Help me estimate basic expenses for my family of 5

Hi everyone,

I've asked a similar question last year, but this time I have a lot more relevant information, so hopefully someone can help me out. I know it is hard to estimate for someone else, so I am going to be as detailed as possible and I want to make it clear that I only want a rough estimate. I have tried contacting a number of revisors/advisors etc. for this service, but no luck (maybe because of summer holidays).

Anyway, my wife and I decided to try and move our family to Denmark. We have 3 kids, aged 4, 4 and 8. They will all be going to public institutions, as we plan on making this a permanent move. In order for us to move, I will need to get a job offer. I have a master's degree in mechanical engineering with 5+ years experience, so I am using IDA recommendation of minimal salary of 45000 DKK/month as a base for calculation. A few thousand plus/minus should be OK, I think.

As I have started looking for a job and sent my first applications, I realized I am not entirely sure about expenses. My wife will surely be an unskilled worker until she learns the language (we already started to learn Danish), because her experience is 100% working with customers. For which she would need Danish, understandable. Until she manages to find ANY job, my salary alone should cover all of the bare necessities. Eating out, going to the movies, etc., we don't care about that until we both are working.

Based on the number of companies that would interest me, I have based this estimation around Vejle. So, here it is:

1. Rent & utilities - looking at AAB Vejle, I see it might be possible to find a 100-120 m² apartment (3 bedrooms as the twins sleep together), district heating, antenna and water included for about 8.500 DKK/month. We're missing electricity and waste. Our current consumption here in Croatia (average per month, 100 m² apartment):

Electricity 254 kWh

Water 9 m³

Heating and warm water (gas) 153,3 m³, without water heating is about 20 m³ less.

I believe we could then set rent plus utilities to around 10.000 DKK/month, with 2 phone plans and internet for the apartment. A few hunder plus/minus. We could pay more if nothing cheaper is available, or could find an even cheaper place if we luck out.

2. Food/hygiene/cleanning products - we've been monitoring our expenses and comparing them to prices at Rema1000 for a few months now. We spend about 3.000 DKK/month on average in Croatia and prices at Rema1000 are 25-50% higher on each of our bills. 50% more is 4500, round it up to 5.000 DKK/month, though it could obviously be as low as 4.000 DKK. We cook a lot, and if we cook every day the expense is smaller.

3. Kindergarten and SFO - full programs cost 2.140 (or 2.835 with lunch and snack) DKK/month for one child in kindergarten (4 yo) and full program (6:30-17:00) SFO is 2.440 DKK/month (it would depend on our work hours if we would need to take the full program). Both our kindergateners do have some food allergies, so we might actually opt to bring their lunch boxes to kindergarten. In this case, we would pay 50% for the second kid. 2.140+1.070? What about SFO? The Vejle website is translated by google, so some sentences lose a bit of meaning, but it says that daycare and SFO sibling allowances are all combined. You pay for the most expensive price and the rest at 50%. So in this case we would pay 2.440 for SFO and 2x1.070 for kindergarten, total of 4.580 or am I mistaken?

4. Bank loan back home 2.700 DKK/month

5. Commute or public transport from Vejle to a neighbouring town 20-30 km away... can we count on 1.000 DKK/month for two passes - one outside the town and one around town? The public transport is a bit confusing, I wasn't able to figure out the correct price for all the zones...

That puts us at around 24.000 DKK/month (rounded up) for bare necessities. Does that make sense? Did I miss anything important like mandatory insurances or something like that? I would be joining a union, but that's a once a year expense, so I am not counting it here. If that is about right, I believe a salary of 45.000 DKK should be around 27.000 DKK after tax. For us, this would be great until wife finds a job.

I also have a few bonus questions:

1) do you need to be working in Denmark for 6 years to receive full children allowance, or anywhere in EU?

2) could I use a tax deduction for my wife until she finds a job from day 1 when she arrives? (I'd move a few months before my family). So even if she finds a job after only a month, could I still use the deduction for this one month?

3) do kindergartens generally offer to reserve a spot for children at lower prices? If we get spots for our twins but they don't start going until my wife finds a job, could we pay less just to keep that empty spot? If that is at all possible. We can do that here, so I was wondering.

4) I understand commuting is tax deductible, but am not sure what is the deduction and how it is received

5) any other deductions we could count on? Primarily interested for the period until my wife finds a job, as we feel this will be a make or break period for us.

That's it. Thank you very much to anyone who read the whole thing and thinks they can help. Again, rough estimates are more than enough and would be super helpful at this point.

Also, last time I had a few recommendations to try numbeo. Judging by Croatia, numbeo is highly inaccurate. I would much prefer to get real insight here.

Mange tak!