13 ms·

True... but cost of living is considerably lower. When I lived there, my costs were basically a 900€ for a rental 120m2 apartment + 300€ for groceries and eati

True... but cost of living is considerably lower. When I lived there, my costs were basically a 900€ for a rental 120m2 apartment + 300€ for groceries and eating out. Since the start of the pandemic I moved to my own place and now pay 400€ in mortgage. The biggest challenge I see is the VC sector in continental Europe. While in the US, I see seed rounds of 0.5-1.5 Millions, the last 2 seed deals I've seen in Lisbon were of mere 50K€. A trifle.

atlasunshrugged 6y ago
I do wonder if the VC sector in Europe (or at least Western Europe and the Nordics) will heat up a lot, I keep seeing more US VCs looking at deals there because the valuations aren't insane and I'd guess they'd push up the prices. That said, not sure it'll trickle down to employees, I noticed when working in tech in Berlin that companies seemed much less generous with equity to employees (and lower salaries)
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  European companies are run like shit. Europeans don't understand what good customer service is. This I've come to realise is what is holding Europe back. Let me illustrate. I signed my wife up with Swapfiets. You rent a bike by the month with them. Basically you fill in a form online, enter your payments card details and they deliver a bike. You then get billed on a monthly subscription until you cancel. All good. Great service until.... we missed a payment because I forgot to move money onto the card in time. No worries I'll just move it across and let them try again.... except... no they don't try again they send emails instead. They sent 4 emails however due to some factors we never paid the bill manually (working full-time at home with a baby and a toddler during a pandemic some less important stuff can slip) so they sent it to the debt collection agency. A few days prior to them sending it to the debt collectors the next months payment became due and was successfully collected. Now if I owe a company x amount of money and then the next month y amount I expect my balance to be x + y and once I pay an amount I expect it to be deducted from the balance and the overdue payment date to be reset. In this case I would expect my due balance to be y. Not with swapfiets, my due balance was x. I raised this with them and they basically told me the system doesn't work like that (no acknowledgement that it should work like that and this is a mistake on their part), they send email reminders and basically fuck you. This sums up European attitudes and companies perfectly. To recap they made the following mistakes: 1: Their UX is broken in that every other subscription I use will try to take payment again before sending a reminder. 2: Their app is not coded according to industry standard billing processes. 3: They refuse to acknowledge any accountability on their side and basically tell me to do one. This is European startups in a nutshell. We suck at customer service and it shows.
908B64B197 6y ago
This CoL thing is a cool HR sales tactic, but breaks down quite fast when looking at saving rates and long term equity. The thing is, by having a mortgage, you are effectively building equity in a good you can resell later (a house). Cheap house means you can sell it for cheap and retire where it's cheap. Meanwhile, a property in a hot market where the mortgage is still the same fraction of your income can be resold for much more. Gives you freedom to retire where you want.
- RobRivera 6y ago
  This is the hot insight people forget to discuss, when it comes to numbers. HR hates it lul
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- peferron 6y ago
  Even without buying, you can spend a higher % of your income on rent and still end up saving more in absolute numbers; and the absolute number is what eventually matters unless you're dead set on picking a place and never moving again.
  - refurb 6y ago
    Yup. If your rent doubles from $1,000 to $2,000, but your salary doubled from $75,000 to $150,000, you incurred $12,000 more in expenses for $50,000 more in after tax income.
    - wooger 6y ago
      But you have to live in a specific place, and what you get for your $2000 is considered cramp squalor by the rest of the country.
      - refurb 6y ago
        Sure, but if you're making $50,000 more post-tax, you could always bump it up to a nicer place and still be ahead.
martinald 6y ago
Moving from London to Lisbon was surprising. Rental costs were cheaper, but not as much as I expected. The main problem I found was the housing stock is in pretty terrible shape. Flats have basically no insulation and often have bad problems with damp. No insulation means the flats are freezing in winter and you can hear the neighbors do everything. While eating out is definitely significantly cheaper, many things are (much) more expensive than in London. Supermarkets, home internet, cell service (brutally expensive), utilities (I was paying 10x for utilities in winter compared to London, because of the complete lack of insulation - and Portugal has some of the highest electricity rates in Europe). Overall I would not suggest moving to Lisbon if you are expecting an overall significantly lower cost of living than London. There are lots of other benefits though :).
- bogomipz 6y ago
  Would you say that the places are close in overall monthly expenses then? I would surprised to read how that those utilities are that much more expensive. I've been to Lisbon in December and remember it being quite mild and warm. Does the damp cold set in later then? I would love to hear what the other benefits you enjoy about living there.
  - martinald 6y ago
    Yeah. The difference is you are going to be living in central Lisbon vs zone 2-3 London for roughly the same price. Obviously you are going to save a fortune going from prime central london to Lisbon, but that's the same anywhere. The cold is really the buildings fault. It's hard to explain it you are used to northern European construction. It seems to be colder inside than out! It's quite a common and well talked about problem. What is good: weather, people, interesting places to visit 30min-1hr away, food, etc. What you'd expect really.
- stainforth 6y ago
  > There are lots of other benefits though :) Ok, go ahead with them?
  - 6y ago
bogomipz 6y ago
I would be curious to hear what type of housing you can find in 400€ range. Do you live in Lisbon proper?
- est31 6y ago
  Seems that you can buy flats/apartments for quite cheap. It seems to start in the five digits for the less attractive things, but nicer apartments can be gotten for few hundred grand... Also depends on the duration of the mortgage of course.
  - lostmsu 6y ago
    Which websites are the best to search? Anything in English?
genericstorage3 6y ago
if you save 3000gbp in London, you'll save 500eur in Lisbon. Compare that, and living costs don't matter that much. In 10 years the difference is huge
- paganel 6y ago
  At the end of it you also would have 10 years of having lived in London vs 10 years of having lived in Lisbon, for some the financial tradeoff may be worthwhile.
pjmlp 6y ago
So basically all of the salary with almost nothing left, given that average companies in Portugal pay between 1000 and 1500 for the best jobs.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  That's the average But you can actually get paid more than that in IT positions, no problem (after-tax salary)
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    I left Portugal during the start of the crisis in 2003, was earning 2000 after taxes, which was a dream job back then. Nowadays the only people I am aware are still getting as much, are senior of my age and older, friends that are self employed, or those that only get half of the salary in official ways (yes undeclared payments are still daily business). So yeah, while being away for 18 years might not make me have a daily picture, it is not as I don't come regularly back home.
    - raverbashing 6y ago
      Ah interesting, I had never suspected you were more directly connected to the country. But I'm not disagreeing with you, the salary ceiling is low, I was just noting that it wasn't as low as 1k/1.5k (yeah, 2k/2.5k is more like it, the taxes don't help neither)
- brauhaus 6y ago
  Which is why Lisbon is so appealing to digital nomads. Your salary will likely by much higher than that.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    As Portuguese and veteran of the first .com wave, I highly doubt it. Then you will end up getting a small flat in Sintra, Vila-Franca, Seixal, Cacias, or whatever up to 30 - 60 km from Lisbon and enjoy 1 h commute every single day, both ways.
onion2k 6y ago
True... but cost of living is considerably lower. While companies continue to base offers they make on your current salary (if you're silly enough to disclose it), accepting a lower salary on the basis of a lower cost of living is going to lower all your future salaries. While in the US, I see seed rounds of 0.5-1.5 Millions, the last 2 seed deals I've seen in Lisbon were of mere 50K€ Seed rounds don't exist in the US any more. The first raise is effectively a Series A, because startups are expected to bootstrap to revenue now.

atlasunshrugged 6y ago

I do wonder if the VC sector in Europe (or at least Western Europe and the Nordics) will heat up a lot, I keep seeing more US VCs looking at deals there because the valuations aren't insane and I'd guess they'd push up the prices. That said, not sure it'll trickle down to employees, I noticed when working in tech in Berlin that companies seemed much less generous with equity to employees (and lower salaries)

rorykoehler 6y ago
European companies are run like shit. Europeans don't understand what good customer service is. This I've come to realise is what is holding Europe back. Let me illustrate. I signed my wife up with Swapfiets. You rent a bike by the month with them. Basically you fill in a form online, enter your payments card details and they deliver a bike. You then get billed on a monthly subscription until you cancel. All good. Great service until.... we missed a payment because I forgot to move money onto the card in time. No worries I'll just move it across and let them try again.... except... no they don't try again they send emails instead. They sent 4 emails however due to some factors we never paid the bill manually (working full-time at home with a baby and a toddler during a pandemic some less important stuff can slip) so they sent it to the debt collection agency. A few days prior to them sending it to the debt collectors the next months payment became due and was successfully collected. Now if I owe a company x amount of money and then the next month y amount I expect my balance to be x + y and once I pay an amount I expect it to be deducted from the balance and the overdue payment date to be reset. In this case I would expect my due balance to be y. Not with swapfiets, my due balance was x. I raised this with them and they basically told me the system doesn't work like that (no acknowledgement that it should work like that and this is a mistake on their part), they send email reminders and basically fuck you. This sums up European attitudes and companies perfectly. To recap they made the following mistakes: 1: Their UX is broken in that every other subscription I use will try to take payment again before sending a reminder. 2: Their app is not coded according to industry standard billing processes. 3: They refuse to acknowledge any accountability on their side and basically tell me to do one. This is European startups in a nutshell. We suck at customer service and it shows.

908B64B197 6y ago

This CoL thing is a cool HR sales tactic, but breaks down quite fast when looking at saving rates and long term equity. The thing is, by having a mortgage, you are effectively building equity in a good you can resell later (a house). Cheap house means you can sell it for cheap and retire where it's cheap. Meanwhile, a property in a hot market where the mortgage is still the same fraction of your income can be resold for much more. Gives you freedom to retire where you want.

RobRivera 6y ago
This is the hot insight people forget to discuss, when it comes to numbers. HR hates it lul
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
peferron 6y ago
Even without buying, you can spend a higher % of your income on rent and still end up saving more in absolute numbers; and the absolute number is what eventually matters unless you're dead set on picking a place and never moving again.
- refurb 6y ago
  Yup. If your rent doubles from $1,000 to $2,000, but your salary doubled from $75,000 to $150,000, you incurred $12,000 more in expenses for $50,000 more in after tax income.
  - wooger 6y ago
    But you have to live in a specific place, and what you get for your $2000 is considered cramp squalor by the rest of the country.
    - refurb 6y ago
      Sure, but if you're making $50,000 more post-tax, you could always bump it up to a nicer place and still be ahead.

martinald 6y ago

Moving from London to Lisbon was surprising. Rental costs were cheaper, but not as much as I expected. The main problem I found was the housing stock is in pretty terrible shape. Flats have basically no insulation and often have bad problems with damp. No insulation means the flats are freezing in winter and you can hear the neighbors do everything. While eating out is definitely significantly cheaper, many things are (much) more expensive than in London. Supermarkets, home internet, cell service (brutally expensive), utilities (I was paying 10x for utilities in winter compared to London, because of the complete lack of insulation - and Portugal has some of the highest electricity rates in Europe). Overall I would not suggest moving to Lisbon if you are expecting an overall significantly lower cost of living than London. There are lots of other benefits though :).

bogomipz 6y ago
Would you say that the places are close in overall monthly expenses then? I would surprised to read how that those utilities are that much more expensive. I've been to Lisbon in December and remember it being quite mild and warm. Does the damp cold set in later then? I would love to hear what the other benefits you enjoy about living there.
- martinald 6y ago
  Yeah. The difference is you are going to be living in central Lisbon vs zone 2-3 London for roughly the same price. Obviously you are going to save a fortune going from prime central london to Lisbon, but that's the same anywhere. The cold is really the buildings fault. It's hard to explain it you are used to northern European construction. It seems to be colder inside than out! It's quite a common and well talked about problem. What is good: weather, people, interesting places to visit 30min-1hr away, food, etc. What you'd expect really.
stainforth 6y ago
> There are lots of other benefits though :) Ok, go ahead with them?
- 6y ago

bogomipz 6y ago

I would be curious to hear what type of housing you can find in 400€ range. Do you live in Lisbon proper?

est31 6y ago
Seems that you can buy flats/apartments for quite cheap. It seems to start in the five digits for the less attractive things, but nicer apartments can be gotten for few hundred grand... Also depends on the duration of the mortgage of course.
- lostmsu 6y ago
  Which websites are the best to search? Anything in English?

genericstorage3 6y ago

if you save 3000gbp in London, you'll save 500eur in Lisbon. Compare that, and living costs don't matter that much. In 10 years the difference is huge

paganel 6y ago
At the end of it you also would have 10 years of having lived in London vs 10 years of having lived in Lisbon, for some the financial tradeoff may be worthwhile.

pjmlp 6y ago

So basically all of the salary with almost nothing left, given that average companies in Portugal pay between 1000 and 1500 for the best jobs.

raverbashing 6y ago
That's the average But you can actually get paid more than that in IT positions, no problem (after-tax salary)
- pjmlp 6y ago
  I left Portugal during the start of the crisis in 2003, was earning 2000 after taxes, which was a dream job back then. Nowadays the only people I am aware are still getting as much, are senior of my age and older, friends that are self employed, or those that only get half of the salary in official ways (yes undeclared payments are still daily business). So yeah, while being away for 18 years might not make me have a daily picture, it is not as I don't come regularly back home.
  - raverbashing 6y ago
    Ah interesting, I had never suspected you were more directly connected to the country. But I'm not disagreeing with you, the salary ceiling is low, I was just noting that it wasn't as low as 1k/1.5k (yeah, 2k/2.5k is more like it, the taxes don't help neither)
brauhaus 6y ago
Which is why Lisbon is so appealing to digital nomads. Your salary will likely by much higher than that.
- pjmlp 6y ago
  As Portuguese and veteran of the first .com wave, I highly doubt it. Then you will end up getting a small flat in Sintra, Vila-Franca, Seixal, Cacias, or whatever up to 30 - 60 km from Lisbon and enjoy 1 h commute every single day, both ways.

onion2k 6y ago

True... but cost of living is considerably lower. While companies continue to base offers they make on your current salary (if you're silly enough to disclose it), accepting a lower salary on the basis of a lower cost of living is going to lower all your future salaries. While in the US, I see seed rounds of 0.5-1.5 Millions, the last 2 seed deals I've seen in Lisbon were of mere 50K€ Seed rounds don't exist in the US any more. The first raise is effectively a Series A, because startups are expected to bootstrap to revenue now.