Ask HN: Leaving Germany – where to find quality of life as experienced engineer?
Nothing like moving abroad for a while to appreciate good old Germany. I centered my life abroad and I&#x27;m not likely to move back but I&#x27;m getting nostalgic ;)<p>This is a bit rant-y, and some of this may be US-centric but I think it will apply to equatorial countries as well. I think you should totally move abroad - if you stay for only 1-2 years you&#x27;ll not want even to move back, after 5-10 years you start to appreciate Germany, wait 10-20 and you&#x27;ll miss it.<p>All that is to say, you should definitely try to move abroad and see if you can build a life there. At the very least it will absolutely enrich your life with all these new experiences and recast how you see your own country&#x2F;society. And if you like it and want to permanently settle, even better! Also, with risk there&#x27;s usually opportunity, I would think equatorial islands may have demand for your wife&#x27;s skills e.g.<p>So now to the ranting... the high taxes imo (at least partially) allow for:<p>- reasonable equality and social equity through redistribution,<p>- low crime and violence (also social cohesion),<p>- excellent &quot;broad&quot; education and opportunities (i.e. not ivy league-level education but very good, affordable and low competition for many),<p>- generally more &quot;care-free&quot; lifestyle (social safety net, imo sensible regulations, medical system, education system are all less stress-inducing)<p>Conversely:<p>- Taxes: you pay lower taxes, but then you spend a lot of money on health-care and education. Sure you can cut corners (esp. on health-care when you&#x27;re young) but then you start worrying about going to this or that doctor or getting this procedure or not.<p>- Education: get ready to pay 20% extra for houses in &quot;good school districts&quot; or spend a good chunk of salary on private schools (which is probably what you&#x27;re looking at outside the US). The best-of-the-best education is going to be quite a bit better than the average in Germany, but most of German education is &quot;good&quot; and free. And then private school means your kids grow up around mostly &quot;rich kids&quot;, personally not my ideal situation. Also, families in the Bay Area are interviewing with their 4-5 year old kids for the &quot;best&quot; kindergardens&#x2F;pre-schools, I see very high pressure early on. Everything is so competitive, but especially &quot;top-tier&quot; education.<p>- Equality&#x2F;Equity: Living life at the top is much nicer than in Germany. But the downside is that there&#x27;s going to be parts of town that you probably don&#x27;t want to walk to&#x2F;through at night - depending on your chosen region you may not want to walk, period, or take public transit (if there even is public transit). Fortunately, your really nice house will probably be in a gated community so you automatically avoid half the population (&#x2F;s).<p>- High salaries: generally you work a lot more, there&#x27;s a reason so many people dream of retiring to an island. Fewer vacation days or no structured vacation at all. Less time with kids. Though that wouldn&#x27;t apply when working for a EU company probably. Great for a while if yo plan to move somewhere lower-cost-of-living eventually and can save up, but for most people the high-paying jobs are in high-COL areas so quality of life isn&#x27;t even strictly better (yes, remote - but I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s more 5% even here on HN). Sure you now drive a Tesla, but you&#x27;re still not saving a lot and spending all that money on your rent&#x2F;house, kids, groceries, and &quot;entertainment&quot; - just on a &quot;higher&quot; level.<p>- Regulation: depending on your location get ready to never drink tap water because the water supply is under&#x2F;un-regulated, and e.g. get ready to do your own research on food additives, vitamins+supplements and so on because they&#x27;re largely unregulated and a free-for-all. There will be no more great renters-protections, consumer-protections. Again, this is fine for a couple years but eventually starts to grind you down.<p>- Groceries&#x2F;food: You might miss some of the stuff you grew up with, not at first but eventually. Also, again cost - German groceries are ridiculously cheap. $5 mozarealla ball? $5 bar of chocolate? $10 for paper towels&#x2F;toilet paper? Also, a lot of stuff is just &quot;different&quot; and not what you&#x27;re used to. Every time I go back, I go to Aldi&#x2F;LIDL and smile when I&#x27;ve bought my weekly groceries and it&#x27;s less than $200-300. Yes, we spend about $600-1000 on groceries alone a month for a larger fam ($600 if you go do Trader Joe&#x27;s and don&#x27;t splurge, $1000 if you order Whole Foods and have it delivered)<p>- Housing: You will probably get a lot more &quot;size&quot; for you money, but quality may not be what you&#x27;re used to from Germany. I&#x27;ve seen huge $2M homes with only single-pane windows ($200-300 on heating every month in the colder months) and foundations that shift, luxury $1.7M condos in SF that have water roof&#x2F;siding leaks within 10 years of being built and so on.