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Another issue is health care insurance. For example Germany has mandatory insurance. So you cannot cancel your insurance, and even if you travel in another cou
by benibela 10y ago
Another issue is health care insurance.
For example Germany has mandatory insurance. So you cannot cancel your insurance, and even if you travel in another country they still expect you to pay the insurance in Germany. Public insurance for freelancers costs around 350€ / month, and as DN without German employer they will classify you as freelancer.
You probably do not have to pay the full fee while being outside of Germany, but public insurance has various rules which even the insurance providers do not know, because they are set by law/regulations not by the providers themselves and the clerks by the providers rarely deal with DN.
1. If you have no savings, it only costs a reduced rate of 150€ / month. But traveling without savings is risky, too.
2. If they register you as freelancers, you can opt out and get private insurance, which costs between the reduced and the full public insurance rate, while you are young. But it is a market-rate and become arbitrary expensive, if you are old, and you can not switch back to public insurance (except for marriage or a non-freelancing job with a certain inome).
3. Thus you must be very carefully when choosing a travel health care insurance, because they might consider that to be a private insurance, and if you had private insurance, you cannot go back to the public insurance.
4. There was an obscure emergency-like plan, where you register as being in another country and then only pay a minimal fee to be insured, but do not get anything covered and you must be outside of Germany for several months. Hard to find any information about that.
5. The important thing is to do all (un)registrations before leaving. Since insurance is mandatory, you always have insurance in Germany, even though you were away. So when you are back there, the new insurance will not begin in that moment, but begin retroactively when the last insurance had ended. When you are then still doing freelancer work, they will bill you a lump sum of 350€ for every month you were away.