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gigel82

It's surprising you can live off $4200 / month in Sweden (after tax I presume that's about $2000 / month).

That is below minimum wage in a place like Seattle for example ($14.49 / hour ~ $2,500 / month gross).

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At the moment, I'm paying myself a net salary of $2,700 / month. It's perfectly livable where I am :)

Dear Andreas,

I've been following Serenity for a while. Thanks for your educational expertise humbly conveyed in your videos!

Could it be beneficial for your company to be set up as a foundation? Since it is not "selling" Serenity, merely taking donations anyhow? I don't know the Swedish system but I wonder if that could provide tax advantages to donors and workers? If you have your own companies, you can pay yourself Director's dividends instead of being employed and drawing a salary. Again depending on the country, that may be advantageous - tax-wise, and also not having to do payroll.

Keep up the good work!

The median gross salary in Sweden is 2618 USD/month.

(Sweden used to be a rich country, but we’ve fallen behind over the last few decades.)

Don't forget that you need to take payroll tax into consideration (31,42%)

Don't forget the US has federal income tax (even if you only make $30k/yr); Washington doesn't have an income tax but has all sorts of sales tax, and then of course there's the matter of health insurance costs. Choose the wrong plan in the US and get into a car crash through no fault of your own, and suddenly you're declaring medical bankruptcy on minimum wage. How many days of PTO and sick leave is that minimum wage job giving? Is the workplace unionized? How much is rent for that matter? Did you get housing in, say, Sthlm by waiting in line or did you use one of the loopholes? How much does food cost, in the grocery store, eating out, and food delivery. How easy is it to recycle?

There's a lot more thought that should go into a consideration when choosing between two places to live. A simple dollars to SEK comparison doesn't begin to scratch the surface of it.

> (after tax I presume that's about $2000 / month).

No OECD country has a total tax wedge (including employers payroll taxes, which may be relevant here since he's running a company) above 50% for an average salary other than Belgium.

Sweden is at ca 42% vs ca 28% in the US.

Which is of course high, but e.g. effectively includes full health cover etc..

(For comparison, income tax and employee contributions average at ca 24% of an average salary both places)

Source: OECD Taxing Wages.

That's more than enough unless he lives in a big city. At one point I even bought a waterfront apartment walking distance from downtown in a medium sized city making a bit less than him. Things are pretty affordable here. The taxes thing is just FUD/propaganda. (Well, ignoring the energy crisis that might be about to hit us hard that is.)

It's on the low-end of average for a software developer salary in Sweden. Sort of thing you'd earn with 5 years of experience.

Cost of living matters a lot when "translating" income.

If you're earning 1.8k eur in Sweden with 5 years of experience, you're doing something really wrong.

In Latvia, a much poorer EU country you're looking st 2.5k at least woth 5 years of exp.

May figures may be a few years out of date, but it's not that far off. Also varies with where you live. Stockholm pays a bit more, but is also significantly more expensive to live in.

This is also assuming you're employed. Contractors will probably at least double that.

It is not. If you studied three years at University you should ask for at least 35 300 kr a month before taxes. If you worked for five years you should earn a lot more. See https://www.sverigesingenjorer.se/lon/lonestatistik/ingangsl...

So donate more...

Dunno, I still think it can be characterized as the low-end of average, even if it's closer to 2-3 years of experience. Maybe not in Stockholm, but there are a places that still offer like 30k for entry level hires.

As written in the article talking salaries in Sweden is avoided, so there are probably many offers in that range. The recommendation is for Sweden in general though, not Stockholm. It is for any kind of engineer, where IT is above average.

What are you referring to in the article? All taxable income (which would include salary) is public information in Sweden and the majority are unionized and do talk about salaries.

Mostly "Please understand that I’m publishing this for transparency, not to brag about making so much or complain about not making enough." and such.

Yeah, that's what I thought. I think you read too much into that. He's just being the humble and cool guy he is. It's not as taboo here like it is in the US.[1]

1. https://www.ft.com/content/2a9274be-72aa-11e7-93ff-99f383b09...

I don't live in the US but get the impression that US prices have skyrocketed in many cities? Like paying $20 for a sandwich in California for example, or $4k rents in New York. So even though the dollar is a stronger currency internationally, it's worth less and less within the country?

If that's true, retiring in Europe might get more and more common for US software developers...

I imagine many developers just retire outside of the big cities, where prices drop drastically.

Even in East Bay Area, you'll pay $10 for a sandwich and $2k for renting a 1 br apartment. It's not that much more than Western Europe for an equivalent thing.

I was just visiting Switzerland and these prices are 2 times what's paid there. And like 3-4 times what's paid in Central Europe.

I don't know how taxes work in Sweden, but in most countries gifts and donations are taxed at much lower rate than employment income, so I would expect the net income to be way higher than $2k.

These types of gifts and donations are considered regular income and are therefore taxed as such.

Depends on the country

The grandparent already said that so I clarified the situation in Sweden.

That can't be true, or everyone would be paid in gifts and donations. (Anyway. He has to report his donations as his self-employed earnings.)

> everyone would be paid in gifts and donations.

That's literally fraud and tax evasion which comes with enormous fines, prison time, revocations of licenses and so on, which is why people don't do that.

Context matters. You can't arbitrarily declare something a gift and expect the local tax authorities to just agree with you.

I don't think many people would choose to be paid an indeterminate amount by their employer each month, consisting of how much they feel like paying that month.

It would be closer to $3000 / month after tax.

Since he's employed he also needs to pay payroll tax. Roughly speaking with both income tax and payroll tax accounted for, you usually end up with at about 50%.

I work in Sweden having a similar salary and pay around 35% tax.

Yeah, but that's missing the 31,42% tax that the employer is paying before you pay your 35%. (and the extra % for pension, insurance, etc)

Aah, yes I was thinking it was salary and not company income. My bad! Who knows what he actually takes out from that in the end then though.

not surprising at all.

p.s. in Sweden the average is slightly below 30 hours of work/week

Uh?

Average weekly working hours: 30.9 hours per week in 2011, it had dropped to 30.1 in 2021, only being below 30 in 2020

Across Sweden, only around 1% of employees work more than 50 hours a week, one of the lowest rates in the OECD, where 13% is the average. By law, Swedes are given 25 vacation days, while many large firms typically offer even more. Parents get 480 days of paid parental leave to split between them

Joe Armstrong, Erlang creator, talked a lot about being able to work on Erlang while being in Sweden because as a parent he was allowed to work less hours a day and had plenty of free time.

I averages may be a bit quite deceiving since they're across industries. About 80% of office workers do a full 40 hour week.

More than 40 is likewise very rare. A work-week is legally standardized up to at most 40 hours. Overtime is a thing, but demanding chronic overtime without good reason is a legal liability, where the boss responsible is held personally liable.

> About 80% of office workers do a full 40 hour week.

avearges are averages.

The average hours worked per week in the U.S. was 38.7 hours as of 2021. Men worked an average of 40.5 hours per week

so comparing a salary in US using hour rates, can lead to a very different result in Sweden.

Averages are not the same across different statistical distributions.

In the case of working hours, the Swedish median, mode and mean are heavily divergent, since the distribution is truncated at 40 hours by the law and thus heavily skewed.

> since the distribution is truncated at 40 hours by the law

which makes it a maximum.

Thanks for confirming that it makes no sense to compare hourly rates between Sweden and Seattle, where people could work 60 hours a week.

No one in Scandinavia pays anything like that amount of income tax.

Sweden has three levels (2106)

    0 %, up to 18 800 kr
    About 31 %  for 18 800 to 443 200 kr.
    31 % + 20 % (statlig skatt): 443 200 kr to  638 800 kr. 
    31 % + 25 % (statlig skatt): 638 800 kr and above

5200 USD is about 550 000 SEK so 31% of about 250 000 SEK plus 51% of about 100 000 SEK.

Roughly 130 000 SEK, or about 1000 USD per month.

See https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skatt_i_Sverige#Inkomstskatt

You need to include payroll tax (arbetsgivaravgift) as well.

Surely you can't ignore the tax that is usually paid by the employer?

As another commenter have pointed out, you're missing payroll tax.

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