[bacon]

It depends how long you plan on staying in a place but anything closer to a year avoid furnished apartments. In my experience you can get an unfurnished apartment and bare bones furnish it for little more than 1k then just sell the furniture before you leave or make a deal with the landlord for them to buy it(ive done both in the past). I would recommend buying your electronics (tv/dvd player,fridge, microwave) and even furniture outside of the bed second hand through pawn shops/consignment shops/newspaper adds in the city you are at.

As for personal belongings as a guy you really dont need that much shit to be comfortable in my opinion. I also throw away shit I am not using every 6 months or so but I have been keeping my posessions down to 2 suitcases for the past 3 years.

Basically here is what I own

I have 8 long leave shirts
4 tshirts
swimsuit
7 boxers
10 pairs of socks
fleece
waterproof jacket
hat/gloves
3 jeans
1 dress pant
dress shoes 2 pair
hiking shoes
sandals
towel(2)
electronics
cell phone
universal adapter
small camera
small laptop

other small personal shit like
sunglasses
flashlight(small)
tolietries etc

For kitchen gear just buy that new but that shouldnt set you back more than a hundred dollars to get pots/pans/blender etc

If you are going to travel much more frequently like every couple months you will pay a premium for furnished apartments and you might find it more economical to just rent a room in one of those places with a local or fellow expat and if you go that route your only cost would likely be buying a bed for your room if that.

Good luck