesterday. Three years. Three years? We've not been here three years. Boss man. I've never had a bill. The gentleman came here, he took the meter reading and we said to him yesterday that we've never had a bill. All of a sudden you guys are turning up here today asking for cash at my door. No, I'm sorry, that's not going to happen. Hopefully when they come to listen to the water meter read it, you'll be home and you'll start signing every time the shrimp detect and the water meter tell you how many cubic metres you have. Number two. Perfect. Thank you very much. Thank you. They literally turn up there and then. We're like, no, I need to see my bill and then we can talk about when and how we pay. Anyway, the saga continues where they said to us that we were getting readings, which to be honest the water guy did come over and he did do some readings, but every time he came we were saying to him, where's the bill? How much is it? When do we pay? Where do we pay? There was no answer. It just came to a head today because there was a reason why this happened. So yesterday our neighbour was over cutting some more far grass and conveniently, thank God, at that the water guy turned up to read the meter, which by the way is about ten years old. So anyway, he came he read the meter. Our neighbour, we said to him, luckily he was here because we said to him, we've never had a bill. Can you ask him, when are we going to get a bill? Where do we go and pay? And he spoke to him in Bulgarian and then these guys turn up today! But they turn up as if we had committed a crime. We did not have the bill in the first place. So if we had the bill we would have paid it. Every time I asked the meter guy who comes to read the meter where do I pay? There was no answer. I even translated it one day into Bulgarian to ask him. Again, no answer. But when they turn up, they actually turn up as if they're like the mafia asking for their money and we didn't know what the bill was in the first place. So turning up in such a way was not it, was not cool at all. However, that is how they do it in Bulgaria. So it is what it is. It's been about 22. I'm going to water that there. The plan is to take down this woodshed and also the chicken coop and get the new fence up. We'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us.