Live in Europe for Less than the USA

Americans and Canadians often think that living in Europe has to be more expensive but the reality is that most European countries are cheaper than living in the United States you can move to these countries get a second passport lower your tax bill and lower your cost of living without sacrificing lifestyle and today I'm going to tell you where [Music] let's put up a map this is uh from Dalmatian mapper and they figured out which countries have a higher cost of living than the United States in Europe it's a pretty short list you've got the northern European countries Norway Sweden Finland Denmark you have Switzerland you have Luxembourg some of the smaller Financial Centers you have the UK and you have Ireland now come down to why countries like Ireland and Switzerland actually could be a better deal for wealthy Americans uh in a little bit but let me walk you through where you can live and how you can actually move there to lower your cost of living in these crazy times with high inflation I'm Andrew Henderson founder of nomad capitalist we help seven and eight figure entrepreneurs and investors legally reduce your taxes even as an American legally protect your assets increase your freedom and grow your opportunities and so for folks who are looking at what we're talking about but they don't like the idea of moving to Asia they find Latin America scary Eastern Europe seems weird to them they want a place that has the same Lifestyle the same values the same culture the same whatever it is they're looking for Europe can be a soft Landing destination obviously Europe is so different all across the continent it's a whole continent but you have countries like Ireland for example or Malta or Cyprus where they speak your language the UK of course you have places that have better weather especially if you're coming from Canada from the northern us it's important you have places that may be along with your values more closely we've seen that big divide people who are more on the right saying we want to be more in some of the Eastern European values people who are concerned on the left about uh you know abortion rights in the U.S are saying hey where can we go where there's more of this kind of personal freedom so whatever you want Europe may offer it to you and so let's look at the actual numbers to live in some of these countries in the United States cost for a family of four now we agree these numbers may not always be exactly correct but we're using them since they're all from the same the same guide we're using them as just a matter of differences rather than the exact numbers being correct 3522 that's the average cost of living for a family of four in the United States according to this report and so since the dollar and the Euro are essentially a parody right now we'll quote their number in dollars and we'll quote the numbers in Europe in Euros for Portugal very popular place for Americans and people from all around the world have been moving to they have a popular golden Visa program which allows you to have access to live in Portugal for as long as you like with only the requirement of About a Week a year and you can work towards citizenship while doing that they also have a self-sufficient program for folks who don't have the money to invest in the golden Visa so if you just have an income you can go through the self-sufficient program and live there long enough and then just move your tax base to Portugal 1972 1972 Euros so you're barely half the price of the United States on average if you are a family of four obviously these numbers are cheaper with the number which I think doesn't really apply anymore but the number again if we're just keeping these all even of under a thousand Euros if you're single live in Portugal difficult to do if you're renting something but we're talking whole countries by the way not just big cities so Portugal almost uh a little more than half the cost you can work towards Portuguese citizenship in a matter of five years of living there you can get in even if you just have some kind of nominal income for the self-sufficient program or you can make it an easier process on your lifestyle by just buying the optionality by investing a six-figure sum of the golden Visa so a lot of benefits to Portugal even though they are raising some of their taxes recently Croatia one that people ask us about I happen to think that Montenegro which is not in the European Union next door offers lower tax rates more flexibility but many people have flocked to Croatia in recent years 2153 Euros to live there they did recently uh put out a good deal on capital gains taxes for folks who are bringing existing capital gains to probation they have a tax incentive for that a more difficult country to move into but Croatia is uh substantially cheaper than the US let's look at Spain a country that a lot of folks want to move to we've talked about how Spain does not want to be tax competitive they just are a high tax country even the foreigners have some kind of tax incentives uh it's just not really a great deal for tax but you can dramatically reduce your cost of living you can potentially increase the weather increase the culture 2 267 Euros is the average price for a family of four to live in Spain you've got parts of Spain that are just extremely affordable and if you're coming from North America you'll probably find some of those folks those places very interesting I spent a month in Valencia about six years ago interesting place to be lots of places in the south of Spain great weather so you can cut your cost of living there uh not your tax bill but your cost of living they've got a golden Visa they've got other ways to get in through self-sufficiency uh so not a difficult country to get into especially if you can invest Latvia interesting country probably not one most North Americans are familiar with beautiful in the winter in my opinion 2 368 Euros to get in there High Senate of living maybe not the highest standard of living you'd find in Switzerland for example but it is an EU country it is not as affordable as some of the countries but it's more affordable in that more Northern climate so if you want that you know more more temperate climate that can be one dual citizenship is hard to come by it takes you about 10 years so compared to you know Portugal for example where dual citizenship is very easy to get takes a shorter period of time you know lap feels a bit more difficult you have to live there a long time to get citizenship uh but if you like that Northern climate that's an opportunity to get a golden Visa put money in the bank put me in the property you've got a golden visa and you can live there for as long as you want uh you don't have to live there but if you want citizenship you do Cyprus 2 589 Euros if you want that Mediterranean lifestyle kind of further away from it all uh they've got a good tax incentive especially if you're in the I.T sector but if you have foreign income Cyprus can be good and so now we're talking about places where you can really lower your taxes Portugal Cyprus also Malta more expensive not a cheap place 2769 Euros per month much smaller country uh in the Caribbean not a lot of room to roam around but if you want kind of a slower paced lifestyle not as many consumer conveniences you can get multi-citizenship in 15 to 18 months that would allow you to live in any of these European countries but it certainly would also like living in Malta uh you can also get they have a number of different golden visa and residents and tax residence programs to live in Malta and if you're not American you can lower your taxes there uh as well Netherlands even 3198 Euros has special benefits for Americans under the daf program uh still a little bit cheaper than the U.S and yet you have a lot more things included in what you pay for your Tech and what you get for your taxes and so probably a better return on your tax investment if you're coming from the U.S especially if you're not it's a seven or eight figure level uh still cheaper to live in than the United States and obviously very well developed and so those countries are very well functioning countries and we could go through I mean Germany's cheaper Paul wins cheaper Poland has really bridged the Gap in terms of their differences between Germany and in terms of the quality of life it's really been a great success story France is cheaper these are all very well developed places so you don't have to go to emerging countries to live the nomed capitalist lifestyle in some of these you're not going to lower your taxes very much but at least you can lower your cost of living and if you come from a tax treaty country you you shouldn't be double taxed uh and so even the places like Ireland and Switzerland which are more expensive we have tax incentives so Switzerland's lump sum for example if you obtain citizenship in an eea or EU country um either by descent let's say you have someone in your family tree through malta's program or eventually through the Portugal golden Visa you could go to Switzerland and you would get basically half off the price that other Americans Canadians Australians would have you would get for Switzerland's lump sum tax system you could potentially pay a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in tax and that's the deal there's a tiny wealth tax in some of the cantons so you can pick which Canton you want to live in each of their own little wealth tax some of it some of them are minuscule so Switzerland is definitely an expensive place to live and the taxes are not low but let's say you make five million dollars a year could you afford to go out get citizenship in a European country for you and your family let's say you have no other way to do it so you get it in Malta in 18 months maybe it costs you a million dollars so you paid essentially a 20 tax one year of income to get citizenship for your whole family to be able for the rest of your lives live in any European country you want and travel anywhere in the world even if you don't have your current country citizenship but on top of that you could also then move to Switzerland and you'd save half the tax burden for as long as you were under that lump sum system so if you make five million dollars and you paid let's say three hundred thousand dollars in tax that's a six percent effective tax rate your cost of living versus the United States will go up but again you're going to get more for that things are efficient care is good there's a lot of benefits to living in Switzerland and so if you are a high earner that could be overall a better deal than living in the United States and paying a lot of money and so you could potentially say I'm going to become a multi-citizen no longer be a U.S citizen live anywhere I want Europe and then claim to and then go and live in Switzerland and pay six percent tax effectively that could be a very effective way to reduce your cost of living because you're not paying so much in tax that you get nothing in return for same thing in Ireland with its uh tax incentives for foreigners you could reduce your taxes dramatically again if you're an American depends on what the income is but even if you're an American uh and you have a business you could find ways to dramatically reduce your tax burden by living in some of these European countries by simply moving your business if you were to live in Switzerland Ireland Italy is a lump sum tax program it's another country it's substantially cheaper than the United States to live in in many of these places you can be working towards a second citizenship if you don't already acquire it through malta's program or through citizenship by dissent through your family tree uh but you are going to be controlling your tax expense and you can put your business somewhere else in these programs so the downside of let's say Portugal's program we've talked about before is you're less uh flexible in terms of where you can put your company you go to Ireland you go to Switzerland you go to Italy you're going to have the flexibility to put your company wherever you want and whether you stay an American citizen or not or whether you're any other country Citizen and you simply leave your country's tax net you can reduce your company's tax to as little as zero and then pay some nominal amount of tax let's say in Switzerland so you pay Switzerland they're a couple hundred grand you put the company somewhere where it pays zero you structure that properly and now you've got a very low tax rate if you're a seven or eight figure earner and so even the countries that are more expensive can be substantially less expensive with some basic tax planning whether you're American and even easier if you're not so you can do both you can move to Portugal get your tax break down at the single digits in many cases cut your cost of living nearly in half work your way towards the second passport or you can go and spend a little bit more knowing that you're paying for that by reducing the taxes that you would pay in your home country and that's what makes many places in Europe cheaper than the US

Channel: Nomad Capitalist

Views: 39,152

Keywords: nomad capitalist, go where you're treated best, second passport, dual citizenship, second citizenship, andrew henderson, where to live, moving to another country, life abroad, personal finance, how to invest, taxes, investing, best places to live, leaving usa, leaving america, where to move, Live in Europe for Less than the USA, living in europe, moving to europe, europe, living abroad, live in europe, life in europe, cheapest places to live, cheapest countries in europe

Id: xeDFw8dPIGY

Length: 11min 17sec (677 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 08 2023