Just came back visiting friends living in Doha, Qatar. That country is…weird. I lived four years in Geneva with my wife and my comment to her was:
Switzerland: I am the calmest country in the world
Qatar: hold my (super expensive) beer
I stopped playing the game “the place where I live is better than yours” years ago for two reasons:
- there are several studies that demonstrate that people living in friendly weather areas, take California, are not happier than people living in harsh weather areas, like Luxembourg. There is an initial boost of happiness, if you move to a better area, but it fades quickly. You benchmark yourself with your neighbours, that have the same weather as you, while you forget your previous self living with coat and gloves ten months out of twelve.
- Each of us is different and we also live different life situations: wife, working wife, kids, no kids, parents, friends, no friends, etc. I am Italian but I (basically) never worked in Italy. I know people that accepted half of their salaries to go back to Italy, I would not have moved for the same money when I was single and most def I would not go back there now that I have a family (if every friend that went to visit Italy and came back to tell me “wow, you were right, they are racist indeed!” had to pay me the proverbial cent I would be retired for real by now…and yes, you need to have non-white friends before thinking that has never happened to you).
I rarely discuss about financial stuff with my friends, it is a boring topic for them, I guess, and I am not the person who throws “hey, how do you invest your money?” in a conversation (even if it could lead to interesting venues); curiously I got enquired about Bitcoins by my hairdresser and wedding photographer. But when you talk about life with people that do not live where they were born, usually money are part of the conversation, in terms of salaries, opportunities and cost of living. Talking about his experience living in Doha, conversation got FIRE-ish, even if I am not sure he knows the concept. He does not see himself having a corporate job until retirement, maybe buy some land in France and move there to farm at a certain point; Doha is a good place to achieve this objective since salaries are high and you pay no taxes.What about the saving rate? He lives there with his wife and two kids and had two choices: live in a nice area full of expats like them, to ease the feeling of being far from home, have a big apartment with a room for visiting parents and friends, pool for the kids and other amenities, or maximise his savings living a less nice area and cutting all the luxuries like the pool. He choose the former and cannot agree more.
Stretching your budget just to show off to your friends (or even worse, social media) that you are living the life is wrong but seeing the smile on your daughter while she enjoys the pool makes the expense not so unreasonable, especially when you can comfortably afford it.
The other day I stumbled on this blog by a girl that manage to save
50% of her PhD student income in Switzerland. Set aside the fact that not only a
student can have a proper income but that she also manages to save 50% of it, I
read the split of her expenses: 15% for food; after some easy math through the
post, you arrive to solve she has a monthly food budget of CHF 266 to starve
live with. I lived in Geneva for four year, this is a place where a pack of
pasta costs CHF 2 and if you go out to eat is impossible to spend less than CHF
20…ah she also claims to eat out once or
twice a week. So, provided that everything she wrote is true, I ask myself:
is it worth it? Maybe the fact that it made me recall the stories of my grandmother
who lived during the war and had nothing to eat is not the best comparison, but
you really want to go through that only to be independent? Maybe I am not the
right candidate because I hate cooking, but financial freedom should also mean
freedom to do whatever you want with your time, not being constrained to eat
all your meals at home (when you have something to put on your plate).
Will I accept to live in Bali without working (I love surfing), knowing that I will never be able to travel anywhere else…and having past the ten years before commuting 3 hours per day to save on rent? Would it be the right choice for my daughter?
When I moved to London, I did not buy a car because I consider it a useless, expensive luxury in this city (it is), I am saving consistently but would it be worth to go taliban on it?
Would I renounce to ten years of holidays for it? I gave up flying Ryanair/Easyjet a long time ago because the ordeal of their rules was not worth the savings.
I am stuck in the middle, saving enough but not as much as I could, to probably end up with the retirement my parents had for free from the State…
What I am reading now:
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