I've noticed Ph.D. students' salaries (not very negotiable since they are usually government-funded) in Germany tend to be considerably higher than in Austria and I began to wonder how difficult it may be to live for three years of a Ph.D. programme in Vienna given the gross salaries are around 2000–2600€ (paid 14 times a year along the usual Austrian scheme).
Let's be less optimistic here and assume I have a gross salary of 2200€ so a net budget around 1600€ a month – how manageable is that? Quite obviously the most painful part of the expenses will be the rent. I tried using online cost of living calculators but I got results in an absurdly broad range (800–1800€). However, median was about 1500€ so it makes me a bit worried (but just a bit because I honestly don't trust most of these calculations).
Let's be less optimistic here and assume I have a gross salary of 2200€ so a net budget around 1600€ a month – how manageable is that? Quite obviously the most painful part of the expenses will be the rent. I tried using online cost of living calculators but I got results in an absurdly broad range (800–1800€). However, median was about 1500€ so it makes me a bit worried (but just a bit because I honestly don't trust most of these calculations).