That cold-cheap bit is decidedly not applicable to Europe, by the way. Scandinavia is overall among the most expensive places in Europe. I'd imagine Switzerland is more expensive by a bit, but Oslo and Stockholm are brutal as well.
I think it is applicable to Europe, but in a different way: Scandinavia and Switzerland are expensive, but salaries are equally high. Compare that to the French Riviera for example, where house prices are nearly as high as Stockholm, but salaries are much lower. That's the problem with sunshine: it attracts a lot of wealthy retirees and tourists, who distort the local market.
I lived in Sweden for seven years, and this is so far from the truth it's hilarious.
Relative quality of life is garbage in Sweden for a tech worker. Your life will be not that much better than if you work in Carlings selling plaid shirts to hard-rock hipsters.
My Swedish friends have decent jobs and still live unglamorous, frugal lives. As soon as I left Sweden, my quality of life completely transformed for the better.
I think it's all relative... I have two colleagues who moved from our offices on the Riviera to our offices in Stockholm, and they gained about 15% take-home salary each, with cheaper rents and public transport. I really don't think anyone's life in Sweden is garbage, as long as you can stand the winters
Minor clarification: I did say relative QoL for a tech worker, meaning less difference between how a low-skilled worker and a tech worker would be remunerated in Sweden vs another country like Poland.
If you're a low-skilled worker, QoL is likely going to be better in Sweden. If you're a tech worker, QoL is almost certainly going to be better in Poland.
My anecdata says otherwise. I still work for a Swedish company and visit frequently. I still know many tech workers who's lives are miserable, quite frankly.
If you go to live and work in Sweden, where will you actually stay? You can't rent an apartment — the waiting list is around 16 years for a decent apartment in the city. It's even several years wait to rent an apartment in the ghetto.
How did your colleagues find apartments? If they didn't buy places or have apartments provided through their employer, I'm guessing they're sub-letting through Blocket.
Work deals with finding apartments, but only by contacting estate agents, the lease is signed and paid by the employee. They're both next to "Skytteholm", apparently it's quite nice and not too far from either city center or airport?
Everyone has a different idea of a reasonable commute distance, but I'd say Skytteholm is pretty far — it's an hour by car to the city. Not sure what the public transport situation is like there.
For reference, Stockholm's suburbia is places like Hägersten.
Swede here. I think this is because it's really, really hard to improve your quality of life in any meaningful way by just spending more money. Especially in the city.
…Then what is this discussion about? The title of the thread is "Ask HN: Cheap places to live with a good intellectual atmosphere".
I might be misinterpreting your point, but it seems like you're taking the position that it doesn't matter that Sweden is outrageously expensive in many regards, because money has no impact on quality of life anyway. If that is indeed the position you're taking, well, it's a trite and nonsensical one.
Your final sentence makes me believe I've misinterpreted you, so apologies in advance if that's the case.
There was no point to misinterpret, it was just an observation. You claimed that quality of life for a tech worker is relatively garbage. I was simply providing context as to why — tech workers make lots of money (comparatively) but it’s hard to spend that money to improve your quality of life.
Relative to Sweden, I believe there are other European countries where the equivalent job would net you far more disposable income. By quality of life, I understand we're talking strictly about material things (since they cost money, and we're discussing money).
If you're a tech worker in Poland, you will feel far wealthier living in Poland than if you're a tech worker living and working in Sweden. You will be able to live in a nicer home, eat out at restaurants more often, and generally have more money to do stuff with.
Buying things (clothes, gadgets) is a different story, because they can't import the stuff any cheaper than Sweden does, but I don't think the difference there is enough to counteract the general difference in QoL and buying power between living in the two countries.
Edit: Also, to clarify, I did not say that quality of life for a tech worker is garbage. It's actually generally great, as I think everyone here knows. My point is that if you want to reap the financial benefits of being a tech worker, Sweden is not the place to do it.
The cost of housing / income ratio in Stockholm is so out of whack that it’s basically impossible to enter the housing market without at least €50k-75k in savings to have as a down payment for an apartment anywhere nice.
And in addition to this renting is basically kafkaesque. You might be able to sublet a place for up to a year, but the rents are equally horrible compared to the average income. Getting a first hand contract is essentially impossible unless you know a private landlord who will give you preferential treatment, as generally the is a queue in which you need AT LEAST 10+ years to get something not nice at all
It's the same in Switzerland. There is just almost no way to be able to afford a house (or just an apartment), because most of them start at 1 million and I am not even talking about apartments in Zurich.
Thats disappointing. After visiting, I found I really enjoyed both Sweden and Norway, and wouldn't mind moving there someday. Sounds like that may be difficult.
Who wants to live in Stockholm anyway? Malmö is much better connected to Europe. You can basically drive to Germany, You can fly anywhere from Copenhagen which is 20 minutes train ride away from Malmö. Copenhagen airport has a lot more flights than Stockholm.
That said, you get advantage of being right next to Copenhagen. It is a big market of jobs there. Salaries are high because it is a big, crowded city with high living expenses. So you could live in Malmö for cheap and commute to Copenhagen for work.
All that said, as a 26 year old, I managed to take a gap year in Malmö now, after working/saving for 4 years, while managing to keep paying my mortgage, owning a car etc.
Norway's rental market is nothing like Sweden's. In Norway rents may be higher but it's trivial to get a nice apartment in the center of town basically immediately.
Honestly I haven't checked for a few years (currently living in Sweden), but last time I checked most programming jobs where working for engineering (mainly connected to the oil industry) or finance companies as opposed to more pure software companies. Not that this has to be a bad thing in any way. That being said I gather from friends in Norway that the startup scene is slowly growing even there and there are more and more small software companies looking to hire.
