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Comment by herbst | Hacker News Reader

I know this sounds stupid.

However i still paid taxes, health care, a mobile contract, banking, etc in Switzerland.

The actual savings should be in living and food. On short term I rarely rented below $800/month for a single room flat. (Vs $1000 for a old house in Switzerland) for food I have to cook myself now Vs. Eating out twice a day in Thailand.

Without actually moving and centering your life to a cheap country (and giving up on a lot of luxury and safety) you dont easily safe money.

Digital Nomading was an absolute luxury for me. Not a way of saving money (at least looking back)

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US may actually be cheapest for someone like you. Move to rural Kansas, get a house for like 80k with full utilities, kitchen, and starlink.

Might sound surprising but I am looking at immobilia in some parts of Switzerland at the same price range. I enjoy the good health care, fair taxes and generally the environment. My entertainment (outside of my techy home) is nature now.

Eh, I don't know, going outside in Switzerland is generally nicer than in Kansas.

You are not comparing apples to apples.

“Normal” meals in Thailand are food stalls, $2 per meal if not less.

If you’d eat out twice a day in Switzerland, you’d go bankrupt.

Same with renting. Short term leases in Switzerland would be astronomical in price.

The way you air-quoted “super cheap Thailand” implies that it isn’t cheap to live there at all. It is, as long as you don’t go out of your way to spend extra.

>“Normal” meals in Thailand are food stalls, $2 per meal if not less.

I gotta disagree here, that's what low-skilled staff eat on their lunch break. It's usually not very tasty or hygienic (depending on what you order), so westerners only eat this once or twice to try it out before learning their lesson. Then they stick to restaurants which cost $5-12 per meal.

Your average western expat spends 30 euros per day on food in Thailand, if they eat out. I know this because a friend did a survey.

My daily spending was about like this:

- Cheap first meal: $2-$3 - 2-3 Espresso from Supermarkets: $4 - Coffee or tea to go: $3 - Water: $1 - Eating out: $6-$30

So my average day in Food was about $16 - $41 per day. I rarely spend this much in Switzerland when buying only organic food and mostly from farmers. I save a lot on coffee by having a proper coffee machine.

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