Those considering Sweden: What's your biggest concern about relocating here? I'm happy to share more details about my experience! For those already working in Sweden - what other challenges or benefits would you add to this list? Let's help each other make informed decisions (:
how do you apply for a job when you need a work permit ? Also how does it work for people with health concerns, would it be easy for them to get the medical attention when needed. since i heard so many horror stories for getting medical help.
You missed a rather large part of the housing market aspect. Property taxes are capped at approximately $880 usd per year whereas in the U.S. property taxes for a modest home is around $6,000 usd/yr or higher. This allows for a rather significant reduction in monthly obligations for your PITI payment. An example would be that a $400k property in the states may cost $3500/mo, a $900k property in Sweden would come out to roughly the same
@@heartly4u Pretend to be an illegal immigrant without any ID, and you'll get immediate help for free. This includes dental, which it is not included in the 'free healthcare' package for citizens.
FYI VAT 12% is for food (groceries, take-aways, dining-in, hotels). VAT 6% is for travel, books, newspapers, concerts, cultural stuff etc. VAT 25% is for everything else.
@@LisaSamaritan There are not value-added taxes but excise duties. It is common to have excise duties on alcohol and tobacco because they have well-known negative effects to health. It is also a popular method to get more money for the state unless people decide to be sober like me.
@VanessaWingårdh The reasoning behind the high tax, on the things that I mentioned is that you are more likely to get health problems by consuming alcohol and tobacco. So the added tax is for the health services that you are more likely to need later in life. I guess it is a little bit like paying for an insurance. You might never need it, but there are those that will. When it comes to gasoline. Sweden have a nice nature and using products that contains unhealthy chemicals is more likely to affect plants and animals, so the tax is to encourage to use it as little as possible and if you still need to, then that money goes to prevent and clean up the effects of the use. That is also one of the added costs to the more expensive laptop, that you showed. It contains chemicals in the battery and other parts and there is an extra tax on that. And there is also a "piracy" tax on storage mediums. Because you could use it to store pirated software, music, movies etc (some people doing bad things affects everybody...).
The critique was fair and i don't disagree with anything, but I would draw a distinction between "Sweden" and "Stockholm". Housing is indeed crazy in Stockholm, but that does not apply to the same extent to other cities. I will admit though that the more you move away from Stockholm, the less opportunities might be there for you!. Other than that, great video and these were pretty much my thoughts as well when I moved to Sweden 16 years ago!
I love how American it is to feel that the right to vacation and time off is a "challenge". Slow your life down a bit. Stop living to work, and start work to support your life instead.
but what about the rest of the time in your life? Vacation is only 1 month at most of your 12 month. The other 11 month living in an small apartment, poor, not being able to buy a house. Europeans think quality of life is one month of vacation. That is the only think you take in account. Of course public health too. If you are a high earning individual you can afford private health. Quality of live is being able to buy a house and being able to flush the toilet at 1am because you don't live sharing each wall with other person too.
@@leandrotocalini there's so much more to mention here. Free dental care for ALL children until the age of 21. Combined maternity/paternity leave of 480 (!!!) days. Daycare that costs around SEK 1200 per month (every parent gets SEK 625 per month and child from the state) and so on. Private health is not such a big thing here (getting bigger though). Trust me, you won't be poor living as a software engineer in Stockholm. Flushing the toilet at 1 am????? What are you on about, you can flush the toilet whenever you want 🤣
I was in USA a couple of years ago and was really chocked by the prices - it was extremely expensive. We were in San Fransisco and LA, so I guess it was more expensive than in some other places, just as Stockholm is much more expensive than the rest of Sweden. As for housing it really depends on where you want to live. If you want to live in center Stockholm in a new apartment it is fantasy prices and only the rich lives there. You need to compare with the same type of places in US. When we were in San Fransisco I took a walk in the evening. I was crying when I came back to the hotel room - it was horrible out there. Homeless people with real mental health or health issues, drugs - it was so much of this, like being in a dystopia. Just horrible and I felt so sorry for the whole population of the US. Also, we were informed by a person who had lived in Sweden that the taxes were about the same, but taken out in different ways. In total it added up, at least for him, to about the same. But while the US taxes goes to military costs we use ours (or used, it is changing rapidly) so that everybody will have access to healthcare (and not die because they cannot afford it, as people do in USA), daycare, maternal/paternal leave, pension (although low for many people), help when ill (although the government now want to dismantle most of these things so that we will be similar to the USA). It also used to go to the infrastructure - I have never seen worse roads than even the big roads in LA, full of potholes and rifts and bad asphalt - and I live in the countryside. Our system is far from perfect and it is crumbling under the rasist rightwing regime and I do guess that the US system is far better if you have a lot of money and are very egoistic so that you think that as long as you yourself are fine, not ill, not having kids and so on it is great as you have a bit more in your wallet for luxury consumpition, I do prefer our system where everyone has the right to healthcare, housing and food (no matter what my income is - I’ve had both high and low but never faltered on this). As for the weather - we tank up during summer, and no, not everyone has to have D-vitamin supplements (if you do but not need it it can even be dangerous), there are foods that most people eat that has D-vitamine added to it so that most people should have enough. The darkness can be tough during winter (on the other hand you have the sun up for about 20 hours in the summer…) but there are ways to deal with it. You should discuss this with your swedish friends.
I agree with everything you say, and will add that the extreme right wing in the US is gaining more traction each year and with only two parties even the democratic party is heading further and further right each year. Also California is far more expensive within the US, but even other large metro areas in the US are similar to what you've seen, just more spread out to where you might not notice the homeless people, drug use, or crime (statistically crime is decreasing in the US, but Sweden and other western European countries, even in their largest cities, have a fraction of the crime in US cities.)
@@vtxgenie1 No, the Dem party is most definitely not moving right. What is happening is that there are two extremes on the fringes gaining power and the middle is being ignored.
In Sweden schools, daycare, elder care, healthcare and so on are paid by taxes. While in the US its paid cash or with insurance. On average and in total it's more beneficial any you pay less in Sweden. But If you for example did not go to a Swedish school and never will use daycare and so on it would be more beneficial to live in the US. And for rent, the prices are higher in the bigger cities just like in the US. And the farther away you get the cheaper it gets.
For a low salaried factory worker, Sweden is better. For software engineers, US is much better. Without kids? US is vastly superior. I mean... you could _EASILY_ work for just 10 years in US and it would be equivalent to working for 40 years in Sweden. Its absolutely ridiculous.
@frstchan this is ONLY true if you don't pay into any services though. Yes my tax rate is only ~28% in the US, but even adding a minimal amount to retirement and a basic health and dental plan brings that rate to ~39%, already above what I would pay working the same job in the Swedish system, but I would already get more return in healthcare even as a healthy athletic person, I would earn the ability to retire beyond what I can in the US, and I would receive long term care far better than what I would be able to afford in the US. I'm not sure why you're all over these videos, but yes, technically if you deny all benefits, live as cheap as possible, and save and invest, with no family or kids, basically giving up life for work and a little more money (or potentially a lot if you're willing to take advantage of people due to the lack of regulations in the US) you can come out ahead until you can't work excessively. Once you pass that point, you're better off in any of the countries with a higher quality of life.
Forgot to tell you what you get for the high taxes in Sweden. In Sweden, it is free for a pregnant woman to visit the maternity center and see a midwife, they do this every month throughout the pregnancy. Giving birth to a child in the hospital is free and it costs nothing to stay in after giving birth. Then after returning home, you should then visit the children's clinic every month to follow up on the child's development and this is free. Ask any American woman. What it costs in the USA to visit the midwife, what it costs to give birth to a child in the USA and ask what it has cost in the USA to expect a child, give birth and return visits. So all of this is free thanks to the higher taxes we pay. Then the fact that things are more expensive in Sweden is because money goes to what I have said before, and because money goes to road maintenance.
But from the perspective of someone who does not have kids and never will, this is just pure theft from my lifetime earnings. Why should I have to pay for other people's personal choices to have kids? Imagine if people suddenly had to start paying taxes because someone went on vacation, or bought a new car, or whatever? Absolutely ridiculous.
@@frstchan I get what you're saying. But they're also paying for things that you use and they might not. I'm more than happy to pay taxes when they are going to useful things such as healthcare, infrastructure like roads, pensions, school, daycare and so on. Your hypothetical scenario makes little to no sense and wouldn't be accepted anywhere.
@@frstchan Talk about being an idiot and not a Swede but an egotistical fanboy. Just so you know, we Swedes are happy and proud to pay taxes. I hate idiots like you.
@@qweek Yes. I draw the line at personal choices. Things you choose yourself. We should all pay for roads, military, healthcare, etc. But NOT when my neighbor decides to get pregnant.
Good summary! Born here but the weather description makes me want to move😊 I believe the slow moving thing is worse in the big companies, like Scania. Smaller companies can be quite fast to decisions.
Yes, I also imagine this beeing a bigger problem in tech-companies with many foregin employes and influences. Part of why the flat organization work is we normally dont include unessecary people in it. It is faster to reach a consesus among fewer people whoms opinion actually matter.
It depends on different company cultures and cannot be generalized. After all, Sweden has many global companies and that is one reason why they look for labor in other countries. You don't achieve that by just sitting in meetings all the time.
Capital gains tax is not 30% using an ISK och KF account. It's 0%. You do, however, pay a total capital tax based on interest rates. This is usually very low and until recent rate hikes, it was below 1%. There's also no wealth tax. Sweden is and has been a very good place for managing capital.
You are complaining hosing is expensive in the most expensive region of Swedn. That is like saying cost of living is high in America due to housing costs in San Fransisco.
Yeah, housing is not expensive, if you are willing to move on the country side. But the problem is there are no jobs there anymore. So that is only for you if you like working remote.
Realistically, nobody would move from the US to Östersund to go into Software engineering. She's talking about software engineering context, and they will move to Stockholm almost exclusively.
Also she checked central Stockholm and not even the mid areas or suburbs. From the Suburbs to the center is like a 20-40min commute depending on if you go by car or public transport
If you think the cold is a problem, you have to remember that it is at its worst in Stockholm. There is moisture present all the time from the sea and the air never gets dry like it does in the north of the country. Go there on holiday and be surprised that -10 C can feel ok!
I guess something to note like someone else mentioned before is that the rent in Stockholm is a lot higher than the rest of Sweden, you could get an equally sized apartment for half or even a third of the rent in cities like Gothenburg or Malmö. Buying costs pretty much the same though, with some exceptions. As for needing to know Swedish I guess it does depend on what kind of work you are going for, I was a bit surprised to hear that since as someone working with manual labouring I've personally worked with and met a couple of people in the service industry that didn't speak a word of it. Have heard that is sometimes been quite difficult to learn Swedish since most people here speak fairly good English. It's quite interesting to see how thing are from an "outside" perspective. As someone who've only lived here I might not have put much thought about things like this since that is just how it more or less always been. 🤔
as a developer myself - sure the flat structure and consensus can have a negative effect to come to a conclusion - that's not one person doing it, but my experience is the opposite in most cases the decision is transferred so that its taken on ground level and the top level management trust the decision process done on a lower level. Meetings are more informative, and doesn't involve decision making at all. And that has been my experience, even in Stockholm at a bigger medtech company. Sure, maybe on a proper management level, it could be meetings, prestudies and follow up's in several meetings and in that case I kind of agree - to do a proper judgment with all possible data available takes time. Like what to do for the next year for the department of 50 developers - that almost never up to one person in Sweden. Good or bad? Good as far as I know reckon
Young people don't need healthcare and they are taxed the most. This is a tax on young generation to pay the bills of the older generation. Pyramid scheme.
This is true, but you would lose your mind if you knew what other things taxes are going to. For example, 56 billion is used in aid to other countries, most of which goes to corrupt nations. Just look at Afghanistan, where the leaders were found in golden palaces. While we have the worst healthcare we had in a long time in this country
And colleges, universities, free paytime when you have a child,... The thing is that in Europe we pay more taxes than in the US, but i think that we pay like a x2 (or even a x3) in taxes compared to the US, but we have a x10 on services compared to the US.
Yes, it is not a pure apples to apples comparison. It would be a better comparison if the cost of health insurance was deducted from the estimated swedish taxes since that is a clear expense an American working in sweden would not have.
You can not only look at income and taxes Vanessa. Healthcare, insurance, childcare, free education, good public transportation systems are some of the things you pay with your taxes in Sweden. Property tax in the US can be pretty brutal (compared to the property fee we have in Sweden). And you are looking at apartments in the center of our capital! The same rents in Washington, DC and quite a bit higher in many other major cities in the US. There are tons of comparisons of salaries, taxes, expenditures between Sweden and the US, they show that they are very much the same. Except in Sweden you can't be medically bankrupt! The weather I can agree a bit. The winters can be really bad but we don't have the extremely hot weather that you get in the US nor the hurricanes or tornadoes. You are comparing apples and pears.
Taxes in Sweden are especially disadvantageous to the middle class since we tax income more than anything else, wealthier people don’t earn their wealth through income
@@eahere I am (was, retired now) a middle class person, married and six children. We live in the countryside, a lot cheaper than Stockholm but also with one of the highest local taxes in Sweden. I have paid a lot of tax but we have also had a great life and good economy. All my kids have a university degree (1 PHD, 3 masters and 2 with bachelor degrees) without any student loans. I agree that tax on equity (stock shares mostly) is too low, but it keeps a lot of investments within the country.
No, she's not comparing apples to pears. She's making fair comparisons and the truth is that moving from the US to Sweden will not work out for most Americans for a variety of reasons. I know because I was one of them and I happily returned to the US 4 months ago. I know people who will stay in Sweden but that's because they found themselves with unique privileges like marrying a Swede who already had a good financial situation. In the the US you can actually get rich from working a standard job. You can't in Sweden.
@@NOCDIBdefinitely incredibly false to say you can get rich working a regular job in the US, but beyond that, you'll be trading more and more of the time to live life if you try to do that. A more balanced system is a better system, and to compare the two financially, you need to calculate everything you get for taxes in Sweden to the costs of the same services in the US, things that are often more or far more expensive in the US.
59th parallel north (Stockholm) passes through Canada. 90% of population of Canada lives below that line. Alaska is on the same parallel and almost nobody lives there (as a percentage of the US population). It also goes through the southern part of Greenland. Let that sink in...
Draw a line just north of Uppsala in Sweden, and 80% lives south of that. Stockholm is pretty far north compared to where people generally live in Sweden.
As @elritsa mentioned, because of the proximity of the Gulf stream, the climate is significantly milder in Scandinavia than in other locations on the same latitudes. All the issues mentioned in the video are true, but it's much better here than in Siberia or Alaska.
It is good to see more videos on moving to Sweden. I live here and I am from the USA. I would say if you live and work in Stockholm you do not need to learn Swedish, It is nice to have but most companies use English as there work language since most companies have an international foot print. I am not in the IT sector and I work in the Manufacturing sector and I speak English, even though I can speak Swedish but there is no need to. Welcome to Stockholm!
I am a software engineer in Stockholm, also being a Stockholmer (born and raised). I always felt like I was getting paid unfairly so I worked hard to get a good skillset and CV and started freelancing. Before that, I didn't feel like becoming a software engineer had been worth it.
@ yes. But at least now I'm not getting lower pay because I'm younger, even though I've been doing way more than my team members in every project I've been in.
As another software engineer living in Sweden for 4 years, having moved with my wife. I couldn't agree more with all your statements. Excellent summary. Thanks for sharing
When comparing price for a Mac you forgot to include sales tax on US price. In Sweden that is included in the displayed price, but in US it is only added when checking out. Where I live in WA with sales tax the price is $3530 after tax.
You forgot to inform that houses/apartments in the USA have building codes that we in Sweden had 50 years ago. Most American plywood houses lack ventilation in the house/walls/roof/foundation, lack functioning external drainage, electricity is drawn without pipes in the walls, almost always lack a moisture barrier in the house, if you have a kitchen fan it is unique, bad windows/doors, bad water connection inside the walls. yes the list can be made as long as you want.
If you’re gonna compare actual living standards then you have to factor in that basically all houses in the US have an AC which is basically unheard of in Sweden. This to me is a much bigger deal than anything else
@@eahere It depends on where your house is located. In sweden no sane person would want to cool their hose, it is already plenty cold outside of it. But resently many have been installing air to air heat pumps to heat their homes in Sweden, and those can normally be run in revers if you absolutly needed to cool your home in the single day of summer.
@@eahere Aircon have nothing to do with lack of ventilation in the U.S. Why shall we have Aircon, you just told us that in Sweden its cold 9 Month a Year. What i talking about is the bad Plywood houses they use in the U.S.
"lack functioning external drainage, electricity is drawn without pipes in the walls, almost always lack a moisture barrier in the house, if you have a kitchen fan it is unique" Straight up lies. Moisture barriers are common in US houses to prevent rot in the studs and basements, especially where the wood has to be pressure treated. Electricity is ran in conduit piping within the walls when necessary, otherwise NM90 is used. Kitchen fans are standard especially above the stove where the fan is built into the hood of the stove. Houses do have ventilation in the form of duct work for the furnace or heat-pump or AC. Not all heaters/AC is baseboard heating/AC. A lot is duct-type with forced-air. You don't know what you're talking about, or you're blatantly lying :S
I am attempting to go to University in Sweden for Software Technology. This is a great way to move to Sweden as well because after you graduate with a Bachelors, you can stay in Sweden for up to one year and find work, allowing you to stay longer.
Make sure you network heavily in school, within activity orgs, at social clubs, within internships. Because as a non Nordic person that entire year can go by quickly as there are peak hiring seasons, Autumn and Spring. In between no one is doing interviews or hiring. That 12 months, in reality is 5-6 months.
20k a month in rent is just no, i live at 78 m2 and my rent did go up thanks to new year so i pay 7200 with 2 bedrooms, and i live around 30 minutes outside Stockholm with the subway, for a 100k living in the rural north you could get a very nice house at 200 m2, and i mean even with a bit of a commute for you, you said if i recall you can work from home 4 days a week. As for the weather, do not forget that during summer the sun is up from 03:00 to like 22:00. And to be fair i think learning a new language and getting into a new country finding a job and such is hard no matter where you go.
And about the slow moving at work. I am a mechanial engineer, in my experience the flat organization is fast at companies that adapt it. Part of the flat organization is the team that need to reach consesus is kept small. If I need a design desition I just ask a maintanance guy what he thinks about my design desition, I may consult our subcontractor who is doing the metal work, and if it doesnt make adverse implication to preformance, maintainence or manufacturing I can go along with the design change. So if the place you work at is moving slow it is due to mismanagment involving too many people to have imput in matters where their input doesnt matter.
As another software engineer in Stockholm, while I agree with most of your points, I couldn't quite relate to the point about slow-moving decision-making due to the flat hierarchy, at least in my own experience. It's something I've never suffered from at my own employer, I feel like most of my coworkers have a vested interest in making good decisions quickly and don't unnecessarily drag things out or book more meetings than necessary. Either I'm unusually lucky, or perhaps it just varies between different companies.
As you've "probably" noticed, food prices have risen significantly in recent years. Before that, food prices were pretty reasonable. Another thing you could have mentioned is how expensive it has become to go to the vet. Several hundred percent more expensive compared to 5-10 years ago. The veterinary chains A. and E. (A. is owned by Mars, and E. by EQT, Nestlé and Silver Lake) are monopolizing the swedish veterinary market. Are your cats 😺 insured?
2:19 "shows tax per month for 100KSEK or 100tkr per month" That changes quite a bit if you add the "employers fee", which is normally around 30% of said salary that your employer pays. If you add that to the whole sum, you can quite easily get to a point where half your income gets turned into taxes.
I am Swedish's from birth and almost 40 years in the teck industry. There is three boxes to check to make a move to sweden worth it. 1:That living whit you're family in nature is the number one priority in you're life. 2:That you have a job that allows you to work from anyware. 3:That nowone in you're family feels that city life is the only way to live. Why to i state this , living in a Swedish city is as expensive as in the rest of the industrialiced world but there are other places where you while have better disposable income. The place where you can really have a better quality of life is in rural sweden, but then my there bullet points apply, and if they do not apply to you perhaps lock else ware. Yes i like sweden and i am still living here, yes i have had a few opportunity's to move to other parts of the industrialiced world. But if you are moving to a new place it it better be for the right reasons.
0:36 The capital gains tax can be avoided by using an ISK account (Investment savings account). You can buy, sell, exchange and withdraw money from that account completely tax-free. What you do pay is an annual tax of 1.086% on your total savings on the account, whether your portfolio made a profit or not. Any figures needed for tax purposes are automatically added to your tax declaration by your bank.
ISK is a small subset of the scope of capital gains tax. For instance, it does not cover crypto nor any kind of RSU of stocks from the employer. RSUs are actually taxed as salary. Which will come as a chock to americans...
This video summarizes it nicely. The truth about moving to Sweden as a software engineer (and I am one with over 15 years of experience) is do not do it if you want to earn a lot of money. You can have a decent living but you will not get rich here or have a large savings account. OK, taxes are high. Everybody agrees to that. The question is what do you get for it? As an expat ... not much. 1. You have probably done with your formal education, so you will not be using that. If you have a child then yes, everything is free (kindergarten, school) but the quality varies a lot depending where you live. In some areas there is also a security concerns. Extracurricular activities are very expensive. However, I would say that education your child will get is probably above average for EU standards. 2. Elderly care is also free but quality depends even more than that of schools. However, it is very unlikely that you will be here long enough to use it. So, for most expats, it is only a minor benefit. 3. Healthcare. It is free (participation is really small and caped). However, it is very different than what foreigners expect, especially primary care. I have heard and experienced very good secondary care (specialist) if you live long enough to get to it. Basically, primary health care is designed to turn as many people as possible away for long enough to, hopefully, the issue resolves itself (or they give up on seeking medical care). The earliest appointment I got at my vårdcentral was 3 weeks from day of calling (4-6 weeks is normal) and that is not even the biggest problem. The care you get is substandard and they are very reluctant to give you medication, even though that medication is over the counter in other EU countries. However, it is on average very unlikely that you will use much of healthcare (more than GP) in your work life while you are relatively young and relatively healthy. 4. Wonderfully integrated and functioning state where all institutions are functioning perfectly. I have heard horror stories, but my experience was nothing but the most pleasant. Maybe I am just a simple case. To conclude, let me just provide a perspective to Swedes that take this all as criticism. Firstly, it is not. This is your country and your system and we knew (or should have known) it when we came. However, the system is not fair to us. Your country did not spend a dime on our education and upbringing, so there is no "past debt" to be repaid. Also, this is not our country so it is not it is not fair to expect from us to invest in it. Your government can decide tomorrow (as some politicians imply) to revoke our work visas and expel us and we will have nothing to show for it.
If we move to the US we get even less for our taxes. Sure it can seem unfair to pay taxes in a new country after you're done with education, but you have to do that in every country. Not just Sweden. And taxes doesn't just pay for education even if it is a big taxfunded institution. If by invest in the country you mean pay taxes, then of course we expect anyone who lives here to pay taxes. I bet foreigners have to pay taxes in the US when they move there and work there.
@ several countries like Italy, Portugal, Estonia etc. Have visas now where they don’t tax foreign earned income or give favorable terms for entrepreneurs, or freelance workers. Sweden should have something similar. If you move to Sweden with valuable skills, you bring value to the country which the country essentially got for free. These people should be taxed way lower
While I understand your comment is directed for those with very short visits rather than those interested in living in the EU, there are a few points: Elder care does matter if you want to become a citizen, as good care is becoming unobtainable for most in the US. The second point, very close to the first, is that in the US, if someone pays for healthcare, they will likely still have to wait an extended amount of time to receive that care, and there's no guarantee it will be paid for by insurance, even when paying 2-3x what Sweden and other countries pay. You may feel that people are being turned away more, but in the US most people don't receive good primary care at all, and the Swedish system (and most of the EU) is much more focused on preventative care, and not using resources on services that won't help the patient.
I mean, when you look at the houses/apartments, using stockholm as an example is like using New York as an example. Where I live in the south of sweden I pay 1/4 of what you pay for your place. If even that. I pay 400Euro a month for a 2 bedroom apartment. If it is as you said that you only need to go to the office once a week, just move out of stockholm and commute to the office once a week. That way you'll save a lot of your salary. There is literally no need to live in stockholm.
I think the point is that Swedish salaries are very low compared to US salaries. Would be easier to afford a $3000 rent with a $20,000+ salary which is not uncommon for software engineers in the US vs. In Sweden where the same person would earn $5-7k per month
About housing. Yes big cites like Stockholm is very expensive. However big cities in Sweden are very small compared to the USA so many people work in Stockholm but live outside for better prices (and to even find living) with the cost of travel time that can be 1-2 hours.
As a Swede, I can vouch for that. But don't being up Stockholm prices. There is so much opportunity in the regional towns and cities. But language is a must... Can't argue with that. But if you're able to learn a new language and have $50K to buy a place? You'll live well. Very well. Edit: For those with kids, everything is paid for. And kindergarden is very cheap. Uni is almost free. Free meals at school. Pretty much free health care for everything. cheap and GOOD public transportation (it actually works and connects to hubs and stuff). The main thing I miss about Sweden. Not having to buy a big box of school stuff every term. And free and GOOD school lunches. Looking at you, Australia. The schools end up donating much of it anyway, because it is ease to donate other people's stuff. Morons.
Lets ask chat gpt: New York: Higher salaries ($130,000-$170,000/year), but you’ll pay 30-34% in taxes depending on your income bracket, reducing your net income to approximately $7,000-$9,000/month. Retirement savings are largely your responsibility, with some employers offering 401(k) plans with limited matching (e.g., 3-6%). High living costs for housing ($2,500-$4,500/month) and healthcare ($500-$1,000/month) further limit disposable income, making saving more difficult. Sweden: Lower salaries (~$60,000/year or 50,000-60,000 SEK/month), but higher taxes at 30-35% reduce your net income to $3,200-$4,000/month. However, these taxes fund a robust public pension system, free healthcare, and other benefits. Housing costs are significantly lower ($1,000-$1,500/month), leaving more disposable income for savings or leisure despite lower gross earnings.
Even this is far off though, as making around $80k in the US means I pay 28% or so in taxes on average, and up to 33% on overtime, time off, and bonus pay. Just for comparison I would likely make within the range stated if I moved to NYC (less outside of NYC but within NY state though) which is what I'm guessing the AI is assuming is meant by NY.
A crucial note about the apartments shown in the video: These are all second-hand rental contracts, which means tenants can be asked to leave with just one month's notice. Most of these contracts have a maximum duration of 2 years. First-hand contracts offer much better value, with rents typically 25-50% lower, but the waiting time for these contracts in Stockholm ranges from 10 to 25 years - this is not an exaggeration. It's worth noting that most residential properties in the Stockholm area are cooperative apartments (bostadsrätter), which have restrictions on long-term rental and investment opportunities. Another correction: work records are not public. Your total paid tax is public, but not who paid you salary or what you paid tax for, except for being grouped in two buckets: income/capital gains. Your phone number is not public either, that's something you can choose to not have shown (usually default). Regarding your adress being public: there are ways to completely hide that. Tip for Swedes: check the Flashback forum. Basically, send in an applcation for protected identity and repeat. During the processing of your application you are hidden. You can apply unlimited times ;-)
@@iukys3889 as a Belgian, you will need to register with the tax authority and get a Personal ID number ("personnummer"). You do no have to deal with the immigration authorities
I’m director of engineering for a U.S. company, but living in Sweden. Yes, taxes are high. There are ways to mitigate how much you pay into it given your financial setup. Also if you don’t have children or at least own a home the math for which country leaves you with the most disposable income will be the U.S.
@ 10:00 paid vacations depends on age and sector. I have 31 paid vacation days/year. If work as a teacher/pre school teacher I think you will have even more. Also your absolutely can decline you vacation application (meaning you can't have vacation whenever you want), but you are entitled to 4 consecutive weeks of during summer period June-August.
Tech has typically less than Government worker which on average has the most. All state workers over a certain age (40 yrs I think) have 35 days by law. Everyone else has 25 but tech has sometimes additional days and in Stockholm 30 days is common.
Taxes for owing a house is quite low in Sweden. Max 1200 dollars a year. That includes all houses from 500 000 $ and up. Will never understand that logic.
I'm quite puzzled about the comment of bad english knowledge. My guess is that it comes from meeting naturalized immigrants. Other countries schools doesn't teach english for as long as Swedish schools.
Yes the latitud of Stockholm is like middle of Canada, south Alaska! However its warmer becuse of the Gulf stream! And Stockholm is our capital city, there many big companies is located, its more expensive closer to those big companies, that pay proportionaly higher wages! Another thing that rise prices for rent and buying is good infrastructure, schools, public transportation, bicycle lanes, pedestrian lanes, clean streets and parks! If one dont need/like that, there is cheaper areas!
I am from New York City and moved to Ostermalm, Stockholm last April. As the OP has accurately mentioned, it's difficult to live well here on a junior salary. Now I work remotely as a Compliance Officer for a Hedge Fund on a NYC salary in USD so I live rather well compared to my senior Swedish friends in the same field. This relatively becomes apparent when discussing rent. I live in the centre of Stockholm in a well to neignbourhood paying rent (got my apartment from Qasa) at 1800 USD a month for a 67sqm sized place. No way could I get that in the centre of Manhattan. So yes, do your due diligence before you move here. It's a great country to bring up families and the educational level is excellent. Norway is higher in salaries but taxes are higher there too. It's relative.
The tax in Sweden isn't a negative thing! The tax makes it possible with free school (collage and everything), free medical, free kindergarten, free payed parenthood for both mother and father after getting a child, etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. One of the big negative things about America is that you have to pay for all these things and more yourself!
I gladly pay for daycare the few years i have kids at daycare instead of how we do it in swden, crazy taxes for your entire work life. Swedens system only make sense if you are low income or ultra rich if you are between (Like a senior developer with 80k salary or more) then you are taxed to death. Likely for me i run my own company and can minimize salary and maximize income through capital gains.
@@andersmalmgren6528 Traditional "Fuck you I got mine"-mentality. Saying the system doesn't make sense because you disagree with the notion that everyone should have access to decent public service. This only increases inequality in society, but I guess you don't care about that.
What do you mean free? Its paid with taxes. Its not free. The issue I have with this is that you don't have any personal choice. YOU have to pay for everyone else's choices, like having kids, pay for them, for their education and the parents parenthood, etc. As if I have anything to do with it? Should you start paying for your neighbors vehicle tax just because he bought a car? Ofc not, that would be crazy. But what's the difference? As I grow older, I get more and more annoyed at this semi-communistic tax system.
@@frstchan Du betalar ju för landets bästa. Det gynnar Sverige att våra barn utbildar sig och lever ett bra liv. Dagen någon i din närhet blir sjuk så är du glad att vi har sjukvården vi har i Sverige. Hela din utbildning är betald, all din mat i skolan. Man kan gnälla på en massa skit våra skattepengar går till, men skola, sjukvård och liknande är fanimig hål i huvudet att klaga på. Mvh höginkomsttagande moderat.
Swedish healthcare is pretty much a joke when it comes to availability. Sure, there is good care, but it's very hard to get access to it. We have on multiple occasions in the past had the fewest hospital beds per capita in Europe. I don't know what the situation is right now, but i don't think it has gotten better.
Nope. Taxes for stocks are typically regulated via ISK-account tax, which are WAY below 30%. For 2024, the ISK-stock tax was 3,62%. Please don't mislead people.
Yes because you invest post-tax money into an ISK. How nice to “only” tax your already taxed money at 3.62%? You also don’t get to deduct any losses from your taxes in an ISK. Isn’t it so great that if you get stocks or RSU’s as part of your salary they tax you on it as if it’s income even though it’s value on paper only? Sweden has lost its mind.
@@Hippidihop1212 Not true. Many, me included, invest inherentance and gifts too. Tax free. 100%. I just feel this crying over taxes in Scandinavia, always voted top 5 nations to live in on the planet, is kinda pathetic tbh. If one is unhappy here, feel free to fuck off.
The original taxing of stocks is 30% of profit. But since years ago there is the alternative of ISK (K stands for account, stop with the CD skiva redundancy) which is a lot cheaper in tax. But still we get taxed for already taxed money. To be fair this can be compared to VAT that also taxes already taxed money and that is something many countries have.
Yes, sunshine is so important. Wonder if people have UV lights at home to counter this problem. I would make my apartment into a jungle with dwarf fruiting plants
I don't work in the tech industry. I've spoken English with my coworkers every day for 7 years now. None of them are native English speakers. They speak Russian, Spanish, Lithuanian, German, but English is our common language. Even a Canadian worked with me for a few years, he neither wanted nor needed to learn Swedish.
As an american SWE, how do you find this jantelagen mindset? Don't you think it slows down development and on a large scale in the long-term perspective will throw the country to the bottom of all ratings?
I understand what you mean by bad weather. :) But january is generally much sunnier than december. December usually is cloudy which makes it dark even when the sun is up.
Yep, spot on. The living cost here is massive. It has gotten way out of hand. Rents, electricity, food, houses and taxes which are about 70% effectively. It's hard to understand how people cope with this. I am fed up for sure. /Someone born and raised in this dystopia
Agree During the winter months, people are negative, bitter and sour..that's why we make the most of the summers so much more. Maybe that's why employers are quite understanding of the workers taking about five weeks of vacation to recover for the cold and dark months like October-April. A tip: If you go up to northern Sweden(Norrbotten) for a weekend or so in the summer. There you will instead experience that the sun does not set at all and it is a big difference from southern Sweden. Everyone should experience that, absolutely wonderful! Although then it can be difficult to fall asleep and a lot of mosquitoes instead. Yes, what problems of developed countries can have =)
I work at an equally big company and completely agree on the consensus part, there is just no clear decision being made, it's just meetings and more meetings. At some point you move on to another topic, and that was the 'decision'. I also feel that the meetings are far too numerous and unstructured, it gives me a grave feeling of your time not being valuable. I'd rather spend my time producing work rather than talking about it! Maybe one thing to point out about working culture is that it's seen way more important to 'be nice' and 'fit in' than to be a 'high performer', someone's who's good at their job. In that sense the standards are imho disappointingly low; it's quite OK to not really know what you're doing. It is correct to point out that in many areas of professions Swedish is necessary, but let's face it, English is not Swedens native language so this is to be expected. I'd wholeheartedly recommend to learn Swedish as it will also help your social integration, and is very much appreciated if you do so. Personally I'm disappointed with the amount of co-workers not willing to invest any time in this, they don't care about integration and are happy living in the bubble of fellow countrymen in the country. FWIW for me the solution is to work with what I enjoy and give myself a pat on the back if I did a good job🙂
Yeah it's frustrating that people who are appointed as managers don't want to take decisions, so they need you to ask other people and you end up having to collect approvals from several people and tell one guy what the other guy said etc.
One problem with the opposite take is that the decisions made in the US are often strictly for higher profit and at the expense of both workers and consumers. There's likely a good middle ground, but top down decisions cost US workers more than just money they should be receiving.
@@jakobstengard3672 It's not like that, the managers are not involved in technical discussions at all. Managers are there for when you need to raise an issue, and 'planning' of the work, and administrative tasks like approve travel applications. Honestly, I don't know what they spend the whole day having meetings about...
If you need an office space why then you are looking for the Stockholm city centre location? To be able to telework, the location in suburbs is sufficient
VAB, Paid when you are home sick, free university for citizens, free hospital health care and much much more.. that is what our taxes go to. I prefer that it does not matter if you are rich or poor everyone can go to University, same healthcare..
a private insurance (recommended) costs between 1000 to 5000 SEK per month. Typically your employeer offers this and you only pay the taxes on this (as its a taxable benefit). www.dkvhalsa.se/media/kfjd35r0/premietabell-dkv-0032-39.pdf
Only adding my experience since it came up recently, but the base amount I pay in the US for medical insurance only, through my job, is $1500 usd per year. It costs additional money for each appointment or medication, services can be denied, and there's a deductible that has to be met of $1000 as well. That doesn't include dental, orthodontic, or vision care.
I'm a Swede that used to work in Texas between 2015-2017 and I prefer our system here. I calculated the differences between Texas and Sweden and had about the same purchasing power when added in all costs (all insurances). I recently had a son born in week 29+3 and we needed to stay at the NICU for 2 months and then at the neonatal family unit for an additional month, that cost me nothing out of pocket and we got most of our salary covered by the state, I earn more than the limit so I got bout 60% compared to my partner that got 80% This would have cost me $200k to $1.6 million in the US out of pocket with the PPO plan I had and then I would have to hope that they did not deny the claim.
It's somewhat the opposite though, one reason why I'm moving there in the middle of my life. More time for living, quality of life, better food and water, and lower costs than where I live in the US, plus retirement and long term care we don't have in the US.
How much would be an average salary for the same position in US, just to compare? I moved from Brazil to Portugal and, despite a lot of things being cheaper here, renting is not only expensive but also difficult to get one. My salary here is in direct conversion, almost a little higher than I had there, I can save a little, but to live on Lisbon is almost impossible. You have to move far from the center or get not so good apartment. In Brazil I would problably liver in better places, but for all the rest, things are much much more expensive there.
Salaries vary widely in the US even within a single state. For my own job I can make anywhere from half of what I do now, to more than double within the US depending on the city and the need, although salary is usually higher in places with even higher costs. I will make a little less in Sweden, but will trade that for the much higher quality of life, public transportation, groceries, and other things.
In the USA, salaries differ a lot from state to state, but overall, I'd say they are 2 to 2.5 times higher in the US and lower taxes simultaneously. The cost of living is relatively the same,, except for rent. The US has a lot of cheap areas, but the Tech industry is usually close to expensive metros like SF, NY, and LA, ..which are about twice as expensive as Stockholm. Healthcare costs aren't a big deal since your employer covers most of them, and when you have them, the quality of the service is much better than in Sweden. The issue with healthcare in US is when you don't have a job, and you have to pay for it out of pocket. If you are young and single, I say the US is much better; you can save a lot, invest, and grow your wealth, if married with 1 kid, the quality of life is about the same (as a software developer), but if you are married with two kids or more, Sweden is better.
Yes, it is very similar in Sweden, but since the space between our coasts is so short we dont have so many "fly-over-states" but we do have them, and in those areas you can basically buy an appartment for one months engineers pay before taxes. A growing trend is German and Belgian people buying hoses in those areas as vaccation homes since they are so cheap.
Your assessment is largely accurate but I was married and have two kids and my life was still better in the US than in Sweden. It's even better now that I live in a state with no income tax, Texas.
I get curious of where people work in the US that healthcare is mostly paid for, or that they pay low taxes, but with healthcare through my professional job I pay $1500 a year which includes no care, a $1k deductible plus at least $30 per appointment copay and no guarantee I'll get needed care. For taxes I pay just short of 30% earning less than $100k/year, and when that retirement and healthcare costs are added in I'm already at 39%... childcare and long term care would put me well over 50%. Transportation costs are far higher in the US plus lack services nearly everywhere, and grocery costs, especially for fresh groceries are far higher in the US. Then you get into things like property taxes, HOAs and other rent on the things a person "owns" in the US and it is at least nearly a match for the vast majority of workers, and better take home pay and quality of life in western Europe.
There are both good and bad things about Sweden, as with any country. I would say that the living standard is very high, both the quality of things and how most things work. A lot of things are digitalized and easy to use, while healthcare is not perfect (long waiting times and unfair salaries to nurses etc), it is still free and again, mostly the quality is good. We have challenges with gang criminality and the progression to combat it is moving very slow due to the nature of legislation here. The taxes are a bit excessive, not only does the employer have to pay about 30% in social fees which directly cut into your salary. Also for people who aim to pursue a career and money the way the taxation system works quickly puts an end to it. Because anything above $60k will be taxed 51%. It would make more sense if they just kept it at 30, but moral of the story is if you want to become rich you have to start your own company. I hate the open records with information about everyone, it’s being misused by criminals and I hope they remove that. No one needs to know where someone lives, how much they make and what car they drive. Would I still recommend living in Sweden? Absolutely.
I'm interested in your comments on nursing, since the pay varies incredibly within the US and although the patients respect them, the companies typically don't care at all about their workers... A nurse I knew who moved from the US to Sweden makes just slightly less than I do in the US now... I can move to one of a couple locations to make more money, as much as double, but the cost of living in those areas is much higher as well. At least with certain jobs, the pay in Sweden and other western European countries appears lower, but it's actually within the US average. Also I pay close to 30% tax on my current income in the US, not including healthcare, retirement, or any other benefits (those 2 benefits alone add up to 39% for me currently). I haven't found a comprehensive comparison anywhere, but I learn from comments like yours at least
@@vtxgenie1 I don't know about jobs in the US but you won't be able to do a fair 1:1 comparison as there are probably some private clinics in both the US and Sweden where pay will fluctuate a lot. As a baseline in Sweden, irregardless of pay most jobs give you 25 paid vacation days, paid sick leave, maternity leave (paid by state) and more benefits like gym cards. A nurse will earn around 30k SEK a month +-3k (depending on if you are in a small or big city) + some extra for working evening/night shifts and weekends. It could probably come out to anywhere between 35-40k SEK a month. I don't know if there is still a shortage, but for a while there was, then hospitals would pay nurses 2-3x salary during summer just to be able to cover the staffing need. There has also been cases where nurses started their own companies and managed to get hired as consultants due to the shortages. Typically that person would earn 2x a hired nurse while working alongside virtually doing the same tasks. Not all positions pay what I have stated above, many positions might even pay you slightly below 30k SEK monthly with little to no salary development (2% yearly). Given how important nursing jobs are it's a little bit of a shame it isn't paid better.
hi, first i moved to sweden for more than 15 years ago, my family lives in salt lake city, and let me tell u that ur comparing apples to tomatos, yes prices r high but in the usa the price showen is not the price u pay, yes when u look at houses and apartments cost is too high in the center of sweden capital city but have u seen the prices in central new york or washington dc center, yes the weather in winter generarlly is bad but u get 5 payed leave weeks in the summer how do u compare that to the usa. what u describing is from a tourist point of view not someone who settling down in the new country because with the same income you mentioned as a family of three we have a house 20 mins from göteborgs center, 2 cars, and 2 to 4 vecations under the year oone of them to visit my family, in the end i wish u luck and hopefully u find a better country than sweden to settle in may i recomand australia :).
In States you are entering on H1B and your spouse is provided with the H4 (accompanying visa with work permit forbidden), so seems like there is no difference
From the Macbook price example, the americans also need to pay tax when buying that macbook I think, Im not sure where, maybe in the checkout? In sweden all prices to consumers must be shown incl VAT but in america I think it gets added later (but they have lower VAT then sweden atleast, but it might close the gap a little)
Any cost comparison on healthcare is not realistic. Advair 250/50 Seretide inhaler was $325 2014 price. They make you pay ten times more in US if your life depends on it. Insulin $500 a month much more if you need long acting insulin.
No idea how you guys do it in Europe. I’ve been netting tens of thousands of dollars per month for years in California as a software engineer. Why don’t you emigrate?
Thank you for the nice comment! I use my iPhone for video and Elgato Wave 3 for microphone. I film the video in OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) and edit using DaVinci Resolve (both open source). (:
I'm an American SWE who worked in Stockholm from 2019-2024. I'm so glad to be back in the US now where I make 2.5x the salary I made in Sweden for the same job and pay less in taxes. Also, the tech job landscape is more limited in Sweden and the discrimination in the hiring process is real. I did remember interviewing at ATG and Viaplay with 15+ years of experience, even giving working solutions to their take-home coding assignments earlier than required, just to have them tell me that they wanted someone with "more experience." To note, I had been through final round interviews at Spotify and Netflix in the USA before.
To be fair you dont pay that high rent outside of stockholm unless its a newly constructed apartment building, My apartment my wife and me had before buying out house was 3 bedrooms 80 square meters, and incuding a parkingplace we paid like 6200 swedish crowns. This was in swedens 4th largest city, while apartments in Stockholm, Malmö or Gothernburg are abnormaly large.
But answer this question: Did you have that apartment on a first-hand contract? Swedes love talking about inexpensive their spacious apartment is without considering that immigrants cannot get it for the same price. I used to pay 14,000 SEK for a 47 sqm apartment in Stockholm. Meanwhile my Swedish co-worker paid less than 8000 SEK for an apartment twice the size up the street.
More than happy to pay taxes.. our children benefit from : Free school lunches, free school trips, free transport, free lap tops, dental care to 23, financial study assistance from 16 , fee free university education, access to ultra low interest study loans at university ... Our son lives in an apartment in Malmö, cost 6000 sek (£550) a month all in, I've just had a gastroscopy and colonoscopy under general anesthetic, 90 minute procedure and full after care, cost 350sek (£30).. so as an immigrant from the UK, I'm more than happy to pay my way...😊
Such simplified economic comparisons can be highly misleading. To make it at least a bit more fair, you need to look at what the taxes actually cover. Additionally, it's important not to compare the most expensive or the cheapest option in each country. Even with adjustments for these differences, it's hard to get it exactly right, but consider this: What do people in the U.S. typically pay out of pocket for sick days, healthcare, childcare, retirement savings, and so on? How much time can people afford to spend with their families? Is it really better to have no taxes on environmentally harmful products? These are too big and complex questions to be carelessly addressed in just a few minutes on RUclips.
All correct. The services more than make up for the difference in taxes when comparing costs in the US. Also true in regards to the cost of housing and pay from one area to another.
Why don’t you make your own video if it bothers you so much to show basic facts about a country? Maybe it’s time for Swedes to get out of their bubble and realize everything is not so great about the country instead of living in denial? Sweden is now unsafe, expensive, high unemployment, unattainable housing market for younger generation, low salaries compared to many other countries, high taxes, suffering, understaffed healthcare with long wait times, struggling education system, high corruption in government with massive waste of tax money. But please, continue to say how great it is instead of dealing with reality
Thanks for the great video. I am moving to Stockholm next month and I am looking for a product role. Is there anyone who knows how to navigate the swedish tech job market?
Fairly accurate description of a lot of things here. But I wouldn’t agree that the weather is bad until May 😀 The lack of sun usually gets a lot better in the middle of march. For capital gains, starting from 2025 there is ”ISK-konto” with very low taxes on capital gains up to 150k tax free even (if I understand it correctly). Cost of living is high especially here in Stockholm, housing especially. Owning a car is also very expensive here. Id say the fact that records are publicly available overall is a pro, but probably seems scary to those not used to it. You need not worry being targeted for crimes from public records 😂 Just dont flash a Rolex on your instagram and you’ll be fine. I think the ”slow decision making” very much comes down to the company, certain sectors in SE are probably more like that then others. I wouldn’t say this is a typical swedish thing. Be interesting to know where from america your coming, I would have thought the west coast (since you dont like the weather here) but you dont seem to have the LA accent. Good informative video, I as a native swede thought it was interesting to hear!
Med ISK så kollar dom hur mycket du har på kontot varje kvartal, sen så räknas det ihop och du betalar, efter lite uträkningar, ungefär 1,086% av värdet. Det är helt skattefritt att sälja och ta ut pengar från ISK-konton, ingen vinstskatt alltså. Men du får heller inte dra av på skatten om du gått med förlust.
I live here as an American and hate it. Taxes are killing me. The weather is also killing me. The light changes are killing me. I’m moving back to the states.
I would add that Stockholm is kind of impossible, the cost of living or even find somewhere to live. There are much cheaper options in other parts of Sweden. On the other hand that is where most of the work for software engineers is, but that line of work could be done remotely too.
Those considering Sweden: What's your biggest concern about relocating here? I'm happy to share more details about my experience! For those already working in Sweden - what other challenges or benefits would you add to this list? Let's help each other make informed decisions (:
how do you apply for a job when you need a work permit ? Also how does it work for people with health concerns, would it be easy for them to get the medical attention when needed. since i heard so many horror stories for getting medical help.
The weather is quite hard to deal with in the winter
@@Pingpongsuperstarnot for everyone, I totally enjoy winter!
You missed a rather large part of the housing market aspect. Property taxes are capped at approximately $880 usd per year whereas in the U.S. property taxes for a modest home is around $6,000 usd/yr or higher. This allows for a rather significant reduction in monthly obligations for your PITI payment. An example would be that a $400k property in the states may cost $3500/mo, a $900k property in Sweden would come out to roughly the same
@@heartly4u Pretend to be an illegal immigrant without any ID, and you'll get immediate help for free.
This includes dental, which it is not included in the 'free healthcare' package for citizens.
FYI
VAT 12% is for food (groceries, take-aways, dining-in, hotels).
VAT 6% is for travel, books, newspapers, concerts, cultural stuff etc.
VAT 25% is for everything else.
You forgot alcohol, tobacco and gasoline. They have 50% tax.
@@LisaSamaritan haha yea but is that enough? Think it even more
@@LisaSamaritan There are not value-added taxes but excise duties. It is common to have excise duties on alcohol and tobacco because they have well-known negative effects to health. It is also a popular method to get more money for the state unless people decide to be sober like me.
Thank you for adding! This is great additional information (:
@VanessaWingårdh The reasoning behind the high tax, on the things that I mentioned is that you are more likely to get health problems by consuming alcohol and tobacco. So the added tax is for the health services that you are more likely to need later in life. I guess it is a little bit like paying for an insurance. You might never need it, but there are those that will.
When it comes to gasoline. Sweden have a nice nature and using products that contains unhealthy chemicals is more likely to affect plants and animals, so the tax is to encourage to use it as little as possible and if you still need to, then that money goes to prevent and clean up the effects of the use.
That is also one of the added costs to the more expensive laptop, that you showed. It contains chemicals in the battery and other parts and there is an extra tax on that. And there is also a "piracy" tax on storage mediums. Because you could use it to store pirated software, music, movies etc (some people doing bad things affects everybody...).
The critique was fair and i don't disagree with anything, but I would draw a distinction between "Sweden" and "Stockholm". Housing is indeed crazy in Stockholm, but that does not apply to the same extent to other cities. I will admit though that the more you move away from Stockholm, the less opportunities might be there for you!.
Other than that, great video and these were pretty much my thoughts as well when I moved to Sweden 16 years ago!
I love how American it is to feel that the right to vacation and time off is a "challenge".
Slow your life down a bit. Stop living to work, and start work to support your life instead.
get a life you don´t need vecation from 👌
but what about the rest of the time in your life? Vacation is only 1 month at most of your 12 month. The other 11 month living in an small apartment, poor, not being able to buy a house.
Europeans think quality of life is one month of vacation. That is the only think you take in account.
Of course public health too. If you are a high earning individual you can afford private health.
Quality of live is being able to buy a house and being able to flush the toilet at 1am because you don't live sharing each wall with other person too.
@@leandrotocalini there's so much more to mention here. Free dental care for ALL children until the age of 21. Combined maternity/paternity leave of 480 (!!!) days. Daycare that costs around SEK 1200 per month (every parent gets SEK 625 per month and child from the state) and so on. Private health is not such a big thing here (getting bigger though).
Trust me, you won't be poor living as a software engineer in Stockholm. Flushing the toilet at 1 am????? What are you on about, you can flush the toilet whenever you want 🤣
I was in USA a couple of years ago and was really chocked by the prices - it was extremely expensive. We were in San Fransisco and LA, so I guess it was more expensive than in some other places, just as Stockholm is much more expensive than the rest of Sweden.
As for housing it really depends on where you want to live. If you want to live in center Stockholm in a new apartment it is fantasy prices and only the rich lives there. You need to compare with the same type of places in US. When we were in San Fransisco I took a walk in the evening. I was crying when I came back to the hotel room - it was horrible out there. Homeless people with real mental health or health issues, drugs - it was so much of this, like being in a dystopia. Just horrible and I felt so sorry for the whole population of the US.
Also, we were informed by a person who had lived in Sweden that the taxes were about the same, but taken out in different ways. In total it added up, at least for him, to about the same. But while the US taxes goes to military costs we use ours (or used, it is changing rapidly) so that everybody will have access to healthcare (and not die because they cannot afford it, as people do in USA), daycare, maternal/paternal leave, pension (although low for many people), help when ill (although the government now want to dismantle most of these things so that we will be similar to the USA). It also used to go to the infrastructure - I have never seen worse roads than even the big roads in LA, full of potholes and rifts and bad asphalt - and I live in the countryside.
Our system is far from perfect and it is crumbling under the rasist rightwing regime and I do guess that the US system is far better if you have a lot of money and are very egoistic so that you think that as long as you yourself are fine, not ill, not having kids and so on it is great as you have a bit more in your wallet for luxury consumpition, I do prefer our system where everyone has the right to healthcare, housing and food (no matter what my income is - I’ve had both high and low but never faltered on this).
As for the weather - we tank up during summer, and no, not everyone has to have D-vitamin supplements (if you do but not need it it can even be dangerous), there are foods that most people eat that has D-vitamine added to it so that most people should have enough. The darkness can be tough during winter (on the other hand you have the sun up for about 20 hours in the summer…) but there are ways to deal with it. You should discuss this with your swedish friends.
I agree with everything you say, and will add that the extreme right wing in the US is gaining more traction each year and with only two parties even the democratic party is heading further and further right each year.
Also California is far more expensive within the US, but even other large metro areas in the US are similar to what you've seen, just more spread out to where you might not notice the homeless people, drug use, or crime (statistically crime is decreasing in the US, but Sweden and other western European countries, even in their largest cities, have a fraction of the crime in US cities.)
@@vtxgenie1 No, the Dem party is most definitely not moving right. What is happening is that there are two extremes on the fringes gaining power and the middle is being ignored.
In Sweden schools, daycare, elder care, healthcare and so on are paid by taxes. While in the US its paid cash or with insurance. On average and in total it's more beneficial any you pay less in Sweden. But If you for example did not go to a Swedish school and never will use daycare and so on it would be more beneficial to live in the US.
And for rent, the prices are higher in the bigger cities just like in the US. And the farther away you get the cheaper it gets.
Also paid parental leave (480 days of which 90 days is at minimum payment).
For a low salaried factory worker, Sweden is better. For software engineers, US is much better. Without kids? US is vastly superior. I mean... you could _EASILY_ work for just 10 years in US and it would be equivalent to working for 40 years in Sweden. Its absolutely ridiculous.
@frstchan this is ONLY true if you don't pay into any services though. Yes my tax rate is only ~28% in the US, but even adding a minimal amount to retirement and a basic health and dental plan brings that rate to ~39%, already above what I would pay working the same job in the Swedish system, but I would already get more return in healthcare even as a healthy athletic person, I would earn the ability to retire beyond what I can in the US, and I would receive long term care far better than what I would be able to afford in the US.
I'm not sure why you're all over these videos, but yes, technically if you deny all benefits, live as cheap as possible, and save and invest, with no family or kids, basically giving up life for work and a little more money (or potentially a lot if you're willing to take advantage of people due to the lack of regulations in the US) you can come out ahead until you can't work excessively. Once you pass that point, you're better off in any of the countries with a higher quality of life.
Forgot to tell you what you get for the high taxes in Sweden.
In Sweden, it is free for a pregnant woman to visit the maternity center and see a midwife, they do this every month throughout the pregnancy.
Giving birth to a child in the hospital is free and it costs nothing to stay in after giving birth.
Then after returning home, you should then visit the children's clinic every month to follow up on the child's development and this is free.
Ask any American woman. What it costs in the USA to visit the midwife, what it costs to give birth to a child in the USA and ask what it has cost in the USA to expect a child, give birth and return visits. So all of this is free thanks to the higher taxes we pay.
Then the fact that things are more expensive in Sweden is because money goes to what I have said before, and because money goes to road maintenance.
But from the perspective of someone who does not have kids and never will, this is just pure theft from my lifetime earnings. Why should I have to pay for other people's personal choices to have kids? Imagine if people suddenly had to start paying taxes because someone went on vacation, or bought a new car, or whatever? Absolutely ridiculous.
@@frstchan I get what you're saying. But they're also paying for things that you use and they might not. I'm more than happy to pay taxes when they are going to useful things such as healthcare, infrastructure like roads, pensions, school, daycare and so on. Your hypothetical scenario makes little to no sense and wouldn't be accepted anywhere.
@@frstchan Talk about being an idiot and not a Swede but an egotistical fanboy.
Just so you know, we Swedes are happy and proud to pay taxes. I hate idiots like you.
@@qweek Yes. I draw the line at personal choices. Things you choose yourself. We should all pay for roads, military, healthcare, etc. But NOT when my neighbor decides to get pregnant.
@@frstchan Because we live in a society? My problem is more when those taxes getting mishandled and not used for the well being of the whole nation.
Good summary!
Born here but the weather description makes me want to move😊
I believe the slow moving thing is worse in the big companies, like Scania. Smaller companies can be quite fast to decisions.
Yes, I also imagine this beeing a bigger problem in tech-companies with many foregin employes and influences. Part of why the flat organization work is we normally dont include unessecary people in it. It is faster to reach a consesus among fewer people whoms opinion actually matter.
It depends on different company cultures and cannot be generalized. After all, Sweden has many global companies and that is one reason why they look for labor in other countries. You don't achieve that by just sitting in meetings all the time.
Capital gains tax is not 30% using an ISK och KF account. It's 0%. You do, however, pay a total capital tax based on interest rates. This is usually very low and until recent rate hikes, it was below 1%. There's also no wealth tax. Sweden is and has been a very good place for managing capital.
You are complaining hosing is expensive in the most expensive region of Swedn. That is like saying cost of living is high in America due to housing costs in San Fransisco.
Yeah, housing is not expensive, if you are willing to move on the country side. But the problem is there are no jobs there anymore. So that is only for you if you like working remote.
Realistically, nobody would move from the US to Östersund to go into Software engineering. She's talking about software engineering context, and they will move to Stockholm almost exclusively.
Also she checked central Stockholm and not even the mid areas or suburbs. From the Suburbs to the center is like a 20-40min commute depending on if you go by car or public transport
There are plenty of software jobs outside of Stockholm
If you think the cold is a problem, you have to remember that it is at its worst in Stockholm.
There is moisture present all the time from the sea and the air never gets dry like it does in the north of the country.
Go there on holiday and be surprised that -10 C can feel ok!
I guess something to note like someone else mentioned before is that the rent in Stockholm is a lot higher than the rest of Sweden, you could get an equally sized apartment for half or even a third of the rent in cities like Gothenburg or Malmö. Buying costs pretty much the same though, with some exceptions.
As for needing to know Swedish I guess it does depend on what kind of work you are going for, I was a bit surprised to hear that since as someone working with manual labouring I've personally worked with and met a couple of people in the service industry that didn't speak a word of it. Have heard that is sometimes been quite difficult to learn Swedish since most people here speak fairly good English.
It's quite interesting to see how thing are from an "outside" perspective. As someone who've only lived here I might not have put much thought about things like this since that is just how it more or less always been. 🤔
as a developer myself - sure the flat structure and consensus can have a negative effect to come to a conclusion - that's not one person doing it,
but my experience is the opposite in most cases the decision is transferred so that its taken on ground level and the top level management trust the decision process done on a lower level.
Meetings are more informative, and doesn't involve decision making at all. And that has been my experience, even in Stockholm at a bigger medtech company.
Sure, maybe on a proper management level, it could be meetings, prestudies and follow up's in several meetings and in that case I kind of agree - to do a proper judgment with all possible data available takes time.
Like what to do for the next year for the department of 50 developers - that almost never up to one person in Sweden.
Good or bad? Good as far as I know reckon
Taxes are used, for example, for free healthcare. In the US, healthcare is a cost.
Young people don't need healthcare and they are taxed the most.
This is a tax on young generation to pay the bills of the older generation.
Pyramid scheme.
This is true, but you would lose your mind if you knew what other things taxes are going to. For example, 56 billion is used in aid to other countries, most of which goes to corrupt nations. Just look at Afghanistan, where the leaders were found in golden palaces. While we have the worst healthcare we had in a long time in this country
This is kinda cope. Taxes are the highest for the middle class since only income is taxed in Sweden and other sources of wealth really aren’t.
And colleges, universities, free paytime when you have a child,... The thing is that in Europe we pay more taxes than in the US, but i think that we pay like a x2 (or even a x3) in taxes compared to the US, but we have a x10 on services compared to the US.
Yes, it is not a pure apples to apples comparison. It would be a better comparison if the cost of health insurance was deducted from the estimated swedish taxes since that is a clear expense an American working in sweden would not have.
You can not only look at income and taxes Vanessa. Healthcare, insurance, childcare, free education, good public transportation systems are some of the things you pay with your taxes in Sweden. Property tax in the US can be pretty brutal (compared to the property fee we have in Sweden). And you are looking at apartments in the center of our capital! The same rents in Washington, DC and quite a bit higher in many other major cities in the US.
There are tons of comparisons of salaries, taxes, expenditures between Sweden and the US, they show that they are very much the same. Except in Sweden you can't be medically bankrupt!
The weather I can agree a bit. The winters can be really bad but we don't have the extremely hot weather that you get in the US nor the hurricanes or tornadoes. You are comparing apples and pears.
ruclips.net/video/nMOgPHhMJ7A/видео.html
Taxes in Sweden are especially disadvantageous to the middle class since we tax income more than anything else, wealthier people don’t earn their wealth through income
@@eahere I am (was, retired now) a middle class person, married and six children. We live in the countryside, a lot cheaper than Stockholm but also with one of the highest local taxes in Sweden.
I have paid a lot of tax but we have also had a great life and good economy. All my kids have a university degree (1 PHD, 3 masters and 2 with bachelor degrees) without any student loans.
I agree that tax on equity (stock shares mostly) is too low, but it keeps a lot of investments within the country.
No, she's not comparing apples to pears. She's making fair comparisons and the truth is that moving from the US to Sweden will not work out for most Americans for a variety of reasons. I know because I was one of them and I happily returned to the US 4 months ago. I know people who will stay in Sweden but that's because they found themselves with unique privileges like marrying a Swede who already had a good financial situation. In the the US you can actually get rich from working a standard job. You can't in Sweden.
@@NOCDIBdefinitely incredibly false to say you can get rich working a regular job in the US, but beyond that, you'll be trading more and more of the time to live life if you try to do that. A more balanced system is a better system, and to compare the two financially, you need to calculate everything you get for taxes in Sweden to the costs of the same services in the US, things that are often more or far more expensive in the US.
I have a lot of cozy lights at home. Like Philips HUE lights. Works wonders at winter when it’s dark! 😊
59th parallel north (Stockholm) passes through Canada.
90% of population of Canada lives below that line.
Alaska is on the same parallel and almost nobody lives there (as a percentage of the US population).
It also goes through the southern part of Greenland.
Let that sink in...
We thank the Gulf Stream everyday before dinner.
That’s a scary thought lol
Factually accurate I just confirmed
Draw a line just north of Uppsala in Sweden, and 80% lives south of that.
Stockholm is pretty far north compared to where people generally live in Sweden.
As @elritsa mentioned, because of the proximity of the Gulf stream, the climate is significantly milder in Scandinavia than in other locations on the same latitudes. All the issues mentioned in the video are true, but it's much better here than in Siberia or Alaska.
It is good to see more videos on moving to Sweden. I live here and I am from the USA. I would say if you live and work in Stockholm you do not need to learn Swedish, It is nice to have but most companies use English as there work language since most companies have an international foot print. I am not in the IT sector and I work in the Manufacturing sector and I speak English, even though I can speak Swedish but there is no need to. Welcome to Stockholm!
I am a software engineer in Stockholm, also being a Stockholmer (born and raised). I always felt like I was getting paid unfairly so I worked hard to get a good skillset and CV and started freelancing.
Before that, I didn't feel like becoming a software engineer had been worth it.
Even freelancing salary is way lower than in China or USA, unfortunately.
@ yes. But at least now I'm not getting lower pay because I'm younger, even though I've been doing way more than my team members in every project I've been in.
As another software engineer living in Sweden for 4 years, having moved with my wife. I couldn't agree more with all your statements. Excellent summary. Thanks for sharing
When comparing price for a Mac you forgot to include sales tax on US price. In Sweden that is included in the displayed price, but in US it is only added when checking out. Where I live in WA with sales tax the price is $3530 after tax.
You forgot to inform that houses/apartments in the USA have building codes that we in Sweden had 50 years ago. Most American plywood houses lack ventilation in the house/walls/roof/foundation, lack functioning external drainage, electricity is drawn without pipes in the walls, almost always lack a moisture barrier in the house, if you have a kitchen fan it is unique, bad windows/doors, bad water connection inside the walls. yes the list can be made as long as you want.
If you’re gonna compare actual living standards then you have to factor in that basically all houses in the US have an AC which is basically unheard of in Sweden. This to me is a much bigger deal than anything else
@@eahere It depends on where your house is located. In sweden no sane person would want to cool their hose, it is already plenty cold outside of it.
But resently many have been installing air to air heat pumps to heat their homes in Sweden, and those can normally be run in revers if you absolutly needed to cool your home in the single day of summer.
@@eahere Aircon have nothing to do with lack of ventilation in the U.S. Why shall we have Aircon, you just told us that in Sweden its cold 9 Month a Year. What i talking about is the bad Plywood houses they use in the U.S.
@@eahere Sure we use AC in Sweden, though only 50 Hz instead of 60 Hz 🙂. Jokes aside, who ever need air conditioner in Sweden.
"lack functioning external drainage, electricity is drawn without pipes in the walls, almost always lack a moisture barrier in the house, if you have a kitchen fan it is unique"
Straight up lies. Moisture barriers are common in US houses to prevent rot in the studs and basements, especially where the wood has to be pressure treated. Electricity is ran in conduit piping within the walls when necessary, otherwise NM90 is used. Kitchen fans are standard especially above the stove where the fan is built into the hood of the stove. Houses do have ventilation in the form of duct work for the furnace or heat-pump or AC. Not all heaters/AC is baseboard heating/AC. A lot is duct-type with forced-air. You don't know what you're talking about, or you're blatantly lying :S
Great informative video, Vanessa! I like your balanced take :)
I am attempting to go to University in Sweden for Software Technology. This is a great way to move to Sweden as well because after you graduate with a Bachelors, you can stay in Sweden for up to one year and find work, allowing you to stay longer.
Make sure you network heavily in school, within activity orgs, at social clubs, within internships. Because as a non Nordic person that entire year can go by quickly as there are peak hiring seasons, Autumn and Spring. In between no one is doing interviews or hiring. That 12 months, in reality is 5-6 months.
I'm in the same boat but doing masters in E&E. I really want to know whether i can get a job in E&E after completing the master.
20k a month in rent is just no, i live at 78 m2 and my rent did go up thanks to new year so i pay 7200 with 2 bedrooms, and i live around 30 minutes outside Stockholm with the subway, for a 100k living in the rural north you could get a very nice house at 200 m2, and i mean even with a bit of a commute for you, you said if i recall you can work from home 4 days a week.
As for the weather, do not forget that during summer the sun is up from 03:00 to like 22:00.
And to be fair i think learning a new language and getting into a new country finding a job and such is hard no matter where you go.
That is with rent control. Getting such an apartment as a Expat is IMPOSSIBLE.
And about the slow moving at work. I am a mechanial engineer, in my experience the flat organization is fast at companies that adapt it. Part of the flat organization is the team that need to reach consesus is kept small. If I need a design desition I just ask a maintanance guy what he thinks about my design desition, I may consult our subcontractor who is doing the metal work, and if it doesnt make adverse implication to preformance, maintainence or manufacturing I can go along with the design change. So if the place you work at is moving slow it is due to mismanagment involving too many people to have imput in matters where their input doesnt matter.
As another software engineer in Stockholm, while I agree with most of your points, I couldn't quite relate to the point about slow-moving decision-making due to the flat hierarchy, at least in my own experience. It's something I've never suffered from at my own employer, I feel like most of my coworkers have a vested interest in making good decisions quickly and don't unnecessarily drag things out or book more meetings than necessary. Either I'm unusually lucky, or perhaps it just varies between different companies.
As you've "probably" noticed, food prices have risen significantly in recent years. Before that, food prices were pretty reasonable.
Another thing you could have mentioned is how expensive it has become to go to the vet. Several hundred percent more expensive compared to 5-10 years ago. The veterinary chains A. and E. (A. is owned by Mars, and E. by EQT, Nestlé and Silver Lake) are monopolizing the swedish veterinary market.
Are your cats 😺 insured?
2:19 "shows tax per month for 100KSEK or 100tkr per month"
That changes quite a bit if you add the "employers fee", which is normally around 30% of said salary that your employer pays. If you add that to the whole sum, you can quite easily get to a point where half your income gets turned into taxes.
I am Swedish's from birth and almost 40 years in the teck industry. There is three boxes to check to make a move to sweden worth it. 1:That living whit you're family in nature is the number one priority in you're life. 2:That you have a job that allows you to work from anyware. 3:That nowone in you're family feels that city life is the only way to live. Why to i state this , living in a Swedish city is as expensive as in the rest of the industrialiced world but there are other places where you while have better disposable income. The place where you can really have a better quality of life is in rural sweden, but then my there bullet points apply, and if they do not apply to you perhaps lock else ware. Yes i like sweden and i am still living here, yes i have had a few opportunity's to move to other parts of the industrialiced world. But if you are moving to a new place it it better be for the right reasons.
0:36 The capital gains tax can be avoided by using an ISK account (Investment savings account).
You can buy, sell, exchange and withdraw money from that account completely tax-free.
What you do pay is an annual tax of 1.086% on your total savings on the account, whether your portfolio made a profit or not.
Any figures needed for tax purposes are automatically added to your tax declaration by your bank.
ISK is a small subset of the scope of capital gains tax. For instance, it does not cover crypto nor any kind of RSU of stocks from the employer. RSUs are actually taxed as salary. Which will come as a chock to americans...
This video summarizes it nicely. The truth about moving to Sweden as a software engineer (and I am one with over 15 years of experience) is do not do it if you want to earn a lot of money. You can have a decent living but you will not get rich here or have a large savings account.
OK, taxes are high. Everybody agrees to that. The question is what do you get for it? As an expat ... not much.
1. You have probably done with your formal education, so you will not be using that. If you have a child then yes, everything is free (kindergarten, school) but the quality varies a lot depending where you live. In some areas there is also a security concerns. Extracurricular activities are very expensive. However, I would say that education your child will get is probably above average for EU standards.
2. Elderly care is also free but quality depends even more than that of schools. However, it is very unlikely that you will be here long enough to use it. So, for most expats, it is only a minor benefit.
3. Healthcare. It is free (participation is really small and caped). However, it is very different than what foreigners expect, especially primary care. I have heard and experienced very good secondary care (specialist) if you live long enough to get to it. Basically, primary health care is designed to turn as many people as possible away for long enough to, hopefully, the issue resolves itself (or they give up on seeking medical care). The earliest appointment I got at my vårdcentral was 3 weeks from day of calling (4-6 weeks is normal) and that is not even the biggest problem. The care you get is substandard and they are very reluctant to give you medication, even though that medication is over the counter in other EU countries.
However, it is on average very unlikely that you will use much of healthcare (more than GP) in your work life while you are relatively young and relatively healthy.
4. Wonderfully integrated and functioning state where all institutions are functioning perfectly. I have heard horror stories, but my experience was nothing but the most pleasant. Maybe I am just a simple case.
To conclude, let me just provide a perspective to Swedes that take this all as criticism. Firstly, it is not. This is your country and your system and we knew (or should have known) it when we came. However, the system is not fair to us. Your country did not spend a dime on our education and upbringing, so there is no "past debt" to be repaid. Also, this is not our country so it is not it is not fair to expect from us to invest in it. Your government can decide tomorrow (as some politicians imply) to revoke our work visas and expel us and we will have nothing to show for it.
Spot on!
If we move to the US we get even less for our taxes. Sure it can seem unfair to pay taxes in a new country after you're done with education, but you have to do that in every country. Not just Sweden. And taxes doesn't just pay for education even if it is a big taxfunded institution. If by invest in the country you mean pay taxes, then of course we expect anyone who lives here to pay taxes. I bet foreigners have to pay taxes in the US when they move there and work there.
@ several countries like Italy, Portugal, Estonia etc. Have visas now where they don’t tax foreign earned income or give favorable terms for entrepreneurs, or freelance workers. Sweden should have something similar. If you move to Sweden with valuable skills, you bring value to the country which the country essentially got for free. These people should be taxed way lower
@@Pingpongsuperstar Taxing foreign earned income is something else. You still have to pay tax on income you make in that country I'm sure.
While I understand your comment is directed for those with very short visits rather than those interested in living in the EU, there are a few points:
Elder care does matter if you want to become a citizen, as good care is becoming unobtainable for most in the US.
The second point, very close to the first, is that in the US, if someone pays for healthcare, they will likely still have to wait an extended amount of time to receive that care, and there's no guarantee it will be paid for by insurance, even when paying 2-3x what Sweden and other countries pay. You may feel that people are being turned away more, but in the US most people don't receive good primary care at all, and the Swedish system (and most of the EU) is much more focused on preventative care, and not using resources on services that won't help the patient.
I mean, when you look at the houses/apartments, using stockholm as an example is like using New York as an example. Where I live in the south of sweden I pay 1/4 of what you pay for your place. If even that. I pay 400Euro a month for a 2 bedroom apartment. If it is as you said that you only need to go to the office once a week, just move out of stockholm and commute to the office once a week. That way you'll save a lot of your salary. There is literally no need to live in stockholm.
I think the point is that Swedish salaries are very low compared to US salaries. Would be easier to afford a $3000 rent with a $20,000+ salary which is not uncommon for software engineers in the US vs. In Sweden where the same person would earn $5-7k per month
About housing. Yes big cites like Stockholm is very expensive. However big cities in Sweden are very small compared to the USA so many people work in Stockholm but live outside for better prices (and to even find living) with the cost of travel time that can be 1-2 hours.
As a Swede, I can vouch for that. But don't being up Stockholm prices. There is so much opportunity in the regional towns and cities. But language is a must... Can't argue with that. But if you're able to learn a new language and have $50K to buy a place? You'll live well. Very well.
Edit: For those with kids, everything is paid for. And kindergarden is very cheap. Uni is almost free. Free meals at school. Pretty much free health care for everything. cheap and GOOD public transportation (it actually works and connects to hubs and stuff).
The main thing I miss about Sweden. Not having to buy a big box of school stuff every term. And free and GOOD school lunches. Looking at you, Australia. The schools end up donating much of it anyway, because it is ease to donate other people's stuff. Morons.
Lets ask chat gpt:
New York: Higher salaries ($130,000-$170,000/year), but you’ll pay 30-34% in taxes depending on your income bracket, reducing your net income to approximately $7,000-$9,000/month. Retirement savings are largely your responsibility, with some employers offering 401(k) plans with limited matching (e.g., 3-6%). High living costs for housing ($2,500-$4,500/month) and healthcare ($500-$1,000/month) further limit disposable income, making saving more difficult.
Sweden: Lower salaries (~$60,000/year or 50,000-60,000 SEK/month), but higher taxes at 30-35% reduce your net income to $3,200-$4,000/month. However, these taxes fund a robust public pension system, free healthcare, and other benefits. Housing costs are significantly lower ($1,000-$1,500/month), leaving more disposable income for savings or leisure despite lower gross earnings.
Even this is far off though, as making around $80k in the US means I pay 28% or so in taxes on average, and up to 33% on overtime, time off, and bonus pay. Just for comparison I would likely make within the range stated if I moved to NYC (less outside of NYC but within NY state though) which is what I'm guessing the AI is assuming is meant by NY.
I still agree with your point though
Nice video I think its a good point pointing out that it can be very hard for spouses
Why would you move from the US to Sweden as a software engineer?
For love or adventure, of course
Looking at where the US society and politics is heading, you could make that move "as a human being"... OK, as a Swede I might be a bit biased.. :)
A crucial note about the apartments shown in the video: These are all second-hand rental contracts, which means tenants can be asked to leave with just one month's notice. Most of these contracts have a maximum duration of 2 years. First-hand contracts offer much better value, with rents typically 25-50% lower, but the waiting time for these contracts in Stockholm ranges from 10 to 25 years - this is not an exaggeration. It's worth noting that most residential properties in the Stockholm area are cooperative apartments (bostadsrätter), which have restrictions on long-term rental and investment opportunities.
Another correction: work records are not public. Your total paid tax is public, but not who paid you salary or what you paid tax for, except for being grouped in two buckets: income/capital gains. Your phone number is not public either, that's something you can choose to not have shown (usually default).
Regarding your adress being public: there are ways to completely hide that. Tip for Swedes: check the Flashback forum. Basically, send in an applcation for protected identity and repeat. During the processing of your application you are hidden. You can apply unlimited times ;-)
Another great video!
This was suchhhhhh a well made video!!!
I'm a belgian junior web developer looking to move and work in Sweden and your videos are very helpful ! Thanks a lot :)
Will be easier for you in the sense that you can ignore the "permits part"
@ I believe I still need a work permit
@@iukys3889 as a Belgian, you will need to register with the tax authority and get a Personal ID number ("personnummer"). You do no have to deal with the immigration authorities
@@iukys3889 If you're a citizen of Belgium then there should be no need for a work permit to work in any other EU country
I’m director of engineering for a U.S. company, but living in Sweden. Yes, taxes are high. There are ways to mitigate how much you pay into it given your financial setup. Also if you don’t have children or at least own a home the math for which country leaves you with the most disposable income will be the U.S.
excelent content, thanks!
@ 10:00 paid vacations depends on age and sector. I have 31 paid vacation days/year. If work as a teacher/pre school teacher I think you will have even more.
Also your absolutely can decline you vacation application (meaning you can't have vacation whenever you want), but you are entitled to 4 consecutive weeks of during summer period June-August.
Tech has typically less than Government worker which on average has the most. All state workers over a certain age (40 yrs I think) have 35 days by law. Everyone else has 25 but tech has sometimes additional days and in Stockholm 30 days is common.
Taxes for owing a house is quite low in Sweden. Max 1200 dollars a year. That includes all houses from 500 000 $ and up. Will never understand that logic.
I'm quite puzzled about the comment of bad english knowledge. My guess is that it comes from meeting naturalized immigrants. Other countries schools doesn't teach english for as long as Swedish schools.
Yes the latitud of Stockholm is like middle of Canada, south Alaska! However its warmer becuse of the Gulf stream!
And Stockholm is our capital city, there many big companies is located, its more expensive closer to those big companies, that pay proportionaly higher wages!
Another thing that rise prices for rent and buying is good infrastructure, schools, public transportation, bicycle lanes, pedestrian lanes, clean streets and parks! If one dont need/like that, there is cheaper areas!
I am from New York City and moved to Ostermalm, Stockholm last April. As the OP has accurately mentioned, it's difficult to live well here on a junior salary. Now I work remotely as a Compliance Officer for a Hedge Fund on a NYC salary in USD so I live rather well compared to my senior Swedish friends in the same field. This relatively becomes apparent when discussing rent. I live in the centre of Stockholm in a well to neignbourhood paying rent (got my apartment from Qasa) at 1800 USD a month for a 67sqm sized place. No way could I get that in the centre of Manhattan. So yes, do your due diligence before you move here. It's a great country to bring up families and the educational level is excellent. Norway is higher in salaries but taxes are higher there too. It's relative.
The tax in Sweden isn't a negative thing! The tax makes it possible with free school (collage and everything), free medical, free kindergarten, free payed parenthood for both mother and father after getting a child, etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.
One of the big negative things about America is that you have to pay for all these things and more yourself!
I gladly pay for daycare the few years i have kids at daycare instead of how we do it in swden, crazy taxes for your entire work life. Swedens system only make sense if you are low income or ultra rich if you are between (Like a senior developer with 80k salary or more) then you are taxed to death. Likely for me i run my own company and can minimize salary and maximize income through capital gains.
@@andersmalmgren6528 Traditional "Fuck you I got mine"-mentality. Saying the system doesn't make sense because you disagree with the notion that everyone should have access to decent public service. This only increases inequality in society, but I guess you don't care about that.
What do you mean free? Its paid with taxes. Its not free. The issue I have with this is that you don't have any personal choice. YOU have to pay for everyone else's choices, like having kids, pay for them, for their education and the parents parenthood, etc. As if I have anything to do with it? Should you start paying for your neighbors vehicle tax just because he bought a car? Ofc not, that would be crazy. But what's the difference? As I grow older, I get more and more annoyed at this semi-communistic tax system.
@@frstchan Du betalar ju för landets bästa. Det gynnar Sverige att våra barn utbildar sig och lever ett bra liv. Dagen någon i din närhet blir sjuk så är du glad att vi har sjukvården vi har i Sverige. Hela din utbildning är betald, all din mat i skolan. Man kan gnälla på en massa skit våra skattepengar går till, men skola, sjukvård och liknande är fanimig hål i huvudet att klaga på. Mvh höginkomsttagande moderat.
Swedish healthcare is pretty much a joke when it comes to availability. Sure, there is good care, but it's very hard to get access to it. We have on multiple occasions in the past had the fewest hospital beds per capita in Europe. I don't know what the situation is right now, but i don't think it has gotten better.
I really agree when it comes to weather 😊,
thank you for you magnificent videos :)
Best of luck with your productivity!!!
Nope. Taxes for stocks are typically regulated via ISK-account tax, which are WAY below 30%. For 2024, the ISK-stock tax was 3,62%. Please don't mislead people.
Yes because you invest post-tax money into an ISK. How nice to “only” tax your already taxed money at 3.62%?
You also don’t get to deduct any losses from your taxes in an ISK.
Isn’t it so great that if you get stocks or RSU’s as part of your salary they tax you on it as if it’s income even though it’s value on paper only? Sweden has lost its mind.
@@Hippidihop1212you do not get taxed on stock options. You get texted on capital gains
@@Hippidihop1212 Not true. Many, me included, invest inherentance and gifts too. Tax free. 100%.
I just feel this crying over taxes in Scandinavia, always voted top 5 nations to live in on the planet, is kinda pathetic tbh.
If one is unhappy here, feel free to fuck off.
@@Hippidihop1212 I invest inheretance and gifts 100% taxFREE, so what you're saying is bs.
If one doesn't like it here, just move away.
The original taxing of stocks is 30% of profit. But since years ago there is the alternative of ISK (K stands for account, stop with the CD skiva redundancy) which is a lot cheaper in tax. But still we get taxed for already taxed money. To be fair this can be compared to VAT that also taxes already taxed money and that is something many countries have.
Yes, sunshine is so important. Wonder if people have UV lights at home to counter this problem. I would make my apartment into a jungle with dwarf fruiting plants
I don't work in the tech industry. I've spoken English with my coworkers every day for 7 years now. None of them are native English speakers. They speak Russian, Spanish, Lithuanian, German, but English is our common language. Even a Canadian worked with me for a few years, he neither wanted nor needed to learn Swedish.
I truly wonder how you can ever feel at home in a country where the people around you speak a language you don't understand.
@@CreRay The sense of home is mainly coming from inside of your heart.
would you mind saying which industry you work in?
Got to be suspicious of foreigners, they're up to no good... If they speak a foreign language, that's like a secret code...
@@norwaybirds3015 Construction and Energy industry with focus on work at high altitude.
Those VAT percentages do not apply to everything. Food and books, for instance, are taxed at a much lower rate.
Food is 12% precisely as she said in the video
As an american SWE, how do you find this jantelagen mindset? Don't you think it slows down development and on a large scale in the long-term perspective will throw the country to the bottom of all ratings?
I understand what you mean by bad weather. :) But january is generally much sunnier than december. December usually is cloudy which makes it dark even when the sun is up.
Valid points!
Yep, spot on. The living cost here is massive. It has gotten way out of hand. Rents, electricity, food, houses and taxes which are about 70% effectively. It's hard to understand how people cope with this. I am fed up for sure. /Someone born and raised in this dystopia
Agree
During the winter months, people are negative, bitter and sour..that's why we make the most of the summers so much more.
Maybe that's why employers are quite understanding of the workers taking about five weeks of vacation to recover for the cold and dark months like October-April.
A tip:
If you go up to northern Sweden(Norrbotten) for a weekend or so in the summer.
There you will instead experience that the sun does not set at all and it is a big difference from southern Sweden.
Everyone should experience that, absolutely wonderful!
Although then it can be difficult to fall asleep and a lot of mosquitoes instead.
Yes, what problems of developed countries can have =)
Thanks for sharing! It's very interesting to hear an outside perspective on Sweden (I suppose you have some roots in Sweden thou).
I work at an equally big company and completely agree on the consensus part, there is just no clear decision being made, it's just meetings and more meetings. At some point you move on to another topic, and that was the 'decision'. I also feel that the meetings are far too numerous and unstructured, it gives me a grave feeling of your time not being valuable. I'd rather spend my time producing work rather than talking about it! Maybe one thing to point out about working culture is that it's seen way more important to 'be nice' and 'fit in' than to be a 'high performer', someone's who's good at their job. In that sense the standards are imho disappointingly low; it's quite OK to not really know what you're doing. It is correct to point out that in many areas of professions Swedish is necessary, but let's face it, English is not Swedens native language so this is to be expected. I'd wholeheartedly recommend to learn Swedish as it will also help your social integration, and is very much appreciated if you do so. Personally I'm disappointed with the amount of co-workers not willing to invest any time in this, they don't care about integration and are happy living in the bubble of fellow countrymen in the country. FWIW for me the solution is to work with what I enjoy and give myself a pat on the back if I did a good job🙂
Yeah it's frustrating that people who are appointed as managers don't want to take decisions, so they need you to ask other people and you end up having to collect approvals from several people and tell one guy what the other guy said etc.
One problem with the opposite take is that the decisions made in the US are often strictly for higher profit and at the expense of both workers and consumers. There's likely a good middle ground, but top down decisions cost US workers more than just money they should be receiving.
Classic Swedish issue.
@@jakobstengard3672 It's not like that, the managers are not involved in technical discussions at all. Managers are there for when you need to raise an issue, and 'planning' of the work, and administrative tasks like approve travel applications. Honestly, I don't know what they spend the whole day having meetings about...
If you need an office space why then you are looking for the Stockholm city centre location? To be able to telework, the location in suburbs is sufficient
3 room apartment for a single household is crazy.. Try getting that in any of the bigger US cities.
VAB, Paid when you are home sick, free university for citizens, free hospital health care and much much more.. that is what our taxes go to. I prefer that it does not matter if you are rich or poor everyone can go to University, same healthcare..
How much do you pay in healt insuranse?
Software engineers have a benefit package including healthcare
a private insurance (recommended) costs between 1000 to 5000 SEK per month. Typically your employeer offers this and you only pay the taxes on this (as its a taxable benefit). www.dkvhalsa.se/media/kfjd35r0/premietabell-dkv-0032-39.pdf
Only adding my experience since it came up recently, but the base amount I pay in the US for medical insurance only, through my job, is $1500 usd per year. It costs additional money for each appointment or medication, services can be denied, and there's a deductible that has to be met of $1000 as well. That doesn't include dental, orthodontic, or vision care.
I'm a Swede that used to work in Texas between 2015-2017 and I prefer our system here. I calculated the differences between Texas and Sweden and had about the same purchasing power when added in all costs (all insurances).
I recently had a son born in week 29+3 and we needed to stay at the NICU for 2 months and then at the neonatal family unit for an additional month, that cost me nothing out of pocket and we got most of our salary covered by the state, I earn more than the limit so I got bout 60% compared to my partner that got 80%
This would have cost me $200k to $1.6 million in the US out of pocket with the PPO plan I had and then I would have to hope that they did not deny the claim.
Very informative video thank you. I now know that i would like to visit Sweden, but would not work there as it might make later life very limiting.
It's somewhat the opposite though, one reason why I'm moving there in the middle of my life. More time for living, quality of life, better food and water, and lower costs than where I live in the US, plus retirement and long term care we don't have in the US.
How much would be an average salary for the same position in US, just to compare?
I moved from Brazil to Portugal and, despite a lot of things being cheaper here, renting is not only expensive but also difficult to get one. My salary here is in direct conversion, almost a little higher than I had there, I can save a little, but to live on Lisbon is almost impossible. You have to move far from the center or get not so good apartment. In Brazil I would problably liver in better places, but for all the rest, things are much much more expensive there.
Salaries vary widely in the US even within a single state. For my own job I can make anywhere from half of what I do now, to more than double within the US depending on the city and the need, although salary is usually higher in places with even higher costs. I will make a little less in Sweden, but will trade that for the much higher quality of life, public transportation, groceries, and other things.
In the USA, salaries differ a lot from state to state, but overall, I'd say they are 2 to 2.5 times higher in the US and lower taxes simultaneously. The cost of living is relatively the same,, except for rent. The US has a lot of cheap areas, but the Tech industry is usually close to expensive metros like SF, NY, and LA, ..which are about twice as expensive as Stockholm.
Healthcare costs aren't a big deal since your employer covers most of them, and when you have them, the quality of the service is much better than in Sweden. The issue with healthcare in US is when you don't have a job, and you have to pay for it out of pocket.
If you are young and single, I say the US is much better; you can save a lot, invest, and grow your wealth, if married with 1 kid, the quality of life is about the same (as a software developer), but if you are married with two kids or more, Sweden is better.
Yes, it is very similar in Sweden, but since the space between our coasts is so short we dont have so many "fly-over-states" but we do have them, and in those areas you can basically buy an appartment for one months engineers pay before taxes. A growing trend is German and Belgian people buying hoses in those areas as vaccation homes since they are so cheap.
Your assessment is largely accurate but I was married and have two kids and my life was still better in the US than in Sweden. It's even better now that I live in a state with no income tax, Texas.
I get curious of where people work in the US that healthcare is mostly paid for, or that they pay low taxes, but with healthcare through my professional job I pay $1500 a year which includes no care, a $1k deductible plus at least $30 per appointment copay and no guarantee I'll get needed care.
For taxes I pay just short of 30% earning less than $100k/year, and when that retirement and healthcare costs are added in I'm already at 39%... childcare and long term care would put me well over 50%.
Transportation costs are far higher in the US plus lack services nearly everywhere, and grocery costs, especially for fresh groceries are far higher in the US. Then you get into things like property taxes, HOAs and other rent on the things a person "owns" in the US and it is at least nearly a match for the vast majority of workers, and better take home pay and quality of life in western Europe.
Informative 👍🏽👍🏽
There are both good and bad things about Sweden, as with any country. I would say that the living standard is very high, both the quality of things and how most things work. A lot of things are digitalized and easy to use, while healthcare is not perfect (long waiting times and unfair salaries to nurses etc), it is still free and again, mostly the quality is good. We have challenges with gang criminality and the progression to combat it is moving very slow due to the nature of legislation here.
The taxes are a bit excessive, not only does the employer have to pay about 30% in social fees which directly cut into your salary. Also for people who aim to pursue a career and money the way the taxation system works quickly puts an end to it. Because anything above $60k will be taxed 51%. It would make more sense if they just kept it at 30, but moral of the story is if you want to become rich you have to start your own company.
I hate the open records with information about everyone, it’s being misused by criminals and I hope they remove that. No one needs to know where someone lives, how much they make and what car they drive.
Would I still recommend living in Sweden? Absolutely.
I'm interested in your comments on nursing, since the pay varies incredibly within the US and although the patients respect them, the companies typically don't care at all about their workers...
A nurse I knew who moved from the US to Sweden makes just slightly less than I do in the US now... I can move to one of a couple locations to make more money, as much as double, but the cost of living in those areas is much higher as well. At least with certain jobs, the pay in Sweden and other western European countries appears lower, but it's actually within the US average.
Also I pay close to 30% tax on my current income in the US, not including healthcare, retirement, or any other benefits (those 2 benefits alone add up to 39% for me currently).
I haven't found a comprehensive comparison anywhere, but I learn from comments like yours at least
@@vtxgenie1 I don't know about jobs in the US but you won't be able to do a fair 1:1 comparison as there are probably some private clinics in both the US and Sweden where pay will fluctuate a lot.
As a baseline in Sweden, irregardless of pay most jobs give you 25 paid vacation days, paid sick leave, maternity leave (paid by state) and more benefits like gym cards. A nurse will earn around 30k SEK a month +-3k (depending on if you are in a small or big city) + some extra for working evening/night shifts and weekends. It could probably come out to anywhere between 35-40k SEK a month.
I don't know if there is still a shortage, but for a while there was, then hospitals would pay nurses 2-3x salary during summer just to be able to cover the staffing need.
There has also been cases where nurses started their own companies and managed to get hired as consultants due to the shortages. Typically that person would earn 2x a hired nurse while working alongside virtually doing the same tasks.
Not all positions pay what I have stated above, many positions might even pay you slightly below 30k SEK monthly with little to no salary development (2% yearly).
Given how important nursing jobs are it's a little bit of a shame it isn't paid better.
Great summary. So, are you planning to move away to a sunnier place?
If you think its dark in Stockholm. In north of sweden its more dark more snow and cold in winter. But in juni The sun newer go down
hi, first i moved to sweden for more than 15 years ago, my family lives in salt lake city, and let me tell u that ur comparing apples to tomatos, yes prices r high but in the usa the price showen is not the price u pay, yes when u look at houses and apartments cost is too high in the center of sweden capital city but have u seen the prices in central new york or washington dc center, yes the weather in winter generarlly is bad but u get 5 payed leave weeks in the summer how do u compare that to the usa. what u describing is from a tourist point of view not someone who settling down in the new country because with the same income you mentioned as a family of three we have a house 20 mins from göteborgs center, 2 cars, and 2 to 4 vecations under the year oone of them to visit my family, in the end i wish u luck and hopefully u find a better country than sweden to settle in may i recomand australia :).
In States you are entering on H1B and your spouse is provided with the H4 (accompanying visa with work permit forbidden), so seems like there is no difference
I always found it annoying/confusing that the US (and some other places) don't include VAT (and stuff) in the price tags...
From the Macbook price example, the americans also need to pay tax when buying that macbook I think, Im not sure where, maybe in the checkout? In sweden all prices to consumers must be shown incl VAT but in america I think it gets added later (but they have lower VAT then sweden atleast, but it might close the gap a little)
no in sweden we pay 15-20% more on computer parts everything is more expensive
Many states have no sales tax, and some have 5-8% so either way it’s about 20% less no matter what.
@@Pingpongsuperstar and what do you pay later for personal taxes?? in sweden it is allways 30% after all your earnings in sales
@@Pingpongsuperstar i have been working in sales for 15 years, is it hard to get a job as a swede in USA``?
@@Pingpongsuperstarmost states have income taxes and are there any states without sales tax? Even if there are that's definitely not common
Any cost comparison on healthcare is not realistic.
Advair 250/50 Seretide inhaler was $325 2014 price. They make you pay ten times more in US if your life depends on it. Insulin $500 a month much more if you need long acting insulin.
Can’t see anywhere in the video where she talks about cost of healthcare?
No idea how you guys do it in Europe. I’ve been netting tens of thousands of dollars per month for years in California as a software engineer. Why don’t you emigrate?
Yeah, just pack your bags and go, right? Oh btw, are you handing out visas?
@ where there’s a will, there’s a way. I work with tons of people from all over the world.
and what do you get for your taxes??
Wow……you made me rethink my decision 😅
Nice content, vlogs and quality. May you tell which equipments are you using :) ? Like camera, mic and the editting software. Davinci? Subscribed :)
Thank you for the nice comment! I use my iPhone for video and Elgato Wave 3 for microphone. I film the video in OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) and edit using DaVinci Resolve (both open source). (:
its not that there is not enough sunshine for vitamin d production, the problem is that you have to work when the sun is up :)
You are really good at making content. Your lowkey mellow style is very Scandinavian haha
Sliw process isn't necessarily a bad thing. Wery often big mistakes are made with hasten decisions
The 3 month rule is an EU regulation right? You can only stay in a country for 3 months at a time as a non-EU citizen.
I'm an American SWE who worked in Stockholm from 2019-2024. I'm so glad to be back in the US now where I make 2.5x the salary I made in Sweden for the same job and pay less in taxes. Also, the tech job landscape is more limited in Sweden and the discrimination in the hiring process is real. I did remember interviewing at ATG and Viaplay with 15+ years of experience, even giving working solutions to their take-home coding assignments earlier than required, just to have them tell me that they wanted someone with "more experience." To note, I had been through final round interviews at Spotify and Netflix in the USA before.
Why are you in Sweden when you complain so much
To be fair you dont pay that high rent outside of stockholm unless its a newly constructed apartment building, My apartment my wife and me had before buying out house was 3 bedrooms 80 square meters, and incuding a parkingplace we paid like 6200 swedish crowns. This was in swedens 4th largest city, while apartments in Stockholm, Malmö or Gothernburg are abnormaly large.
But answer this question: Did you have that apartment on a first-hand contract? Swedes love talking about inexpensive their spacious apartment is without considering that immigrants cannot get it for the same price. I used to pay 14,000 SEK for a 47 sqm apartment in Stockholm. Meanwhile my Swedish co-worker paid less than 8000 SEK for an apartment twice the size up the street.
More than happy to pay taxes.. our children benefit from : Free school lunches, free school trips, free transport, free lap tops, dental care to 23, financial study assistance from 16 , fee free university education, access to ultra low interest study loans at university ... Our son lives in an apartment in Malmö, cost 6000 sek (£550) a month all in, I've just had a gastroscopy and colonoscopy under general anesthetic, 90 minute procedure and full after care, cost 350sek (£30).. so as an immigrant from the UK, I'm more than happy to pay my way...😊
Such simplified economic comparisons can be highly misleading. To make it at least a bit more fair, you need to look at what the taxes actually cover. Additionally, it's important not to compare the most expensive or the cheapest option in each country.
Even with adjustments for these differences, it's hard to get it exactly right, but consider this:
What do people in the U.S. typically pay out of pocket for sick days, healthcare, childcare, retirement savings, and so on?
How much time can people afford to spend with their families?
Is it really better to have no taxes on environmentally harmful products?
These are too big and complex questions to be carelessly addressed in just a few minutes on RUclips.
All correct. The services more than make up for the difference in taxes when comparing costs in the US. Also true in regards to the cost of housing and pay from one area to another.
Why don’t you make your own video if it bothers you so much to show basic facts about a country? Maybe it’s time for Swedes to get out of their bubble and realize everything is not so great about the country instead of living in denial?
Sweden is now unsafe, expensive, high unemployment, unattainable housing market for younger generation, low salaries compared to many other countries, high taxes, suffering, understaffed healthcare with long wait times, struggling education system, high corruption in government with massive waste of tax money. But please, continue to say how great it is instead of dealing with reality
That compare mac, us price includ sale vat, then you buy in big city? 10%+7%
Thanks for the great video.
I am moving to Stockholm next month and I am looking for a product role.
Is there anyone who knows how to navigate the swedish tech job market?
Fairly accurate description of a lot of things here. But I wouldn’t agree that the weather is bad until May 😀 The lack of sun usually gets a lot better in the middle of march.
For capital gains, starting from 2025 there is ”ISK-konto” with very low taxes on capital gains up to 150k tax free even (if I understand it correctly). Cost of living is high especially here in Stockholm, housing especially. Owning a car is also very expensive here. Id say the fact that records are publicly available overall is a pro, but probably seems scary to those not used to it. You need not worry being targeted for crimes from public records 😂 Just dont flash a Rolex on your instagram and you’ll be fine. I think the ”slow decision making” very much comes down to the company, certain sectors in SE are probably more like that then others. I wouldn’t say this is a typical swedish thing.
Be interesting to know where from america your coming, I would have thought the west coast (since you dont like the weather here) but you dont seem to have the LA accent.
Good informative video, I as a native swede thought it was interesting to hear!
Med ISK så kollar dom hur mycket du har på kontot varje kvartal, sen så räknas det ihop och du betalar, efter lite uträkningar, ungefär 1,086% av värdet.
Det är helt skattefritt att sälja och ta ut pengar från ISK-konton, ingen vinstskatt alltså. Men du får heller inte dra av på skatten om du gått med förlust.
@ - det känns igen, men är det inte också helt skattefritt upp till 150k från och med i år (2025)?
I live here as an American and hate it. Taxes are killing me. The weather is also killing me. The light changes are killing me. I’m moving back to the states.
I would add that Stockholm is kind of impossible, the cost of living or even find somewhere to live. There are much cheaper options in other parts of Sweden. On the other hand that is where most of the work for software engineers is, but that line of work could be done remotely too.
well done.