In my last post I gave an overview of the costs of living in Paris, and now I will address the other side of the euro coin: working.

Grants

The easiest way to make ends meet in Paris is to get a massive infusion of free money. There are a few grants available that are worth looking into: Fulbright, Harriet Hale Woolley, Frank Huntington Beebe.  I am not sure about the exact amounts, but each of them is worth about $20,000; easily enough to cover your €10,000 expenses for one year.

I applied several times for the grants and got rejected flat out every time.  From what I have seen, the best way to get one is to have a degree from a big school like Northwestern or Indiana.  For the Fulbright, most of the grant winners are in fields other than music and most of them come from schools like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cornell, etc.  The same is true of the Wooley grant, which in the last few years has gone to students from Rice, Indiana University, New England Conservatory, Cleveland Institute of Music, and Northwestern.  One year a pianist from IU won both the Fulbright and Wooley grants in the same year.  I never applied for the Beebe grant, but it actually has a playing competition, so it might be worth considering for someone who is already playing at a professional level.

I would still suggest applying for all three of these grants.  Even if it doesn’t work out, the process of writing your application and organizing the materials might turn out to be useful eventually.

Teaching

If you are not well-connected enough to get $20k in free money, there are other possibilities to make ends meet.

Personally, I decided to try to work only in my field and avoid taking a job outside of music.  I have been able to make it work mostly by teaching, a little from competitions and concerts (very little), and a little help from my parents.

I have been somewhat lucky in finding students over the last three years, but it has never been enough to cover all my expenses.  In total I have taught about 12 students, but several of them were only in Paris for a year or two, so at any given moment I have had about six students at the same time.  I teach each student on average three lessons per month because of cancellations and vacations.  I charge €35/lesson, so on average that is €100/month for each student.  Six students would be €600, which is pretty much the best I have done.

Teaching english can be possible, as well.  This year I had one private student who I gave english lessons and did some translations for him, but that wasn’t a very significant source of income.  Some of my friends teach english classes or private lessons, but the problem there is that the going rate for English lessons is much lower: €15-20/hour unless you have some significant credentials as an English teacher.  There is also a lot of competition for these students, so you have to be extremely proactive to make this work.

Other Work Opportunities

I have some friends who have done other kinds of work: one who worked for a year at a bar (which she had trouble balancing with her practicing), another who has been working at a call center, another who has some kind of job where he sets up conference halls at a convention center, several girls who have done some babysitting, a Tunisian friend who used to work at a hotel and now as a hall monitor at a middle school, and one flutist who plays in a metro tunnel near the Louvre museum, making €20-50/hour.

Another possibility is to try to work during the summer and save money, which some people have been able to pull off, or to do a study abroad through your University and take out student loans in the U.S..

<For anyone who previously or currently lives in Paris, please share your own employment suggestions for inclusion here!>

I find very often that my colleagues in the U.S. would love to study in Paris for a year or two, but the issue of money is a major barrier.  I initially moved to Paris thinking that I would only stay for one year, but it has turned out that I can live here as cheaply as any city in the U.S.  Rent in Paris is generally very expensive, but it is possible to live relatively cheaply in student housing.  Transportation costs are lower than in the U.S., because the extensive Paris metro system is much cheaper than having a car.

Baseline Costs

If you are an artist or musician, then you will probably want to get a room at the Fondation des Etats-Unis (FEU), which is the American building in the Cité Universitaire.  Musicians can practice in their quasi-sound-proofed rooms, and artists can paint, sculpt, photograph, video, etc in their unfairly large, lofted rooms.  The rent is €435/mo for the 2010-11 year, but the price creeps up slightly each year.

The majority of France’s extensive social safety net programs only apply to people with French citizenship, but the state does provide housing assistance to all students.  The program is called Caisses d’Allocations Familiales (CAF), and will give you about €100/mo to help offset your rent.

If you are under 26, then you can get a year-long metro pass (highly recommended) that only costs about €30-50/month, depending on where your conservatory is.

Tuition at the state conservatories ranges from €600/year to €1300/year, and you are supposed to also pay €200/year to opt in to the state health care system through
your conservatory.

So here are your baseline living costs:
Tuition: €100/mo
Rent: €440/mo
Metro: €30-50/mo
Food: €100/mo
Cell phone: €20/mo
CAF: (€100/mo)
=€600/mo

Other costs

France has the #1 health care system in the world, so medical costs are very cheap.  A normal doctor’s appointment costs €23. Most prescriptions are very cheap to fill (my allergy and asthma medicines cost €5-10 each).  If you pay the €200 opt-in payment through the conservatory, about half of what you pay for doctors and medicine will be reimbursed through an annoying process of attaching some stickers to a special paper and sending it in with a copy of your prescription.

Most concert tickets are extremely cheap for students.  Most contemporary music concerts (Cité de la Musique, IRCAM) have student tickets for €5-10.  The Paris Opera and Ballet also have very cheap student tickets, but you have to be willing to come an hour or two in advance to wait in line, and sometimes you will get turned away in the end.  Salle Pleyel is the city’s main concert hall, but unfortunately, the student tickets there are more difficult to get.

Restaurants in Paris are ridiculous.  A cheap french restaurant will cost ~€12-16 for a two-course meal.  You can get a (one-person size) pizza for ~€10-12, meal at KFC or McDonald’s for €6, a “grec” sandwich for €5, some questionable chinese food for €5, a baguette sandwich, crepe, or panini for €4.  Note that none of these options come anywhere near the “high cuisine” that France is supposedly famous for.  In other words, unless you are paying more than €25 for a meal (not including wine), you will not even realize that you are living in a country that is supposed to have good food.  By contrast, many other European countries (Italy, Spain, Greece, Germany, for example) do have delicious food that is affordable for people who are not independently wealthy.

Going out to bars is expensive in Paris.  At a random “brasserie” or bar, a half liter of beer will cost €5-6, and a mixed drink will usually be €6-10.  Some places do have happy hour or specials, and I know one bar where half liters of Warsteiner are €3.

While it is expensive to go out, buying wine at the grocery store is a completely different story.  The quality-to-cost ratio of wine in Paris is huge compared to the U.S.  You can buy €4-5 bottles of decent wine that are probably the equivalent of a $20 bottle in the States.

Another significant cost to consider is that of traveling.  You will probably want to do at least a little travelling in France, so you should consider that as a significant cost.  If you take the train within France more than twice per year, then you should definitely buy a “12-25″ reduction card.  The card gives you a discount of 25-60%, making it very reasonable to travel by train. For example, Paris-Bordeaux tickets cost as little as €65 round trip, and you can go a lot of places for under €100.  If you go to the Netherlands or Belgium, the tickets can be a little more expensive €100-200 round trip.  Some places in Germany and Spain cost about the same, but much farther than that, and you will be better off with a low cost flight, which go all around Europe in the €100-200 range.

The Bottom Line

The amount of money you will spend during a year in Paris completely depends on how you live.  If you live frugally, but go on a couple short trips in France or elsewhere in Europe, go to a couple concerts a month and eat out only rarely, it would be completely possible to make it on €10,000.

Check in to the next article for information on the other half of the money equation – earning money in Paris.

I am often asked about moving to France, so I am starting a series of posts titled “Living in Paris.”  This information should be interesting to anyone who is planning to live in Paris, but I will focus my attention primarily on issues that would concern American musicians who come to study.

Once you have read through the series, please feel free to contact me to ask further questions!