Money matters

Credit crunch, economic slump, company lay-offs, falling house prices, pouvoir d'achat, and banks going bust mean that this is not a good time for anyone financially.

Money-wise it was a (personally speaking) disastrous time to move to Romania. The country's entry into the European Union and the steady increase in foreign investment had created a wave of euphoria throughout the land which saw flats in major towns changing hands for higher prices than in Paris or Vienna. Even here in Buzău, flats in run down concrete blocks with dodgy lifts and even dodgier décor were being sold for in excess of 130 000€. I myself feel this figure is insane because the amenities available are nowhere near the standard of a provincial town in France (where you could expect to pay the same price) and you'd still have to contend with other inconveniences such as stray dogs and dirt roads. Luckily the situation is calming a little, but rent remains high – up to 1000€ a month here whilst in Bucharest it is double or triple that.

Quite how Romanian people can afford such prices is beyond me. Renault workers in Piteşti went on strike last year to obtain the princely sum of 300€/month. You'd need three salaries just to cover the rent! Even professional salaries seem incompatible with the cost of living, with an accountant earning around 14 000€ annually. The taxation system also means that lower earners are even worse off. Everybody pays a whopping 16% income tax! If you're a factory worker, that's 48€ of your 300€ gone before you've got it home. (Some of the other problems, like people holding down multiple jobs and widespread corruption seem to be easier to comprehend in this light).

The attitude of Romanians towards Westerners is rather a strange one; it is assumed that you have money to burn. This does not necessarily mean you will be taken advantage of, although I was ripped off by a taxi driver yesterday, but you will undoubtedly differ in opinion as to how money should be spent. I was recently ambushed by an insurance saleswoman who tried to sign me up for some life insurance. In Britain or France they wouldn't have looked twice at a 26 year old in jeans and trainers but here I was being given the hard sell. Having explained the formalities, we discussed how much I'd hypothetically like to pay each month. The default amount was already on the screen but "100 €, is too little" she told me, "for you, 150€ is no problem". Err??? My earnings have taken a nosedive recently (I'm paid by the hour for English training, which is not a priority for companies trying to keep their overheads down) but even before moving to Romania this would have been about 10% of my take home pay. Even in spite of the communication barrier, I felt quite speechless. That's an enormous amount to just "find" from somewhere and in the current economic climate I would not be able to do it. How much did she think I made?

What people spend their money on is vastly different though. Numero uno has to be a flash car, preferably a 4x4. This would come way ahead of fixing up the house or taking a foreign holiday. Many Westerners would spend money on the garden but nobody even has a garden here. Restaurants are often empty, there's no cinema, not many bars and cafés and I haven't been tempted by one single garment since I arrived (except on a trip to Bucharest). When they do go out at night, they're not drinking because they have to drive their flash car home. It seems that the trappings of a Western life come at the expense of a Westerner's lifestyle.

The reason that I have been giving values in €uros is not just because it's now my default value for calculations, it's also the Romanian one too. The currency is used for property, cars (even second-hand) and contracts for services, and everyone can convert values into Euros easily (as I write this the exchange rate is about 4.3 RON, Romanian New Lei, to the €uro). People are very optimistic about entering the €uro zone, which they expect to do in 2014 (I think it will take longer).

However, whilst high end goods and services are calculated in €uro (but often paid for in RON), cheaper items are calculated in the local currency. At the market, a kilo of spuds costs 1 RON (around 20p or 0.23€), meaning that change for anything less than one RON becomes fiddly. At the supermarket the price is often rounded up or down, at least to the nearest tenth of a RON or 10 bani. I'm still coming to grips with the fact that coins are more or less worthless here, and that it is important to always have a good stock of 1RON notes because nobody ever has any change.

The most perturbing thing of all is that the RON is a relatively new currency. It came into circulation in January 2005 and replaced the "old" lei (singular leu, meaning Lion) with 1 RON being equivalent to 10000 ROL. This aimed to bring purchasing power in line with that of Western European states. A nice idea, but as people effectively chose to adopt the €uro as a reference point at this time it would appear a little redundant. Also, most people still refer to the old values, meaning that you may be told that your cheese at the market costs 50 000. Even more confusing is the negation of the thousand when speaking, (so that the cheese would now be priced at 50) which always has me asking the seller the price about seven times, before trying to pay ten quid for a block of bland cheese.

At least they are more adaptable than the French. The Malteaser still converts EVERYTHING from €uros to Francs, as do most French people (they've only had 10 years to get used to it, after all!). My elderly relatives in Ireland converted to the Euro remarkably easily, and after 6 months, prices were no longer displayed in the two currencies. Needless to say that this is not the case in France; indeed if you go out into the country you'll find that the people in villages still talk about anciens francs, the value before the devaluation in 1969! I think this says a lot about people's will to change things. Although they're quick to defend the €uro in the face of les Anglais (Mutter, mutter, mutter, we are les britanniques and if I hear one more time about the "English" Prime Minister Gordon Brown I'll scream).

I think I'll just let someone else worry about the money for now. I quite like the idea of being a kept woman.