5 ms·

How so? Healthcare? FIRE seems much more attainable in the US

sameoldtune 2y ago
Healthcare is just a word until you get into your sixties, then it is a lifestyle
shiroiushi 2y ago
Housing and healthcare costs are insane. When you're older, you need a lot more healthcare (and you won't have that nice insurance plan you had at your big company job when you were working), and housing keeps getting more expensive, which is a problem if you're on a fixed income. You could move to much cheaper locales (i.e. rural areas), but those are "healthcare deserts" where there's no competent doctors left and hospitals are all closing left and right, plus when you're infirm how exactly do you drive yourself? Living in a walkable city (or any city really) is much more doable when you're older for these practical reasons (less need to drive, healthcare providers close by), but then you can't afford the housing there.
- anovikov 2y ago
  Housing in US is in fact one of the cheapest... everywhere, measured as price per square foot as percentage of income. Several times cheaper than in many countries and at least somewhat cheaper than almost every single one, rich or poor, democratic or authoritarian. It's just that "normal" housing in the US is what's only attainable to the very rich and only because they inherited it, in most of Europe let's say: even 1% won't be able to buy an equivalent of median new US single family house, in EU - that 1% probably owns a similar or somewhat better house but simply because they bought or built it generations before.
  - sonzohan 2y ago
    Got a source for this? I'm only finding sources that vehemently disagree, and say the only countries worse for this are Portugal and Canada. Everywhere in the world is better.
    - anovikov 2y ago
      That's probably because what you are googling is a ratio of price of average house to average income... Which only means that American houses are much much bigger and thus more pricey, because Americans have many times more disposable income per family than just about any nation in the world. But if you compare the price of the SAME sized house to the average income, the situation is opposite. U.S. is the 3rd best after Oman and Saudi Arabia. It's just that Americans are not satisfied with houses even twice the size of what people in many rich countries are happy with. https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count...
      - jltsiren 2y ago
        American houses are large and unaffordable. The usual term for a situation like that is inefficiency. Price per square foot is not a very useful metric, because neither utility nor construction costs scale directly with the size of a house. A 3000 square foot house is not 2x as good as a 1500 square foot house, and it should not cost 2x as much to build. Roughly speaking, walls are expensive, while making the rooms larger is cheap. And bedrooms are cheap, while bathrooms are expensive.
    - anovikov 2y ago
      I'd love to see your source. It's curious how can one manipulate numbers so badly to arrive to this sort of result.
- kbrkbr 2y ago
  > "healthcare deserts" Well, in Germany health care is affordable in terms of cost. However, while 20 years ago you just went to a doctor when you were sick, these days you will wait hours and hours even at your family physician's crowded waiting room. You need a specialist? 6 months if it's something serious like a cardiologist. If you're on private health insurance, alright, only 3 months. I don't know if this is specific to Germany, or similar in all of Europe. But that is a change many people notice that I speak with.
  - delichon 2y ago
    In the US before Obamacare I could make an appointment with a specialist on the same week. Now it takes more than six months. Three different specialties that I know of and the only three I tried. Apparently we're catching up with Europe.
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      Americans are discovering that giving universal healthcare access to everyone means those who already had access, now have to wait longer to make room for everyone else. That's how it works.
      - mrguyorama 2y ago
        No they aren't. Americans are finding out that when you abuse medical workers by calling them "essential workers" who have to continue working during a pandemic while hundreds of thousands of patients berate you for saying things like "you should get vaccinated" or "don't eat an anti-parasite medication for horses" and overwork them and pay them shit, they quit in droves. They are then finding out that for profit businesses have no interest in re-hiring all the workers they had before the pandemic, because they didn't lose as much business as they saved money in salary, so everyone is just running a skeleton crew that they overwork. Meanwhile the data I find for emergency room visits are that there's barely been any increase in percentage of the population that visited an emergency room since 1997. Companies are spending less on services and letting us just suffer because we don't have better options and YET AGAIN dumb Americans for some reason blame the government for completely independent companies making self serving choices?!
- hackeraccount 2y ago
  Depends upon how much older you mean - at 65 in the U.S. you get Medicare which is not that bad.
Jensson 2y ago
> How so? Healthcare? FIRE seems much more attainable in the US Much easier in Europe, go work in Switzerland or some high paying country then go retire in a low cost area with healthcare.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  If it's so easy why isn't everyone in Europe doing this life hack? Could it be that moving to a place with high salaries means that job market is more competitive with higher bar to entry, with more stress, and CoL and housing is proportionally higher so once you factor in housing, healthcare, childcare expenses etc you realize that unless you scored some FANG job that pays orders of magnitude more than the local median, you're more or less at the same wealth point as in the lower CoL locations? Feels like the solution is to find the place when you can earn more than the median there and not just blindly move to the most expensive places in the world hoping that will make you rich.
  - Jensson 2y ago
    > If it's so easy why isn't everyone in Europe doing this life hack? Language barriers, mostly. USA doesn't have those, that is the biggest difference I'd say, language barriers is such a massive hindrance to movement even if you are legally allowed to. Even if the work language is English you still have to live with all the signs etc being in a language you don't understand, and learning a new language is a massive undertaking. However if you don't care about that then it is really simple. And lots of people are doing just that, people spending a few years working in a high wage place isn't uncommon at all.
    - kazen44 2y ago
      also the massive difference between cultures is a thing aswell. Not to mention people tend to not move asmuch in europe compared to the US, and people like to stay close to their community and families in my experience.
- CalRobert 2y ago
  I live in the Netherlands and the combination of low pay (compared to US), higher taxes, and housing expenses make this difficult.

Healthcare is just a word until you get into your sixties, then it is a lifestyle

Housing and healthcare costs are insane. When you're older, you need a lot more healthcare (and you won't have that nice insurance plan you had at your big company job when you were working), and housing keeps getting more expensive, which is a problem if you're on a fixed income. You could move to much cheaper locales (i.e. rural areas), but those are "healthcare deserts" where there's no competent doctors left and hospitals are all closing left and right, plus when you're infirm how exactly do you drive yourself? Living in a walkable city (or any city really) is much more doable when you're older for these practical reasons (less need to drive, healthcare providers close by), but then you can't afford the housing there.

anovikov 2y ago
Housing in US is in fact one of the cheapest... everywhere, measured as price per square foot as percentage of income. Several times cheaper than in many countries and at least somewhat cheaper than almost every single one, rich or poor, democratic or authoritarian. It's just that "normal" housing in the US is what's only attainable to the very rich and only because they inherited it, in most of Europe let's say: even 1% won't be able to buy an equivalent of median new US single family house, in EU - that 1% probably owns a similar or somewhat better house but simply because they bought or built it generations before.
- sonzohan 2y ago
  Got a source for this? I'm only finding sources that vehemently disagree, and say the only countries worse for this are Portugal and Canada. Everywhere in the world is better.
  - anovikov 2y ago
    That's probably because what you are googling is a ratio of price of average house to average income... Which only means that American houses are much much bigger and thus more pricey, because Americans have many times more disposable income per family than just about any nation in the world. But if you compare the price of the SAME sized house to the average income, the situation is opposite. U.S. is the 3rd best after Oman and Saudi Arabia. It's just that Americans are not satisfied with houses even twice the size of what people in many rich countries are happy with. https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count...
    - jltsiren 2y ago
      American houses are large and unaffordable. The usual term for a situation like that is inefficiency. Price per square foot is not a very useful metric, because neither utility nor construction costs scale directly with the size of a house. A 3000 square foot house is not 2x as good as a 1500 square foot house, and it should not cost 2x as much to build. Roughly speaking, walls are expensive, while making the rooms larger is cheap. And bedrooms are cheap, while bathrooms are expensive.
  - anovikov 2y ago
    I'd love to see your source. It's curious how can one manipulate numbers so badly to arrive to this sort of result.
kbrkbr 2y ago
> "healthcare deserts" Well, in Germany health care is affordable in terms of cost. However, while 20 years ago you just went to a doctor when you were sick, these days you will wait hours and hours even at your family physician's crowded waiting room. You need a specialist? 6 months if it's something serious like a cardiologist. If you're on private health insurance, alright, only 3 months. I don't know if this is specific to Germany, or similar in all of Europe. But that is a change many people notice that I speak with.
- delichon 2y ago
  In the US before Obamacare I could make an appointment with a specialist on the same week. Now it takes more than six months. Three different specialties that I know of and the only three I tried. Apparently we're catching up with Europe.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    Americans are discovering that giving universal healthcare access to everyone means those who already had access, now have to wait longer to make room for everyone else. That's how it works.
    - mrguyorama 2y ago
      No they aren't. Americans are finding out that when you abuse medical workers by calling them "essential workers" who have to continue working during a pandemic while hundreds of thousands of patients berate you for saying things like "you should get vaccinated" or "don't eat an anti-parasite medication for horses" and overwork them and pay them shit, they quit in droves. They are then finding out that for profit businesses have no interest in re-hiring all the workers they had before the pandemic, because they didn't lose as much business as they saved money in salary, so everyone is just running a skeleton crew that they overwork. Meanwhile the data I find for emergency room visits are that there's barely been any increase in percentage of the population that visited an emergency room since 1997. Companies are spending less on services and letting us just suffer because we don't have better options and YET AGAIN dumb Americans for some reason blame the government for completely independent companies making self serving choices?!
hackeraccount 2y ago
Depends upon how much older you mean - at 65 in the U.S. you get Medicare which is not that bad.

Jensson 2y ago

> How so? Healthcare? FIRE seems much more attainable in the US Much easier in Europe, go work in Switzerland or some high paying country then go retire in a low cost area with healthcare.

Cumpiler69 2y ago
If it's so easy why isn't everyone in Europe doing this life hack? Could it be that moving to a place with high salaries means that job market is more competitive with higher bar to entry, with more stress, and CoL and housing is proportionally higher so once you factor in housing, healthcare, childcare expenses etc you realize that unless you scored some FANG job that pays orders of magnitude more than the local median, you're more or less at the same wealth point as in the lower CoL locations? Feels like the solution is to find the place when you can earn more than the median there and not just blindly move to the most expensive places in the world hoping that will make you rich.
- Jensson 2y ago
  > If it's so easy why isn't everyone in Europe doing this life hack? Language barriers, mostly. USA doesn't have those, that is the biggest difference I'd say, language barriers is such a massive hindrance to movement even if you are legally allowed to. Even if the work language is English you still have to live with all the signs etc being in a language you don't understand, and learning a new language is a massive undertaking. However if you don't care about that then it is really simple. And lots of people are doing just that, people spending a few years working in a high wage place isn't uncommon at all.
  - kazen44 2y ago
    also the massive difference between cultures is a thing aswell. Not to mention people tend to not move asmuch in europe compared to the US, and people like to stay close to their community and families in my experience.
CalRobert 2y ago
I live in the Netherlands and the combination of low pay (compared to US), higher taxes, and housing expenses make this difficult.