You pay your bills at the Abitab… The what?
One thing to look at when estimating your cost of living in Uruguay is your monthly bills, how much they are and where/how you pay them.
When we lived in San Diego, we rarely pulled out the checkbook and mailed a payment for anything. We paid everything online… from our electric bill to rent and everything in between. If it wasn’t set up to direct debit from our account, we would have our bank set up to automatically send a check out to whomever.
In Uruguay, we go to the Abitab to pay our bills… We could go directly to the company, but the Abitab is the “all-in-one stop.”
Our porter collects our mail and slides it under our door… The majority of our mail is our monthly bills…
A Quick Shout Out: Celeste and Ren’e; we just got your Christmas card… Thank you very much…
When we get our monthly bills, we open them, complain about how much they are (since the value of the US dollar has dropped, our cost of living in Uruguay has increased) and then walk down the street to the Abitab.
How much are our bills?
We've had a lot of questions about cost of living in Uruguay lately, so here are some of our fixed costs in Uruguayan Pesos per month:
- Internet: $2,604 (Antel, ADSL 4 MEGA 4096/512)
- Home Phone: $343 (We have to have a home phone for our Internet because it’s ADSL.)
- Electricity: $3,500 (give or take… but this should go up because we’ve been running the AC at night lately)
- Gastos Communes: $3,375 (This is our building common expenses; It covers our water, trash, heat, building maintenance and our Porter)
- Health Insurance: $3,999 (3 months after Kaylee gets here it’ll go up to $4,926)
- Emergency Service: $870 (After Kaylee gets here it’ll go up to $1,160)
The point is that all of our bills seem to arrive around the same time… for a total of $14,691 per month.
Now you have your bills… what is an Abitab and how do you find one?
Abitabs are little offices that are speckled all throughout the city and the countryside. Each of your bills has a barcode on it that is scanned in by the clerk at the Abitab… You pay the clerk, they give you a receipt and you go on your way.
It’s a little bit of a pain not to be able to pay our bills online or drop a check in the mail, but we’re fortunate enough to have two Abitabs within 2-3 blocks of us.
One thing to ask your realtor when searching for a place to rent or buy is, “Where is the nearest Abitab?”
For those of you already living in Uruguay… How far away are you from the nearest Abitab?
Ignacio says
Hi Newcomers !
Note some tips regarding how to pay bills in Uruland –
*direct debit from a local bank account
*direct debit from a local credit card (like Visa)
*on line payment with a credit card (even with a foreign credit card) (available for phone company ANTEL, i.e.)
*at ABITAB,RED PAGOS or URUGUAY POST OFFICES
If paying the bill in ABITAB, ask for your free preferred client card, wich permits to gain points which are later reedemed (gifts, concerts, etc.)
ABITAB, RED PAGOS and POST OFFICES also offer many other services like – gambling (lotto), sale of tickets for concerts, ferry boat, buses to neighboring countries, tokens for parking, etc, etc,
With respect to your energy bill, please take a look at http://www.ute.com.uy since there are many rates for a variaty of needs. Currently, Im paying the DAY/NIGHT rate. What does it mean ? All the energy I need from midnite to 06pm costs a few bucks, but the energy from 06.01pm to 11.59pm cost more expensive.
The Day/Night rate is very convenient for all those needing more thant 125KW per month.
Hugs
Ig
Brian and Chrystal says
Hey Ignacio,
Thanks for the tips… We’ll be checking them out ASAP…
DIT says
You can actually not pay for the phone if you’re only interested in the Internet. I recently moved and had to pay zero installation costs just for clearly stating that I was only installing it for Internet. Of course, I can’t make phone calls – I use my cell phone for that – but I CAN receive them!