>>508411002They chose to live in the "American Village" in Istra, which to me is fucking retarded beyond words.
Its basically a new built Dacha area northwest of Moscow away from all Russian things and not even public transport. Its built specifically for North Americans.
They got scammed hard by their lawyer. They even admitted they got into debt because it cost more than they expected.
I have no idea why they thought doing that was a good idea. They'd have been better off living in Moscow proper and experience the language directly and have instant access to cheap reliable transport. You'd be amazed how much you can pick up just living among people and pattern recognition without any training.
She's an English teacher so she really needs to get work, private English teachers in Moscow city can make about 210k rubles per month, public english teachers its around 130k per month.
For a single person a monthly salary of around 120k rubles in Moscow would be decent to survive on, probably 150k for extra room. Its by far the most expensive but most invested and developed region for obvious reasons.
If in St Petersburg you can comfortably get by on 90k rubles per month. If you are getting 150k or more, you'd live very comfortably.
Pro tip: When Russians mention salary its their money, the tax has already been taken off.
As a family,you'd need a bigger salary or just move to a cheaper area of the country.
Minimum wage(dirt poor) ranges between 22-30k rubles per month
"Unskilled worker" salaries(most Russians are in this category) are like 45-90k rubles per month
Skilled workers depending on experience and training range from 100-300k rubles per month
Professional workers(especially IT) can net upwards of 350k rubles per month.
Apartments range from 700k rubles to 10 million rubles for context in terms of buying homes.
There is a 5 million skilled workers shortage in Russia especially welders,electricians,carpenters and plumbers. There's a lot of opportunity.