A stop at a café in Milan prompted a question I keep coming back to: when is an everyday purchase affordable? Looking at the price alone leaves out the person who has to pay it.
Start with a figure we can check
The Kosovo Agency of Statistics reports average monthly wages for 2025 of €713 gross and €636 net. Its release is dated 29 May 2026. These are Kosovo-wide averages, not figures specifically for Prishtina. Read the official wage release.
Gross pay and take-home pay answer different questions. For a household purchase, net income is the more direct starting point. An average also does not tell us what every worker earns.
One café is an observation, not a city average
A menu can show what one business charges. It cannot, by itself, establish the average price of coffee across Milan or Prishtina. Nor can a city wage figure from one year be divided by a national figure from another and treated as a clean measure of purchasing power.
A stronger comparison would match the year, the population covered and the definition of pay, then look at the same basket of expenses. Housing, food, transport and household size all belong in the question.
That is the point I want to keep from the café conversation: the same price can carry a very different weight in two budgets. Before calling a place cheap or expensive, ask what remains after the essential bills are paid.
Fact-check update: 15 October 2026. Unverified Milan wages, citywide coffee and menu prices, GDP ratios and the original salary multiple are omitted. The Kosovo wage figures above refer to 2025.
Illustrative image, not the café visited: Chevanon Photography / Wikimedia Commons, CC0.
Original social post · 2026-10-08
