ywetka wrote:ok, ok, I totally get your point, no need to be rude or bitter (assuming by those censored words), we're just having a friendly discussion, not solving EU crisis...
Just to clarify my thoughts - yes, taxes in Finland are high but they are high also in many other EU countries, it depends on the way of work (freelance, employee...), where do you work and also on earned amount - in our case, you don't know any of these. The taxes we're paying are also pretty huge.
Yes, they are so huge in Spain for example that their tax level is only 10% lower than Finnish. Finland has even globally one of the higher taxation levels. As for you, I can make good guesses based on your information. To put simply, you are good weather inhabitant in Finland, while I am here every goddamn month of the year.
Also, you neglegt to remember that housing can be much cheaper elsewhere, where weather conditions make it possible to put together cardboard box and call it a house.
Then... also in Finland there are some people who earn much more than others, or no? If you e.g. earn according to this table (
http://www.saprankings.com/blog/tags/SA ... ing-Rates/) - and those are indeed real numbers, I don't think you're struggling financially as you described here.
SAP consultant salaries which start at MINIMUM with 9 years of experience? Talk about picking the worst kind of example.
For your benefit, current finnish average wage is about 3k per month. Out of that, huge chunk can go into taxes, I would make wild guess of 22-28%.
And the last thing - it also all depends on the cost of living.
And again, you here fail to grasp that your experience of how "easy" it is to save money is because you do not live 12 months of the year in Finland with HIGH living costs.
It's same as me telling some guy working at sweatshop in Asia that it's not so bad to work, I can do it just fine... Sitting in the office 8-9 hours with benefit of breaks.
Yeah, he would be thrilled with his 14+ hour days without even chance to go take a leak.
E.g. I bought car only when I had money in cash, that's the thing I'd never go to debt for and it would be the first thing I'd get rid if money would be tight. Maybe with children is a bit harder, but hey, I grew up without having car in family and I didn't miss it at all
. And so on... we're all buying too many things we only think we need, but actually we don't
Welcome to Finland. This is not where you grew up. Me taking kids to see either grandma is about 300km trip by car. Using some other means of moving it would require at least one train, after which we need to find bus which takes us at least within rough vicinity of the mentioned grandma's, resulting in chirpy little walk with the little buggers hauling everything we need with us.
Thanks to extra stops by traines etc and lack of public transportation we would speak of 5-6 hours in transit at least.
I know it's complicated but ...
No, you have not got a clue. You just imagine you grasp reality, but you do not.
). We're both working and because we don't have debts (we did everything to pay them off as soon as possible, and hopefully never again) we manage to save quite nice sum every month... it's an easy math. I'm only speaking from my experience that's why I said it's doable - it's definitely doable for me.
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