What is the Real Cost of Living in Belize?

Questions about the cost of living in Belize are some of the most frequently asked questions in the many expat-focused Belize Facebook Groups and other forums online. In this article, I am opening up the financial books on my life here in Belize to share exactly what I spent over the course of a year living in Belize.

First, I have to say, that for those of you who have read a number of Belize FAQs articles, this article will be a bit of a departure from my usual style, as I generally tend to write more from a journalist’s perspective than a first-person narrative.

I usually do research from primary sources, perhaps an interview or two, and then comment or add some personal experience simply to demonstrate how things work on the ground versus the ‘official’ line on topics such as the Basics of Real Estate in Belize, Permanent Residency, Healthcare in Belize, and other commonly discussed topics.

And despite the fact that I taught at international colleges and universities for many years, and then owned a very busy business in the tourism sector in Hawaii, I am generally a very private person and can be quite introverted in public situations, so I have had to talk myself into sharing this slice of my life here.

Basics of the cost of living in Belize

When I first considered writing a cost of living in Belize article, I thought that my recent personal experience is likely atypical; thus, not very helpful for others. However, I realized that what I may be able to supply is a real baseline, a no frills cost of living in Belize, focused just on the basics.

Prior to moving to Corozal, I lived in the top-floor apartment of a triplex in San Pedro which I had completely renovated, and I operated two licensed vacation rental apartments on the ground floor. And while I tracked all of my spending in San Pedro, because I was operating a business on the property, it was much harder to track just my personal expenses there, as I was constantly putting money into additional work on the building during the entire time that I was living in San Pedro.

I moved to Corozal in mid-2023, so 2024 was the first full calendar year for which I have accurate data about my personal spending over a full year. In this article, I share my real cost of living in Belize for a year.

Basics of the cost of living in Belize: What is my living situation in Belize?

After I sold my rental apartments in San Pedro, I bought a house just north of Corozal town in northern Belize. The house is technically a duplex, constructed of a composite of concrete and plycem, which is a type of cement board, and it is about 2200 square feet. I live in approximately 1200 square feet upstairs, and there is an 800-900 sq ft apartment, as well as some storage units downstairs. The house also has a fairly large pool, approximately 31’x 17′. And the lot is close to 1/3 of an acre.

I briefly describe the location, house, and pool, as we will see that these factors weigh heavily on cost of living in Belize. Also, of course, since I own the house, I have no cost of rent to factor in, but there are costs associated with home maintenance here, as the climate in Belize can be really hard on just about everything.

Personal lifestyle and the effect of cost of living in Belize

I currently live on my own in Belize, and for a number of reasons, both personal and professional, when I moved to Corozal, I decided to really simplify things. Because I live pretty simply, I see my spending over a year as a real baseline, which one can adapt to use to estimate a budget for a couple, adding on all of the items which are lifestyle choices.

I do not drink alcohol, so I don’t spend money in the bars or on wine, spirits, or beer for home consumption, and in my budget below, I do not track my spending in restaurants, as I likely only went out three or four times during the entire year, preferring to cook at home. Also, I have a 2011 Jeep Liberty which I purchased when I moved to Corozal, but I drive only about 30-40 miles a week.

Drinking, going to bars, eating out, and driving a great deal can be really expensive undertakings in Belize, so be aware that these things are at a minimum in my budget, and you need to take these expenses into account if you want to predict a realistic budget.

Cost of Living in Belize: Budget Categories

I kept accurate records of all of my spending for a full year in the following categories, and these are the expenses which I will discuss below:

• Groceries and Household Supplies
• Utilities
• Auto Expense
• Pool and Lawn Maintenance
• Home Repairs and Maintenance
• Drinking Water
• Healthcare Expense

I have decided to exclude the following expenses from the article, as they are completely discretionary, and some of these are related to both my website publishing and freelance writing work:

• Amazon Prime Subscription
• Express VPN Subscription
• Traveling Mailbox Service
• Subscriptions related to website development and freelance work
• Limited number of restaurant visits

While I haven’t ordered anything from Amazon to be delivered to Belize since about 2021, I have kept the subscription as I still love to watch BBC mysteries, and Amazon has the best selection!

Aside from the Traveling Mailbox, and perhaps the VPN, the rest of my subscriptions are used primarily for work, so I have left them out here. Also, as I mentioned above, for a number of reasons, I decided to live really simply in 2024, so I was only out to restaurants a few times during the entire year, and because most of the people I know here spend a good deal eating out, I did not want to give a false impression about the cost of dining out; this is something you will have to determine for yourself.

For all of the numbers below, even though I think in Belize dollars when I am shopping here, I am posting all of my expenses below in USD, as this will likely make things easier for our Canadian readers.

How much did I spend on Groceries and Household Goods for an entire year in Belize?

For this category, Groceries and Household Goods, I include all food items, household cleaning products, paper products, laundry products, and personal hygiene items. The greatest factor which will determine how much one spends on groceries and household items in Belize is likely how many imported North American brands one chooses to buy.

I tend to purchase, almost exclusively, food and household goods produced either in Belize or in Mexico. Mexican and local products are significantly less expensive than those imported from North America, mostly because there are fairly heavy tariffs imposed on imported items, on top of the high cost of shipping the items. My only real exceptions to this rule are that I regularly purchase pasta and olive oil which are made in Italy, as well as North American cat food and cat litter.

One other way that I have kept my food expense down is the fact that I very rarely eat beef here. I may have eaten beef three or four times in five years. The beef cattle raised here are a different species than those in North America, they are fed differently, and local beef is almost never aged; thus, many folks do not think that it is worth the high prices. Chicken, fish, and pork are great and are the staples of most Belizeans.

I did not put pet supplies in a separate category when I recorded my spending last year, so the totals below include cat food and cat litter, which is much more expensive here than in North America. If I had to guess, I believe that I spend between $50-$60 USD per month on my two feline friends (Smidge and Little Dorrit).

• Groceries and Household Goods Annual Expense: $4667.71 USD
• Groceries and Household Goods Monthly Expense: $388.98 USD

Finally, if you would like more information and some tips on shopping for food and household goods here in Belize, check out our article on Shopping in Belize.

Cost of living in Belize: Utilities

Like with food and household goods expenditures, lifestyle choices will greatly affect one’s cost of utilities here in Belize. This is especially true for the use of air conditioning in one’s home. Since I lived in the tropics for two decades prior to moving to Belize, I was accustomed to the heat, and I have never turned on the AC in either of the homes I have owned here in Belize.

By international standards, the per kilowatt hour cost of electricity in Belize is very high, so if one runs AC units 24/7 in their home, they may be in for sticker shock when the first electric bill arrives. When I lived in San Pedro, I met several people who were paying nearly $500 USD per month for electricity during the hot, humid rainy season.

I include the following utilities in my annual expense report below:

• Butane (Propane mixture for cooking and hot water)
• Electricity
• Internet Service
• Cell Phone Service

I do not have a line item for water service in my utilities, as my house has both two large catchment tanks, which I use for water inside the house, and a well, which is used for the outdoor shower, pool, and water hoses.

For cell phone service, I use a DIGI pre-paid plan, and I spent only $45 USD on cell service for the entire year last year, and this is because I do not have a data plan on my phone, and I make 99% of my calls in Belize using WhatsApp. I really only use the pre-paid credit on my phone when I need to call my bank or credit card company in the US for some reason. Where I live outside of Corozal, cell service is pretty poor, so it would not make sense for me to pay more for cell service.

My internet service is a local point-to-point over the airways service, and it can be unreliable, however, DIGI’s fiber-to-home network is not available where I live. If you’d like more information on internet service and the various providers, check out Internet Service in Belize.

As far as butane expense, I basically use the gas just for cooking, as I shower outside 99% of the time every afternoon after I swim, and I almost never use hot water in the house, as a matter of fact, I turned off the hot water tank for about four or five months last year, so I spent a total of $525 USD on butane for the entire year.

• Utilities Annual Expense: $2,364.80 USD
• Utilities Monthly Expense: $197.06 USD

The breakdown of utilities over the year:

1. Butane Average Monthly Expense: $43.75 USD
2. Electric Average Monthly Expense: $93.91 USD
3. Internet Average Monthly Expense: $56.25 USD
4. Cell Phone Average Monthly Expense: $3.75 USD

When I lived in San Pedro, I lived in a space which was about the same size as where I am living now in Corozal, and I did not run the AC there. My electricity bill in San Pedro was about half of what it is in Corozal, and the only real difference is that I need to run the pool pump here about 6-8 hours every day, so the pool, in effect, doubles my electric bill.

Also, please remember, my cell phone monthly average is so low because there is really limited service where I live, the signal is not good, so it makes no sense to put additional pre-paid credit on the phone, as the credit expires if you don’t use it in a given amount of time.

Finally, one’s cost of living in Belize, particularly concerning utilities, will be determined by factors such as owning a pool and if you regularly run AC in your home.

Pool and Lawn Maintenance

My house sits on about 1/3 of an acre, and most of the lot is landscaped with white gravel and plants, as well as a few areas of grass. As I mentioned above, I also have a fairly large pool, about 31′ x 17′.

When I purchased the house, I was told that I could also inherit the pool/lawn guy who had been helping to take care of the pool and and garden since the house was built.

The previous owner highly recommended him, so even though I could probably cut the limited grass and take care of the pool myself, in San Pedro, I had learned how important it is to have a good local maintenance contact, so I decided to keep him around to clean the pool weekly and to cut the grass once or twice a month. The labor for pool maintenance, lawn work, and tree trimming probably makes up about half of the yearly pool and lawn expense.

I am really happy that I decided to keep the pool guy around, as I soon learned that he is a builder with all of his own tools and reliable transportation, and he is able to handle basically any kind of home maintenance, and he is a family guy who doesn’t party, so I see the weekly cleaning and lawn care fee as a sort of retainer to have a reliable maintenance guy available if I need anything done at the house that I can’t handle myself.

• Pool and Lawn Maintenance Annual Expense: $2507.46 USD
• Pool and Lawn Maintenance Monthly Expense: $208.96 USD

While around 50% of the Pool and Lawn expense went to labor, the rest of it was spent on chemicals for the pool. And both the annual and monthly expenses above are a bit skewed, as I bought pool chemicals in bulk at the end of last year, so I likely will not need to purchase chemicals again until very late in the year this year, or perhaps not until next year.

Cost of living in Belize: Auto Expense

Most expats I know who live on the Belize mainland own a vehicle, and this can be one of the greatest expenses here, due to both high fuel prices and the very high rate of tariff on auto parts.

When I moved from San Pedro to Corozal, I bought a used vehicle which had just been imported to Belize from the US.

Through a connection in San Pedro, I bought my Jeep Liberty from a guy who has been in the car business in Corozal for many years. And while I feel that I got a pretty good deal on the Jeep, I did need to sink significant money into it shortly after I moved into my new place. These costs are not depicted in the numbers below, as they occurred prior to last year.

Please note that I live off of a very rough road, so I drive really slowly most of the time, and I only average between 30-40 miles per week. Those who drive a good deal spend considerably more than I do on Auto Expenses, both due to the high cost of fuel and the maintenance costs associated with driving on the really rough secondary roads. Plan on at least $6.00-$7.00 USD per gallon for fuel costs.

In my Auto Expense category, I include fuel, maintenance, car registration fee, driver’s license renewal, and insurance. My registration costs $100 USD per year, and my insurance runs $207.50 USD per year. My largest maintenance expense for last year was a new battery at $151.88 USD.

• Annual Auto Expense: $1,302.63 USD
• Average Monthly Auto Expense: $108.55 USD

Please remember, that last year, I drove less than almost anyone I know here, so while my numbers for insurance and registration will be similar for others, if you drive a good deal, you will have far higher fuel and maintenance costs.

Home Repairs and Maintenance

Every homeowner, no matter where they live, knows that there are repair and maintenance expenses associated with owning a house. In Belize, at least from my experience and the experiences of others with whom I have spoken, the factors influencing these costs are mostly attributed to where the house is located and the materials from which it is built.

When I first moved to Belize, I did a complete renovation on a large, older building in San Pedro. We converted the first floor from a restaurant space into two large apartments, and I lived in the owner’s apartment upstairs.

Despite having owned a very busy business on the island of Kauai which was located just a block from the beach in a wooden structure which was nearly 100 years old, I was completely unprepared from the amount of maintenance that was required on my place in San Pedro.

From my building, I could see the lagoon on the back side of the island, and it was just a 7 minute walk to the sea front, so between these two bodies of salty water, it was like living in a steam room constantly pumped full of very salty and dusty air. My neighbors told me that the local saying was “even the plastic rusts in San Pedro.”

This very humid, salty environment was very hard on wood, paint, varnish, stain, and even painted concrete, and many electronics also failed after just a couple of years. Even though I had lived in the tropics for many years prior to moving to Belize, I was really unprepared for the very high maintenance expenses, and non-stop maintenance work, I experienced with my building in San Pedro.

When I decided to sell the rental property and move to the Belize mainland, I was determined not to purchase another wooden house and had planned on buying something newer, made of concrete.

However, after looking around and talking to a number of people, I opened myself up to considering Covintec and other alternative materials. The home I finally purchased, Casa Serenity, is a composite construction of concrete and plycem, which is a type of cement board. While in San Pedro, I had learned that plycem is fire-resistant, impervious to termites (a real problem in many wood structures), and it tends to need repainted far less often than either concrete or wood.

On of the biggest benefits of materials like Covintec or plycem is that homes made with these materials tend to retain far less heat that traditional concrete structures.

Last year, my largest home maintenance project was painting all of the external concrete surfaces of Casa Serenity, including the pool deck. The cost of the paint and a few brushes, etc. was $436.00 USD and the labor for power washing and painting was $1000 USD.

The only other large maintenance expense for the year was the replacement of the pressure tank for the well, and the new tank and the labor to install it was $322.50 USD. Other than these expenses, there were just some small plumbing expenses, and parts for small general repairs which I did myself.

• Annual Home Maintenance and Repair Expense: $2064.58 USD
• Monthy Home Maintenance and Repair Expense: $172.05 USD

Cost of Living in Belize: Healthcare Expense

Currently, I do not have private health insurance in Belize, so I pay for all of my healthcare costs out of pocket. Last year, my healthcare expenses were all related to diagnosing and trying to figure out how to treat chronic neck pain and also jaw pain, which is most likely caused by TMJ.

I am still working on getting an accurate diagnosis for the TMJ problem, and I will probably need to go to Mexico to deal with this, but in Belize, I did learn that I have moderately severe arthritis in my neck, and I am still experimenting, trying to figure out the best way to manage it.

I will not delve into the mechanics of healthcare in Belize here, but for a detailed report on the medical scene in Belize, please check out our Healthcare in Belize article.

• Annual Healthcare Expense: $587.50 USD
• Monthly Healthcare Expense: $48.96 USD

Drinking Water

Most folks in Belize, unless they have a reverse osmosis system in their home, choose to drink bottled water. I have 10 gallons of water delivered to my house each week; they come in refillable 5-gallon bottles, which are exchanged for fresh bottles each week.

I drink a lot of water, and I use the bottled water to make coffee and tea as well, but I cook with the rainwater from the cistern when making pasta or rice. Of course, the kitties drink the fresh bottled water as well; they are spoiled!

• Annual Expense for Drinking Water: $144.00 USD
• Monthly Expense for Drinking Water: $12.00 USD

Cost of Living in Belize: What were my total expenses for a full year?

Context really matters in the figures given below, so please, if you haven’t already done so, go back and read the full article before making any assumptions or decisions based on the numbers here!

To reiterate what I have stated above, remember, I am a guy in my early 60s who owns his own home in a rural area outside of Corozal, and I live alone. My total expenses include all of the basics, but I do not drink alcohol; I don’t go to bars, and I very rarely eat out.

Also, the figure below does not include any real entertainment or travel expense, and because I have lived in the tropics for so long, I have never turned on an AC unit in Belize. I see this simply as a frugal baseline from which folks can make adjustments to create a budget.

• Total Annual Basic Expenses in Belize: $13,638.00 USD
• Monthly Basic Expenses in Belize: $1,136.56 USD

Remember, as I stated in the article, the following discretionary items are excluded from the figures above:

• Amazon Prime Subscription
• Express VPN Subscription
• Traveling Mailbox Service
• Subscriptions related to website development and freelance work
• Limited number of restaurant visits

Most of these items are used for my website publishing work or for my freelance work, so I decided to exclude them from my cost of living expenses.

Final thoughts on the Real Cost of Living in Belize

As I stated in the introduction to the article, I am, by nature, a very private person, so I really had to convince myself to open up the books on my life for a year here in Belize. Surprisingly, I think that this is the longest post I have written for Belize FAQs, and I hope that the article is helpful for folks who are thinking about making the move.

Obviously, my numbers are based on owning my home, so if one is renting a place, their cost of living will be greatly influenced by location and the type of home or condo they choose to rent. In San Pedro, in a beautiful sea front unit, one could easily pay $2000 USD, or more, in rent, and in some places on the mainland, one might find a decent, but fairly basic home, for $500-$700 USD.

Also, lifestyle choices, especially going out fairly regularly to bars and restaurants in the tourist areas could quickly double my basic budget. Heavy use of AC is another factor that can greatly increase your monthly utility expense. Especially in the busy tourists towns, one could spend a great deal more than I do on food and household goods if they choose to use familiar, imported North American items. And finally, my auto expense is about as bare bones as possible, as I probably spend as much in gas in 4-6 weeks as many spend in just a week or two.

Finally, I hope that this article was informative and proves to be a useful guide for those who are considering Belize as their new home. And, if you are considering a move to Belize, you might want to check out our book: Belize FAQs: A detailed guide for those interested in moving to Belize. In the book, there are more than 150 pages of Belize FAQs at your fingertips. And Belize FAQs is available in both paperback and Kindle formats.