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Comment by prodent | Hacker News Reader

Finding an expensive apartment vs. not finding an apartment at all, really?

Say you are single, have some experience and get low-balled into a CHF 100k contract. Not counting 13th salary this translates to CHF 7.7k per month gross / CHF 6k net (before health insurance). I.e. at up to 1/3 of your monthly net you can spend up to 2k per month on an apartment. There are plenty of those to choose from inside Zurich city, even if some might be small for the price or have other drawbacks. You can find cheaper/bigger/nicer easily by expanding your search radius to the (extremely well-connected) suburbs.

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> spend up to 2k per month on an apartment

Only if you're a relentless hunter. Otherwise it looks more like >2.5k CHF monthly. 400-500 CHF monthly on health insurance, 500 CHF monthly for random tickets, fees, fines, and other "disciplinary measures". Suddenly you find yourself being poor in Switzerland. Being poor among rich hurts multiplied.

>Being poor among rich hurts multiplied.

Depends. Sure, it hurts your ego being "poor" in a super rich country, but that has the advantages of being safe everywhere, not being stabbed for wearing a nice watch, having access to the best medical care in the world, a reliable insurance and justice system for when things go wrong, clean air and drinking/bathing water, a high trust society where you're not afraid of being scammed everywhere or leaving your door open at night, not afraid that anyone will shoot you in your school, etc.

Some people would rather be dirt poor in Zurich, than filthy rich in Zimbabwe.

Once you pay 200 EUR/CHF for kitchen sink piping or 500 EUR/CHF for locksmith you quickly lose track was is a scam and what isn't.

Prices in Germany and Austria are not that much lower for handymen and locksmiths, unless you already have "a guy".

Ultimately it's supply and demand. It's the consequence of everyone wanting to be a latte sipping WFH laptop worker, instead of a contractor/handyman.

Also, worth considering that locksmiths charge crazy money because they basically work shit hours and have to deal with shitty customers. You're basically on call 24/7, on the road a lot, and most of your customers who call you are party people who realize they lost their keys when they get home from the bar/club at 2AM on a Saturday night/Sunday morning and call you desperately trying to get into their house, and once you do open their door they start to bitch, moan and can even get aggressive refusing to pay, because you're charging too much money for "5 minutes of work". Sure, maybe you make a solid thousand Euros that night, but you basically fucked your weekend. Not great work/life balance IMHO, which is why not so many do it.

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