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To all the Selbstständige: How do you survive in Berlin?
After Taxes (450 Euro) and Health insurance (650 Euro) I have about 2200 left.… I just did some analysis of my finances for Q1, roughly made 3333€ each month, some months were better than the others.
After Taxes (450 Euro) and Health insurance (650 Euro) I have about 2200 left.
Rent is about 1100€, Electricity 85, Internet + Cellphone about 100, Online Tools, subscriptions, some stuff I need for work about 200 a month. Then 600 for food (trying to eat clean and healthy). Which leaves me with 100 Euro savings.
Kinda living paycheck to paycheck with no opportunity to save money which I really want since there are always months where I can lose a client
honestly those numbers look pretty standard for Berlin these days. your tax estimate seems low though, are you sure you're accounting for the full Sozialabgaben? most freelancers I know end up closer to 30-35% all in.
a few things that helped me when I was in a similar spot. first, the 600 on food is high for one person even with clean eating. try Markthalle Neun on a Thursday or the Turkish market at Maybachufer, you can get decent produce for half the Rewe price. also check if you're overinsured with TK or AOK, some of the newer brokers like Ottonova or Feather can cut that 650 down closer to 500.
the real game changer was finding a co-working space with a proper kitchen. I use Betahaus in Kreuzberg, 200/month but I stopped buying lunch out and prob save 150-200 just on that. also lets me write off another 2400/year as Betriebsausgaben. worth looking into if your current setup doesn't include that.
yeah the 600 on food is wild honestly, if you hit up the turkish market near maybachufer you can cut that down to like 400 easy. also check if you can claim your home office as betriebsausgaben, saved me like 200 a month on taxes
What is the correct spelling for a street name that appears differently on multiple signs in Charlottenburg?
Worth noting that Berlin street names have official umlaut and ß rules that trip people up, so a sign showing "Strasse" versus "Straße" is not actually a spelling error, just an older transcription. Same with "ue" versus "ü" (e.g. "Kantstrasse" vs "Kantstraße"), both are considered valid renderings and you'll see the ß version on the blue Schilder and the ss version on older plaques or in databases that predate Unicode. If the difference you're seeing is between those two forms, there's nothing to fix and both are technically correct.
if the signs u mean are the old enamel ones on the house facades those are often protected as Baudenkmal so nobody's allowed to correct them even if the spelling is outdated. the binding version is whatever is in the Berliner Strassenverzeichnis plus the entry in the Liegenschaftskataster, so if u tell me the street i can point u to the right Bezirksamt Mitte or Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf page. tbh the merged district thing is real but the facade signs are a separate story, theyre basically museum pieces at this point
honestly thats super common in Charlottenburg, the district offices were merged from older Bezirke and nobody ever fixed all the Schilder. if its a real street you can check the official strassenverzeichnis on berlin.de, that list is what the Burgeramt actually goes by. which street is it? some of the Kaiserdamm / Kantstrasse signs are notorious for this.
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