QA Engineer salary in Lodz 2026 | Is 7000 zł enough to live well? | Cost of leaving for single in PL

I moved to Łodź 10 years ago to start a new life in Poland. When I first arrived, I had no idea how far money actually goes here. Back then, cost of living felt shocking — how cheap everything was. But after paying my own bills, managing a mortgage, and watching my salary as a QA engineer, I realised the real picture is more complicated. In this video I break down actual numbers. My take-home salary. My mortgage payment. The price of groceries, utilities, eating out, transport. What's genuinely cheap and what surprised me by being expensive. And the actual question: if you earn 7000 zł net in Lodz, can you live well, save money, and still enjoy life? This is not about struggling to survive. This is about what comfortable actually costs in a city where Western Europeans often expect everything to be impossibly cheap. — Julia