Ask HN: Leaving Germany – where to find quality of life as experienced engineer?
My wife (hotel management), our 6 month old son and myself (CS, software, hardware + business consulting) need to leave Berlin and Germany. Everything in Germany and especially Berlin eroded to a point, where we don’t want to stand it no more - meaningless to get into the details but quality of life, politics, social life, social net and tax situation just reached their 30 year low.
Our main goal is quality of life for all of us, so it should be a country w/o cold winters, possibly an island close to the equator. I’d appreciate, if I found a tech position, that allows us to buy / rent a quality house (which is close to impossible in Berlin even making 200k/year [due to neck breaking tax and cost of living]).
Getting along with English is a must. The same goes for the possibility of getting work visa. I also consider working remote for a EU / US company and just move to a nice place, but I’d love to hear your personal story, recommendations or ideas.
268 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 342 ms ] threadOne suggestion is the Isle of Man. It has very mild winters. It has very low tax. There are some tech jobs. If you don't mind living on a quiet small island without much to do, with a lot of grey skies, it could be an interesting possibility. The one disadvantage is that housing is relatively expensive.
Outside of that then the world is your oyster. The world is a big beautiful place and if you work in tech you're only limited by your own imagination.
What made you leave Berlin, if you don't mind sharing a bit more?
Finding the right place is always a compromise. E.g. :
1) quality of schools for your son (eventually; he's still super young)
2) VISA, how easy it is to get a permanent resident, and/or citizenship
3) Island close to the equator: the weather is usually not that great (source: lived in Singapore, an island close to the equator, for 2.5 years). But picking the right "type" of place is important, and I suggest you take a 1-month long vacation in 2-3 places, if you can afford it, to "test" it and see if you like it.
Still on this point, I think that most "north Europeans" enjoy the mediterranean area (Portugal, Spain, Italy, or even Greece). Have you tried it out?
Well, maybe. There are some island towns with lots of community , even expat communities. I actually found it easier to make friends on these islands then in a big city.
But the supply chain issues are big, if you want electronics ( in my case for Panama ), you get on a plane and go to the US to buy them. Same with any major medical care.
1. Unhealthy relationship with cars, race and food. Food is bad quality in general compared to other developed countries.
2. Car centric city planning, zoning. Suburb culture.
3. Bad or lacking and underfunded public transport everywhere.
4. No public healthcare.
5. Not very good for introverted people who just want to be chill and mind their own business.
6. People will look at you strange or make fun of you if you don’t like or care about certain American things like BBQ, football, burgers, pizza, etc.
7. People in general don’t know much about the rest of the world, and only consume American cultural products.
8. Unsafe outside in certain parts of the city. "Don't go south of that street" kind of stuff.
9. Trump.
I lived in Scandinavia and certain developed Asian countries, and found that these places fit me better, so that’s why I moved away.
Few things:
1) family reasons (father-in-law was sick, wanted to stay closer)
2) had enough of SF. Expensive, dirty, unsafe, poorly managed.
3) was missing some cultural interactions (European/Italian vs “shallower” Californian)
4) tax advantages for returning to Italy
5) wanted to start a new VC firm, thought that non-US became interesting.
The challenge with Islands near the equator are the natural disasters.
Have you considered Asia, or even the south of Europe? Portugal maybe?
I have a friend who moved from The Netherlands to very small town in France. He was mostly seeking quality of life for him and his family.
One other thing about most US locales, is property taxes are relatively high, and they fund the local government (i.e. your town - they pay for police, school, etc.) which is something a lot easier to control than state or federal government. I've known fellow engineers who ended up investing time/effort to join the local town government and have impact on how that money is spent.
And US school shootings to worry about
You can live there talking English only, and there will be probably opportunities of work for your wife (that should however learn to speak at least functional Spanish).
Remote working for you, however, I don't think there is much occupation related to your field.
Canary Islands (though part of Spain) are a "special territory", and have some different tax rules from Spain:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_member_state_territori...
VAT is different and there are some subsidies for (say) establishing a company there if you employ locals.
> quality of life, politics, social life, social net and tax situation just reached their 30 year low.
I first recognized that this trend was not restricted only to where I live. And so you recognize that this is not about fleeing your location specifically, and is moreso about fleeing a set of conditions that exist in many places and looking for a location that is not characterized by these conditions. The difference I think is important.
Second, I recognized that these conditions are temporal - that is to say that they were not always the case and need not necessarily always be the case in the future. Furthermore, a location without these conditions today is not guaranteed to be free of these conditions in the future. And so any change of location could very well be just temporary - I might need to move again in some X num of years.
Third, when you look at for example Californians fleeing the state and moving to places like Austin, TX - bringing along with them ideologies that are anathema to that of the legacy population, you recognize that it is not just geography that defines the conditions of where one lives, but to a greater degree the people who are living there.
Putting this all together, I arrived at the conclusion that fleeing could at best be a temporary solution and that I would be better served by building relationships in my local community which would produce a higher quality of life for my family. The way you push back on the trend is to re-establish your roots with your people, your nation, and its history. Fleeing will only result in greater isolation and disconnectedness from those around you.
I think it will be hard to recommend depending on your exact positions on these.
I think it will be difficult to recommend a place with low taxes and robust safety net. Generally the taxes are what Pay for a safety net.
On that note, the US could be an option (southern states) for you since the taxes tend to be lower than other developed nations. The safety net is fairly robust, but only applicable in many cases if you're destitute. The caveat is that politics suck here, but they suck basically everywhere.
We're both educated and open towards a liberal, future oriented society. Same goes for paying taxes, since the "overall standards" in Germany are still very high. Nevertheless, the last 10 years spit society, family and friends. Hardly any healthy discussion culture, you're either on the one or the other side, no matter which topic - immigration, taxation, climate effects and wheather change ... you name it. We travel a lot and realized, these topics are discussed in many other countries too, but in Germany it recently came to a point, where government, news and media and even people and parties you trusted your whole life made more and more just short-sighted and dangerous decisions. You can ignore all of those for a long time, sell your TV set, don't read newspapers, stop using Twitter and Facebook. But the moment you witness, that your hard earned and very high taxes are spent on everything but meaningful things, it's hard to stand it no more. We both look for peace of mind and quality of living - which to us especially means escaping crazy black/white discussions, which completely omit all tones of gray. Don't know, whether this makes any sense. But thank you for your thoughts.
But the decision to leave instead of trying to engage and improve things is pretty black and white mentality in itself, isn't it?
You've got a point here. Yes, it's giving up. And to be honest, we both gave up. But since we're responsible for our little one, we still try to make the best of it, hence want to restart somewhere else. But I get your point. It's just that we both spent all of our energy over the last 25 years to improve things in all sorts of different dimensions and simply ran out of "mana".
I am just thinking, because I grew up in Southern Europe, I have the opposite opinion to you regarding this. I think Germany is much more open to "skepticism" than you believe. Where I grew up people differentiating from the mainstream view are labeled as idiots and are in a very tiny minority, whereas in Germany, they go parading in the streets every other month and make up 25% of the population...
Out of experience, it's only about the people you meet, however foreigners will be the ones giving you the less politically correct opinions: they'll just share their opinion. But again, it depends on who you meet and in which context you speak about things.
For me this has unfortunately to do with the fact that there is not a healthy debate about things, there is always this fear of being a Nazi or whatever shit they did in the past, which frankly I don't care about.
The people we look up to because they are typically painted as the agents of social change tend to be the ones who were there at the right moment: they were catalysts rather than major forces and their relatively small contribution caused a much larger force to become unlocked. But for that to happen that force already has to be there, for each and every one of those there are thousands (millions?) who tried the same thing at a different point in time and failed.
Thank you.
Somehow, in the era with universal access to raw data discussions seem to never have been so polarised. But I'm afraid that's the same anywhere :-(
I still there's a few places better than Germany to live, even more if you've started a family.
I wish, I could afford your optimism. :) IMHO Germany is getting deconstructed rapidly, and if one of the leading European countries suffers the breakdown I expect, I see nothing but dark clouds on the European sky. Europe and especially Germany as part of the free, western world need to be leaders trying to solve the ecological and economical challenges ahead of us. But when you want to solve such a huge number of problems, it's not wise to burn down your whole country beforehand.
Also, could you please stop creating accounts for every few comments you post? We ban accounts that do that. This is also in the site guidelines.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
Unfortunately this depiction of Germany triggered me ;)
If you think, that nonsensical conspiracy theories should be regarded as an equal opinion to facts, then you won't be happy in many countries. Well, maybe in Russia.
Assuming you have German genetics, climate and sun living near equator might be very rough on you if you're not used to it. Spain or California might be at far as you want to go.
Quality of life and safety is relatively high. Due to the low population density many issues that other countries have do no escalate in the same way. The country has a high level of development and is peaceful/stable.
The only challenge is getting a residence permit but if you understand the goals of Home affairs, it is possible. Ask if you want to know more.
But no, you are right.
For quality of life, I would like to suggest Italy, but the salary are terrible low and the taxes are high. Moreover, the probable new government, will make immigration way more complex.
Immigration from Germany?
Both Italy and Germany are countries in the EU, hadn't you noticed.
Like - say - let's remain in the EU for the moment, but let's deprive non-italain EU citizens of their fundamental right to establish their residence in Italy (or in any other EU country).
https://ec.europa.eu/info/policies/justice-and-fundamental-r...
> Ridiscussione di tutti i trattati UE a partire dal fiscal compact e dall’euro.
This seems clear to me, it's just a nice way to say: we would like to exit from UE and Euro.
If you really want the italian citizenship, you can ask for it after 4 years of (registered) residency in Italy.
That's not a concern considering OP is European, he can move wherever he wants inside the union.
If the right wing wins the elections they will (probably) tighten rules for poverty immigration from outside Europe.
> the salary are terrible low and the taxes are high.
That's true, but if you can find a well paying remote job and a nice place to live you'll have a good life in Italy. Just don't rely on the state and you'll be fine.
What's happened if an Italexit will happens?
That "crazy old man" (Paolo Savona) is an economist, academic, previously minister for the economy and he is now the CONSOB president, so trust me he is not crazy, he has a better CV than both of us combined, it's just that you disagree and your view of him is overly simplistic. Furthermore I don't see what right the reactionary Mattarella had to veto him, but that's another story.
Nevertheless, even with the best intentions no party/government has the right standing and foreign support to leave Europe succesfully, even the yellow-green government didn't have any actual chance. If we try, the best we can hope for is a scenario a la Tsipras' Greece.
That's why I don't believe there's any chance that Meloni will attempt something like this, and even if she promises Italexit and a majority of Italians votes her for it, the reactionary Mattarella will stop it. No worries, Italy is a democracy only as long as people vote "correctly", and by correctly I mean in a way that doesn't scare the markets.
Seriously, calling "crazy old man" someone who's done more in their life than you will in 5 of your lives is some interesting form of coping.
And if he want to exit from Euro, he and the parties that supporting him, they must say it explicitly in front of the Italians, instead that be foggy about the topic and prepare hidden plans to be implemented overnight.
The problem is that your stances on these impact recommendations. Are you taxed too high and think the social safety net costs too much?
Or do you need the social safety net and are complaining about rich people not paying?
You're well off, you're earning a lot, you're privileged enough to be able to travel often and to a lot of places, some quite far away. You're in position where you can basically freely choose where to live next, by the sound of it.
One of the foundations of Germany is the principle of solidarity and that owning property bears social responsibility. That means that people who earn and possess more than others may and most often do have to contribute more to society than others. Or in simple terms, as you earn and own more, you're benefitting less from "the system". Just want to make it clear that this is by design..
You'll most probably find a place that will make your personal life objectively easier, i.e. taking less money from your paycheck.
I honestly hope you will find a happier life!
Pensioners are taking an ever bigger cut of the cake, both due to their rising numbers, but also relatively speaking. As a relatively young person with a good salary, it becomes ever more attractive to just emigrate, and this will lead to a pretty bad cycle Germany is ill-prepared to deal with.
E.g. [online] shopping and stock availability is so much better in germany, and you only notice what a privilege it is to get everything you need in 1 day once it's taken away from you. Groceries are super cheap in germany compared to canada. Cellphone and ISP service and pricing is often looked down upon in germany, but still also better than lots of other places. [Free] eduction is also good.
Housing in Berlin in 200k should be as comfortable as in Vancouver on 400k and new building construction quality is good. But sure - there will be tons of other places on this planet where housing is cheaper.
Then there's considerations about healthcare (where germany is probably neither at the top end nor the bottom end of the spectrum).
And of course also about long term job perspectives. While you might be able to find a remote job now, it could be much harder to maintain it or look for future opportunities in some locations than in others. Being in a country with a big tech industry or at least in the same timezone will help retaining opportunities.
I mean Vancouver is not exactly a paragon of affordable housing either.
It was just meant to offer my perspective and lessons learned around moving from germany to another location. I am sure for other locations there are again other pro's and con's.
Is that for all your income or "just" over a certain threshold?
>Even if you make some good money, that does not leave you with a lot to live.
You said you travelled to different countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. Do you consider that not leaving you with a lot to live?
>with virtually no deductible costs you pay taxes first, and then have to take care about health care, insurances and pension afterwards
Those are all, up to a certain degree, deductible from your taxes, right?
Regarding income tax, there is a tax free allowance of 9.984.
>You said you travelled to different countries in Europe, Africa and Asia. Do you consider that not leaving you with a lot to live?
We travel for more than 15 years and we mostly leverage so called PEP offers, which reduce your travel cost to a fraction of the real cost. Otherwise we'd not be able to afford that.
>Those are all, up to a certain degree, deductible from your taxes, right?
That's the point. They are NOT! The only deductible position would be an official pension insurance. If you invest on your own (which we do) you can not deduct a dime. Everything else we have to pay AFTER taxation.
>That's the point. They are NOT!
Your private pension might not be - but with Health Care, business expenses and certain type of insurances there's more than "virtually no deductible costs" though.
There's a lot of stuff that seems unfair, I agree. I'm not here to debate that you pay more into the system as others and don't get more benefits from it - but the picture you're painting of a 70 % overall tax rate and "not a lot to live on" strikes me as a bit too grim.
To compare cost of living: https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/comparison.jsp
Safety comparison: https://www.numbeo.com/crime/rankings_by_country.jsp?title=2...
You should calculate the end % of tax. The 45% is the marginal rate. Also the solidarity tax has a ceiling
(And not everything is charged the full VAT rate)
And in the end, that number doesn't mean much? Switzerland for example had much lower tax, but your cost of life shot up. Some other places your income tax might be lower but sales taxes are higher.
It's all relative
Edit, as an example for 200kEUR in Berlin your tax will be ~ 43% (Cat I) - for 1MEUR/yr you're paying 46%
(this is not so much about Berlin or Germany - the math is the same everywhere - it's about people thinking that the rate means they pay that % of their salary)
UK has not low taxes by any measure, but certainly lower than eg Germany, at 200k you're looking at effective tax rate of about 35-40% all in. But state schools are a lottery and shut down for 13 weeks a year. Healthcare is good if you can get seen but otherwise it's the private health insurance. Public transport is expensive. Social security in this segment of earnings is non-existent, you would be ineligible for many things (because "earn too much"), unemployment benefits only available if you have 0 savings left and so on.
I'm not sure I'd recommend the UK though it's less bad an option than it seems, it's just a demo.
Really the only way in UK is to put in a large part of your earnings into pension contributions which effectively makes it out of bounds till 55 or 57 from 2028 onwards, which means even if you have FU money you can't use it. Again if you have large RSU payouts due to working at a FAANG, it can be difficult as you start hitting lifetime allowance of your pension contributions.
[1] https://www.nutmeg.com/nuggets/escape-the-60-tax-trap
edit: specifying that the above comment is for UK
It is not a good idea to get your tax information from an investment corporation advertisement.
The article you link is about marginal rates, and these are indeed all over the place, buy that's a different story.
Tax calculator: https://www.tax.service.gov.uk/estimate-paye-take-home-pay/y...
Spain Balearics or Canary Islands.
I used to live in Southeast Asia and learned you can never truly feel at home due to visa rules and the homogeneous culture.
I loved my time there and encourage others to go, but I'd caution if you're trying to throw down roots.
This is more likely to be due to the tight situation on the housing market with several monopolists than to excessively high taxes.
:) get your point and love it. As someone born and raised in Berlin the decision is everything but easy. Love-hate-relationship I'd say. But if we leave, we also want to escape the current, very heated "social mood", which makes Germany not an option. But SAP is actually quite a good hint. Thanks!
Are you considering the US? There's a few states that would meet your criteria of weather. You'd really want to talk to some people privately regarding what you want and politics - California and Florida could not be further apart WRT the people, beliefs, and governments.
Whatever you will end up finding: it will make you a more balanced person and better able to appreciate the good and the bad of where ever you are in a much more objective way than before.
That seems to be a fact. Nevertheless really interesting to hear other peoples thoughts. Thanks for yours.
I've personally wondered about Melbourne or somewhere for myself at times...
I am not saying "move to north Sweden". Just that amount of daylight is not everything.
in the US real estate on the east and west coast is insanely expensive and 1.5MM plus for a very basic house. nothing fancy and lower quality than in europe.
so the cheaper real estate is in the midwest where there is little infrastructure and very little access to the cultural systems like exist in europe.
i am on the west coast and love it here. but it has been extremely stressful and i will probably not be able to afford a house until i win the lottery or the startup game or maybe a very high up FAANG position. europe is just a different pace and stress level.
i will add to this that professional discrimination of women in europe is much less than in the US IMHO. important if your wife is working.
But things might finally turn around a bit with the interest rate hike and looming recession, if you have some capital you might be able to grab some good real estate soon, at least if you don't have to be square in the center of Berlin (which will definitely stay expensive).
I don't think many people will sell when their real estate agent tells them that they're house is now worth 200k less than last year (or the neighbor's house that just sold), they'll just keep paying the mortgage and wait for the market to improve.
People are friendly though and nature is beautiful. And some of the food is amazing.
- Getting things done in Germany is equally problematic. Bureaucracy exists there as well. - There is large part of the public sector that works better than anyone gives them credit for. Same with public schools and healthcare. Greece produces twice the number of scientists compared to the average on OECD countries, you can't do that without an at least "good" education system.
Unfortunately corruption is rampant and the current gov only made things worst on this front.
French Polynesia (English probs though)
Dominican Republic is easiest for Visa
British dependencies/territories in the Caribbean?
You could get an answer by doing some basic research...
I'd go with Australia or New Zealand that I think gets you the best of both worlds.