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Comment by Swizec | Hacker News Reader

Exactly what ddorian43 said.

My particular friends (and me of old) are located in Slovenia, clients are in San Francisco. You can have a decent life in Slovenia for $20k/year. You can easily get a gig in San Francisco for $60k/year. Probably even easier for $100k/year because of the whole signaling thing.

I wasn't able to save as much as my friends are because of lifestyle inflation, but I sure had a lot of fun. My margin isn't as high now that I live in San Francisco, but my glass ceiling is higher. Tradeoffs :)

PS: as you can infer from above, you can also always move. Nobody says you have to stay in a bad economy.

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Thanks for the reply and the info provided. My personal opinion regarding the ability to move from a bad economy is that this is not always as easy as it looks. Even if you are european with an EU passport you are very likely to come up against some high language barriers etc. Although that could be a challenge some people might jump at.

For example I know that the UK (and mostly London) is extremely tolerant of non native English speakers. However from experience I know this will count against you when people are looking to hire (I was on the hiring side at one point so know how my managers perceived this.)

Germany is again another example where unless you speak really good German you will have some pretty tough challenges. I had a friend who grew up speaking German as a second language, who completed his masters in Germany, be told by his boss to go for German writing classes if he wants to get anywhere in their company.

Europe might be one big open job market but Language honestly makes it far more difficult than it seems at first. This also goes for settling into your new country even if you are working for US or UK companies as your day job.

> you are very likely to come up against some high language barriers etc.

This is not a problem I personally experienced for English speaking countries. Started learning when I was in kindergarten, always immersed in the culture via TV and internet, did English and English writing as a hobby pretty much since starting high school. Until they hear my accent, most people assume I'm a native speaker.

So I lucked out on that front.

The hard part for me was the visa. But that is also a solvable problem.

> The hard part for me was the visa. But that is also a solvable problem.

That is something I did not even want to mention due to the challenges it brings. It is not insurmountable but does sometimes come at a high cost of both money, time and stress.

$48k/y gig for US client converts in less than 2000 eur/month net with some creative book-keeping.

Rent and utilities in Ljubljana cost us about 800 eur. What is left is maybe enough for one person, who will never own any property.

$20k/y is close to a welfare level in Slovenia, except maybe in countryside.

These are specifics and probably not interesting to the rest of HN.

BUT, you can open a sole proprietorship, fill out some forms, and voila: you pay 4% taxes. After all the healthcare and stuff, you end up with 1068 euro net on a $20k (17k eur) yearly revenue.

At $48k/year, you get 3040 euro/month net. Now you're getting paid almost as much as the president. Your taxes will go up a bit next year, so save up, but for the first year you have plenty of extra money in the bank that you can leverage for making even more money.

And if you target San Francisco, you're competing with people who are asking for $130k+/year.

;)

That is REALLY interesting! Quite a useful and nice way to work with tax. What does the percentage increase to in the following year?

It is a shame that the UK does not have anything like this. The best you can hope for is to contract and that give an average tax of around 26% to 30% depending on how creative your bookkeeper is.

Germany as my alternative example is quite a different story, there being freelance is very difficult due to the cost of healthcare that you HAVE to pay and their tax law is extremely complicated, you pay loads more tax than the UK for example. I know some friends who too permanent employment in Germany as it was more beneficial than being freelance.

> less than 2000 eur/month

Sure, you'll always be renting, but this is still significantly better than working for most local companies.

The GDP per capita of slovenia is about 20k. So pretty much everyone needs welfare? I don't believe that.

Invoicing 1500 eur/month as a company, minus operation costs, minus taxes, gives 800-850 eur/month, which is barely livable. Lawful minimum is about 750 eur.

Swizec is right, there are ways to incorporate to pay less tax, but not everyone can go that way.

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