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I’m an American living in France for the past two years and cannot wait to move back to the USA. The taxes are so extreme and salaries so low that no one can ev

I’m an American living in France for the past two years and cannot wait to move back to the USA. The taxes are so extreme and salaries so low that no one can even invest in the stock market. If I stay here, I will be able to leave virtually nothing to my kids when I die. The EU can take its 5 weeks of vacation and go fuck itself.

ein0p 2y ago
Have you seen the steep exponent on the US debt? You won't be able to leave anything to your kids if you move to the US either. Might as well enjoy 2 weeks vacation, rather than 2.
fennecfoxy 2y ago
Instead, you'd rather spend all of that money on healthcare in the US and still have nothing left behind. What's the point of inheriting a life in a corporate hellscape (presuming you live in a tech city).
gchamonlive 2y ago
[flagged]
sho_hn 2y ago
On the other hand, it's absolutely fantastic to have a young daughter and have her virtually not impact our finances at all for many years, between clothes/toy gifts from friends, gov subsidy, free healthcare, free education and low levels of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses on after-school activities, plus knowing I won't burden her financially either as I happily live out my retirement on a decent pension. I may not leave her a lot of inherited wealth, but she may also not really need any to have options. (That said, my personal frame of reference for why this is better and wonderfully stress-free is years lived in South Korea--that ultra-low fertility rate has reasons--, not so much the US.)
- fakedang 2y ago
  At the current trajectory of the EU though, don't count on it. She will regret you guys not having built up an inheritance for her, considering that EU tier 1 and tier 2 towns and cities are being rapidly bought up by American private equity.
  - jamespo 2y ago
    Source?
    - fakedang 2y ago
      Source is me. I worked at a major PE firm in a past life doing exactly that. Also check who's the new landlord at many European cities - Paris, Munich, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Copenhagen.... More often than not it's either of the two American investment firms which start with B (and I worked at one of them). European real estate is highly attractive to hedge fund investors because of stable growth and low volatility due to forced undersupply - much better for them than actually working for their 2 and 20 paycheck.
      - jamespo 2y ago
        Hmm so anecdata
- lurking_swe 2y ago
  “may not need any to have options”. I hope you’re right, but hoping the EU continues to prosper over the next 20-30 years is not what i’d call a plan. The future is unpredictable.
  - dpeckett 2y ago
    I think this is the fundamental cultural difference between countries like the USA (and Australia) vs most of the EU. Folks here expect and trust the state to provide for the future, private provisions are easily dismissed as unnecessary. As a result of this the median household wealth of the area I live in is 5x lower than my home country of Australia, despite incomes (adjusted for purchasing power) not being drastically different. Whether that trust is wisely placed we'll have to wait and see[1]. However I do need to narrow that down a bit, it's not the whole EU, mostly France/Germany. There are other nations moving ahead with private pension schemes etc and much higher household wealth (Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands). 1. My main concern is government investment is inherently slow, politically charged, and pathologically risk averse vs the private sector. This means in the aggregate, over the long term, private household investments will out perform.
    - itsthejb 2y ago
      This is entirely a problem of putting all of eggs in one basket. Or rather, only having one basket in which you’re allowed to put your eggs. The German pension system is already insolvent, and I suspect it’s not the only one. European welfare states are great n’all, but it would seem they were set up when the going was good and populations were growing. Now with stagnation, they don’t look much like staying solvent and populations don’t have anywhere else to turn
      - dpeckett 2y ago
        The German pension system is completely insane. There is no fund backing it, and disbursements already exceed contributions to the tune of 127B EUR per year (which is subsidized from the general budget) and the gap is only growing. Probably explains a good chunk of Germany's and the EUs anemic growth. Simply put, that's 127B EUR that can't be spent investing in the future and growing the economy.
- dowager_dan99 2y ago
  and this I think highlights a really big difference in perspectives: how do people feel about equality in origin, opportunity and outcomes? As an upper income Canadian I'm getting pretty tired of paying for all that equality, and I think Canada is not yet at the same level as most European countries. My kids may be the first generation that should leave Canada for opportunities.
  - throaway915 2y ago
    As a fellow Canadian I don't think it's equality that's the issue. It's services rendered for the payment given
- woobar 2y ago
  > I won't burden her financially either as I happily live out my retirement on a decent pension. What is a decent pension and where it will come from? I'm projected to get a decent SSA pension (bigger than a median income in top tier EU countries), but I am not counting on it. What gives you confidence that government will be able to support you through retirement?
  - mbs159 2y ago
    > What gives you confidence that government will be able to support you through retirement? Laws that obligate the country to do so
foolfoolz 2y ago
the eu quality of life has a higher minimum but a far lower median
- barbazoo 2y ago
  source?
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  It can't be overstated how much of this is cultural. Quality of life is simply less materialistically driven in Europe. If Americans give up on home ownership and luxury items, they too can enjoy a European quality of life; living in an 800sqft rental and enjoying a rich social life.
  - voidfunc 2y ago
    Do people honestly think Americans don't have rich social lives? Just because we socialize differently doesn't mean it isn't rich. Most Americans seem to prefer church groups, and small friend and family gatherings at their homes rather than going out and mingling in urban entertainment districts and bars.
    - lolinder 2y ago
      Europeans get most of their perspective on US social living conditions from the terminally online, who are disproportionately likely to have no social life. The average American living in, say, the Midwest doesn't show up in the anecdotes that stereotypes are built around.
    - tomtheelder 2y ago
      I'm an American and it definitely seems like we are in a significant and worsening loneliness crisis. I have no idea to what degree any of it is unique to Americans. Social connectedness, socialization rates, and companionship have all been declining for quite a while now. Lot's of potential causes and theories about it. [1] is a decent overview. Like personally I'm doing great, and so are a lot of people I know, and I'm sure you as well. But I think a lot of Americans are struggling badly with their social lives. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9811250/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9811250/
itishappy 2y ago
Leaving more money for your kids vs spending more time with your kids seems like a rough choice.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  Is that not a false dichotomy? I make quite a lot of income and still have lots of time with my kids. At least as much as I'd have anywhere in Europe, I bet. It is not a hard requirement to make good income that you sell your soul to the corporation.
  - itishappy 2y ago
    I hope so, but I feel it holds true in general. It's certainly true where I work that no Americans take 5 weeks of vacation.
    - sokoloff 2y ago
      It's not technically 5 weeks, but I'm American and get 24 days (96% of 5 weeks) of PTO plus 7 company-chosen holidays. And I take every one of them, even if some are just "I'm not working the next 3 Fridays, because I want to putter around the house." We start with 19 + 7 days and get 1 extra day per year of service until 5 years. (We also get a 4 week contiguous block once every 5 years.)
  - JKCalhoun 2y ago
    Original post talked about 5 weeks vacation each year. I suspect the assumption is that working hard in the U.S. would not allow for that 5 week vacation. Therefore that's 5 less weeks with the kids each year — or about 1.6 years total by the time they leave home for college.
    - jonasced 2y ago
      Then there's parental leave: Sweden offers 390 almost fully paid days plus 90 days optional with minimum payment per child, split on the parents. I could consider going to the US to earn some money while young but never to start a family.
kibwen 2y ago
I invoke Poe's Law. Please explicitly mark your satire.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  Is that satire? The last time I seriously looked at moving to Europe, it was a pretty fundamental part of why I aborted the effort. Unless something has changed recently, for software engineers income is vastly better in the US.
  - andrepd 2y ago
    I care about income as a proxy for quality of life, not as an end in itself. For me, the quality of life I get in Europe for X salary is better than what I would get in the USA for 1.5X salary. Ymmv
    - rootusrootus 2y ago
      I agree, YMMV. But the average software dev salary in western Europe is half what it is in the US. The guy in the US can buy better insurance than what is provided through taxes in Europe, and still have way more money to invest in their future and increase their quality of life.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      If, when it comes times to retire, and your Us counterpart has $1,500,000 to your $1,000,000 to retire on, that extra $500,000 seems material.
rurp 2y ago
Leaving money to your kids isn't a bad inclination or anything but I don't see why it's the be-all end-all. Maybe my parents will leave me some money when they pass, or maybe not, I'm certainly not expecting or planning on anything. I hope they spend what they can to enjoy their life while they're alive.
- programjames 2y ago
  Also, any inheritance money would come way too late to be useful in my life.
- kazen44 2y ago
  Not to mention, you cannot predict the future and you might lose your wealth outside your control. wealth is only able to grow if the state and society itself is stable, otherwise you might have worked for naught, and lose everything in the process thanks to war/climate change/economic depression etc anyways. (my SO's family lost all their wealth in world war two for example, and i am talking generational wealth here). Raising your kids to be able to stand on their own and deal with the harshness of the world is far more important in my opinion.
mathgeek 2y ago
How would your situation change if you didn’t have to account for US income tax while living abroad? Does it offset at all due to agreements with France?
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  The US excludes the first $120K of income for expats, IIRC. That probably works out to >100% for the majority.
  - jandrewrogers 2y ago
    That only excludes basic wage income. If you have any other income, investments, etc then the tax situation becomes indefensibly punitive.
addicted 2y ago
What’s even nicer is if kids don’t need their parents to leave them an inheritance just so they can afford a roof over their heads. The U.S. is filled with homeless people. Even Italy, which was doing economically terrible when I visited, didn’t even have a fraction of the homelessness problem as in the U.S.
- ovi256 2y ago
  That's weird, because France has a higher rate of homelessness than the US. The French average, 45/100k pop, is comparable to NYC. Italy is much lower at 8/100k.
  - com2kid 2y ago
    In Seattle it is over 400/100k, by some estimates higher than 500/100k. 45/100k would be an incredible improvement. Though looking up Paris, it is ~200/100k, which is still half of Seattle's rate!
  - fakedang 2y ago
    Leave Paris and Marseille and you'll be golden. I'd be curious to see that kind of data.
    - dowager_dan99 2y ago
      well get out of the major, mild US cities and it drops substantially as well.
  - Aloisius 2y ago
    I caution against trying to compare homeless statistics internationally. The definition of who is homeless and how they are counted varies dramatically between countries to the point where comparing headline numbers is largely useless.
- anon291 2y ago
  [flagged]
ysofunny 2y ago
because you're an inmigrant going backwards. move south to stay wealthy
hindsightbias 2y ago
> virtually nothing Older kids will only have virtual needs. They'll have a job and health insurance.
andrepd 2y ago
You look stressed, maybe you can do some talk therapy through the socialised health care system :)
amrocha 2y ago
Idk why you think your kids should get your money when you die. If they didn’t earn it then they should get a small amount and have to work for the rest, just like everyone else.
- whtsthmttrmn 2y ago
  Because families passing down assets is a tale as old as time?
  - amrocha 2y ago
    I guess we should go back to feudalism then?
    - whtsthmttrmn 2y ago
      Be careful making such massive leaps, you might injure yourself.
      - amrocha 2y ago
        You're the one that thinks "it's as old as time" is a good enough reason to keep doing it
        whtsthmttrmn 2y ago
        1) Sorry I didn't list other reasons in order for you to understand that there is more than one reason it's done. 2) You bringing up feudalism is still completely random lol. I get you're trying to make the point "just because something was done in the past doesn't make it a good idea", but the contrary is also true - just because something was done in the past doesn't make it a bad idea. Using your logic, I suppose we should stop cooking food since it was done in the past and everything done in the past is akin to feudalism lol
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
Pet_Ant 2y ago
Isn't it alarming to you that you are optimising for what you leave behind when you die (stocks) over what you can have while you live (vacations)?
- smodo 2y ago
  Right. And the vacations are something you ‘give’ your kids too. You won’t lie on your deathbed and think: “I shouldn’t have taken my kids to Vienna that summer. Should’ve put it all in Vanguard ETFs. Man what a bummer.” If your kids appreciate your money more than your time is when you know you screwed up.
- kbelder 2y ago
  He's optimising for (kids) over (himself). It's noble.
  - master_crab 2y ago
    Kids also want to see their parents (particularly when young). That’s also an important gift to children.
    - kazen44 2y ago
      heck, raising your kids is the one and only tasks which should really count in your life (if you have children ofcourse). Wealth can dissapear in an instant, and considering the stability of the world seems to be only decreasing, raising and seeing your kids grow up seems far more important than investing in the stock market to me.
  - bdangubic 2y ago
    first the government will take 50+% of everything he leaves to his kids. if there is still significant funds that he leaves them they will 100% become bums. he should spend every penny he’s got to spend every minute he can with his kids - especially while they are young. and his kids will say the same. not noble at all - naive, dangerous and downright stupid thinking
GuB-42 2y ago
I understand why one would prefer the US way, but these are some weird arguments. I understand why you would want higher net income to enjoy a wealthy life, but for "investing in the stock market"? I also understand why you would want to earn more so that your kids can have a better life, but why "after you die"? If anything, the latter can be turned into an argument for the EU way. Your kids don't need you dead, they need you to be alive and caring. So you have vacations so you can spend time with them, public education so that they have the skills to help themselves, so they don't need your inheritance, and healthcare to keep you alive even if your "stock market investments" are at a low point.
com2kid 2y ago
Daycare in my city in the US is around 30k a year. The city just dismantled its gifted program for schools, so if your kid is a high achiever plan on another 40k a year for schooling. Even swim classes have a huge waitlist and are expensive. Any type of children's activity is absurdly expensive due to the high cost of living. Housing is absurd, if you have a couple kids plan on spending 4k a month on rent for a place in a nice neighborhood. Most Americans have around a thousand dollars in savings and that is it. Americans are, by and large, not even able to save up for retirement, with zero hope of leaving anything to their kids. Tech worker salaries are a small bubble in all of this.
- jandrewrogers 2y ago
  > Most Americans have around a thousand dollars in savings and that is it. Per the US government's own BLS, the median household has >$1,000 leftover each month after all ordinary expenses. Americans may not save much but it isn't for lack of available income.
  - com2kid 2y ago
    Medians mean nothing in a society that has a bimodal distribution of wealth. America is full of people who are working a job and a half (with a good chance both are 30hr a week jobs that offer no benefits, and may have "flexible" scheduling where the employee is called in to work different computed selected shifts each week), and people who are working in offices earning good money. In the middle you have some people working trades still. We switched over from a manufacturing economy that made things and gave people stability and enough money to raise a family to a "service" economy, and then we started telling everyone working service jobs that "those jobs aren't real careers, so of course you are being treated and paid poorly!"
- eitally 2y ago
  I've lived in LCOL, MCOL and VVHCOL cities in the US. Just because everything is outlandishly expensive in the bay area, that doesn't mean the same is true everywhere in the country. In large swaths of LCOL and MCOL areas, your money absolutely goes further in all the areas you listed. I would suggest, though, that if you didn't grow up in the bay area and have family property here, as a relocation target it should be considered similar to gold mining. You're moving here for work because of the amount you can save [as a result of ludicrous tech compensation] and then use elsewhere, not because it makes sense financially to actually be living here.
eitally 2y ago
Several years ago (when I was a manager at Google) one of my employees needed to relocate overseas in order to facilitate coming back under a more preferable visa type, and they were looking at options. For the same role where they were earning $135k base in Mountain View, it was going to translate to about $115k in London, $155k in Zurich, and only $89k in Paris. They chose Zurich and ended up staying there for over five years before moving back to the bay area.
kaimac 2y ago
peak hacker news comment
callalex 2y ago
You can't leave money for your kids in the USA unless you have several million dollars lying around, because health care will eat up all of your savings in old age.
- sokoloff 2y ago
  If you have a good relationship with your kids, give them (or trusts for them) the money as you are aging (and before the 5-year look-back period). Then, your family will have a choice as to whether to spend that money on you/your spouse or to not spend it on you and to rely on Medicaid.
- toephu2 2y ago
  Why would healthcare eat up all your savings in old age? Everyone in America is required to have health insurance. No one actually pays $50k out of pocket for surgery. Most of it is covered by insurance.
  - dahinds 2y ago
    There are gaps in Medicare coverage. There's long term care that isn't covered by Medicare; people can self insure, or purchase separate coverage, or many rely on Medicaid which requires exhausting assets first. I've watched both my parents go through this, with significant chronic health issues. They had good private insurance on top of Medicare, they routinely had $10-30K annual itemized deductions for health related expenses that were not covered by their insurance. And that was with a daughter who is an MD who invested a massive amount of time and effort to get insurance to cover as much as possible.
sofixa 2y ago
> The taxes are so extreme and salaries so low that no one can even invest in the stock market. There's a special "retirement plan by actions" (PEA) with lower capital gains tax, and the reason why most French people don't invest in the stock market is mostly lack of education around it. For most, real estate is the main way of investing/saving money. The stock market is dangerous and you can lose everything, and many have personal references (their parents/themselves bought stock from efforts such as the Eurotunnel that failed, financially) to that effect.
verzali 2y ago
I live in France and invest in the stock market. Sounds like you just need to find a better paid job.

ein0p 2y ago

Have you seen the steep exponent on the US debt? You won't be able to leave anything to your kids if you move to the US either. Might as well enjoy 2 weeks vacation, rather than 2.

fennecfoxy 2y ago

Instead, you'd rather spend all of that money on healthcare in the US and still have nothing left behind. What's the point of inheriting a life in a corporate hellscape (presuming you live in a tech city).

gchamonlive 2y ago

[flagged]

sho_hn 2y ago

On the other hand, it's absolutely fantastic to have a young daughter and have her virtually not impact our finances at all for many years, between clothes/toy gifts from friends, gov subsidy, free healthcare, free education and low levels of keeping-up-with-the-Joneses on after-school activities, plus knowing I won't burden her financially either as I happily live out my retirement on a decent pension. I may not leave her a lot of inherited wealth, but she may also not really need any to have options. (That said, my personal frame of reference for why this is better and wonderfully stress-free is years lived in South Korea--that ultra-low fertility rate has reasons--, not so much the US.)

fakedang 2y ago
At the current trajectory of the EU though, don't count on it. She will regret you guys not having built up an inheritance for her, considering that EU tier 1 and tier 2 towns and cities are being rapidly bought up by American private equity.
- jamespo 2y ago
  Source?
  - fakedang 2y ago
    Source is me. I worked at a major PE firm in a past life doing exactly that. Also check who's the new landlord at many European cities - Paris, Munich, Frankfurt, Stockholm, Copenhagen.... More often than not it's either of the two American investment firms which start with B (and I worked at one of them). European real estate is highly attractive to hedge fund investors because of stable growth and low volatility due to forced undersupply - much better for them than actually working for their 2 and 20 paycheck.
    - jamespo 2y ago
      Hmm so anecdata
lurking_swe 2y ago
“may not need any to have options”. I hope you’re right, but hoping the EU continues to prosper over the next 20-30 years is not what i’d call a plan. The future is unpredictable.
- dpeckett 2y ago
  I think this is the fundamental cultural difference between countries like the USA (and Australia) vs most of the EU. Folks here expect and trust the state to provide for the future, private provisions are easily dismissed as unnecessary. As a result of this the median household wealth of the area I live in is 5x lower than my home country of Australia, despite incomes (adjusted for purchasing power) not being drastically different. Whether that trust is wisely placed we'll have to wait and see[1]. However I do need to narrow that down a bit, it's not the whole EU, mostly France/Germany. There are other nations moving ahead with private pension schemes etc and much higher household wealth (Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands). 1. My main concern is government investment is inherently slow, politically charged, and pathologically risk averse vs the private sector. This means in the aggregate, over the long term, private household investments will out perform.
  - itsthejb 2y ago
    This is entirely a problem of putting all of eggs in one basket. Or rather, only having one basket in which you’re allowed to put your eggs. The German pension system is already insolvent, and I suspect it’s not the only one. European welfare states are great n’all, but it would seem they were set up when the going was good and populations were growing. Now with stagnation, they don’t look much like staying solvent and populations don’t have anywhere else to turn
    - dpeckett 2y ago
      The German pension system is completely insane. There is no fund backing it, and disbursements already exceed contributions to the tune of 127B EUR per year (which is subsidized from the general budget) and the gap is only growing. Probably explains a good chunk of Germany's and the EUs anemic growth. Simply put, that's 127B EUR that can't be spent investing in the future and growing the economy.
dowager_dan99 2y ago
and this I think highlights a really big difference in perspectives: how do people feel about equality in origin, opportunity and outcomes? As an upper income Canadian I'm getting pretty tired of paying for all that equality, and I think Canada is not yet at the same level as most European countries. My kids may be the first generation that should leave Canada for opportunities.
- throaway915 2y ago
  As a fellow Canadian I don't think it's equality that's the issue. It's services rendered for the payment given
woobar 2y ago
> I won't burden her financially either as I happily live out my retirement on a decent pension. What is a decent pension and where it will come from? I'm projected to get a decent SSA pension (bigger than a median income in top tier EU countries), but I am not counting on it. What gives you confidence that government will be able to support you through retirement?
- mbs159 2y ago
  > What gives you confidence that government will be able to support you through retirement? Laws that obligate the country to do so

foolfoolz 2y ago

the eu quality of life has a higher minimum but a far lower median

barbazoo 2y ago
source?
s1artibartfast 2y ago
It can't be overstated how much of this is cultural. Quality of life is simply less materialistically driven in Europe. If Americans give up on home ownership and luxury items, they too can enjoy a European quality of life; living in an 800sqft rental and enjoying a rich social life.
- voidfunc 2y ago
  Do people honestly think Americans don't have rich social lives? Just because we socialize differently doesn't mean it isn't rich. Most Americans seem to prefer church groups, and small friend and family gatherings at their homes rather than going out and mingling in urban entertainment districts and bars.
  - lolinder 2y ago
    Europeans get most of their perspective on US social living conditions from the terminally online, who are disproportionately likely to have no social life. The average American living in, say, the Midwest doesn't show up in the anecdotes that stereotypes are built around.
  - tomtheelder 2y ago
    I'm an American and it definitely seems like we are in a significant and worsening loneliness crisis. I have no idea to what degree any of it is unique to Americans. Social connectedness, socialization rates, and companionship have all been declining for quite a while now. Lot's of potential causes and theories about it. [1] is a decent overview. Like personally I'm doing great, and so are a lot of people I know, and I'm sure you as well. But I think a lot of Americans are struggling badly with their social lives. [1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9811250/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9811250/

itishappy 2y ago

Leaving more money for your kids vs spending more time with your kids seems like a rough choice.

rootusrootus 2y ago
Is that not a false dichotomy? I make quite a lot of income and still have lots of time with my kids. At least as much as I'd have anywhere in Europe, I bet. It is not a hard requirement to make good income that you sell your soul to the corporation.
- itishappy 2y ago
  I hope so, but I feel it holds true in general. It's certainly true where I work that no Americans take 5 weeks of vacation.
  - sokoloff 2y ago
    It's not technically 5 weeks, but I'm American and get 24 days (96% of 5 weeks) of PTO plus 7 company-chosen holidays. And I take every one of them, even if some are just "I'm not working the next 3 Fridays, because I want to putter around the house." We start with 19 + 7 days and get 1 extra day per year of service until 5 years. (We also get a 4 week contiguous block once every 5 years.)
- JKCalhoun 2y ago
  Original post talked about 5 weeks vacation each year. I suspect the assumption is that working hard in the U.S. would not allow for that 5 week vacation. Therefore that's 5 less weeks with the kids each year — or about 1.6 years total by the time they leave home for college.
  - jonasced 2y ago
    Then there's parental leave: Sweden offers 390 almost fully paid days plus 90 days optional with minimum payment per child, split on the parents. I could consider going to the US to earn some money while young but never to start a family.

kibwen 2y ago

I invoke Poe's Law. Please explicitly mark your satire.

rootusrootus 2y ago
Is that satire? The last time I seriously looked at moving to Europe, it was a pretty fundamental part of why I aborted the effort. Unless something has changed recently, for software engineers income is vastly better in the US.
- andrepd 2y ago
  I care about income as a proxy for quality of life, not as an end in itself. For me, the quality of life I get in Europe for X salary is better than what I would get in the USA for 1.5X salary. Ymmv
  - rootusrootus 2y ago
    I agree, YMMV. But the average software dev salary in western Europe is half what it is in the US. The guy in the US can buy better insurance than what is provided through taxes in Europe, and still have way more money to invest in their future and increase their quality of life.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    If, when it comes times to retire, and your Us counterpart has $1,500,000 to your $1,000,000 to retire on, that extra $500,000 seems material.

rurp 2y ago

Leaving money to your kids isn't a bad inclination or anything but I don't see why it's the be-all end-all. Maybe my parents will leave me some money when they pass, or maybe not, I'm certainly not expecting or planning on anything. I hope they spend what they can to enjoy their life while they're alive.

programjames 2y ago
Also, any inheritance money would come way too late to be useful in my life.
kazen44 2y ago
Not to mention, you cannot predict the future and you might lose your wealth outside your control. wealth is only able to grow if the state and society itself is stable, otherwise you might have worked for naught, and lose everything in the process thanks to war/climate change/economic depression etc anyways. (my SO's family lost all their wealth in world war two for example, and i am talking generational wealth here). Raising your kids to be able to stand on their own and deal with the harshness of the world is far more important in my opinion.

mathgeek 2y ago

How would your situation change if you didn’t have to account for US income tax while living abroad? Does it offset at all due to agreements with France?

rootusrootus 2y ago
The US excludes the first $120K of income for expats, IIRC. That probably works out to >100% for the majority.
- jandrewrogers 2y ago
  That only excludes basic wage income. If you have any other income, investments, etc then the tax situation becomes indefensibly punitive.

addicted 2y ago

What’s even nicer is if kids don’t need their parents to leave them an inheritance just so they can afford a roof over their heads. The U.S. is filled with homeless people. Even Italy, which was doing economically terrible when I visited, didn’t even have a fraction of the homelessness problem as in the U.S.

ovi256 2y ago
That's weird, because France has a higher rate of homelessness than the US. The French average, 45/100k pop, is comparable to NYC. Italy is much lower at 8/100k.
- com2kid 2y ago
  In Seattle it is over 400/100k, by some estimates higher than 500/100k. 45/100k would be an incredible improvement. Though looking up Paris, it is ~200/100k, which is still half of Seattle's rate!
- fakedang 2y ago
  Leave Paris and Marseille and you'll be golden. I'd be curious to see that kind of data.
  - dowager_dan99 2y ago
    well get out of the major, mild US cities and it drops substantially as well.
- Aloisius 2y ago
  I caution against trying to compare homeless statistics internationally. The definition of who is homeless and how they are counted varies dramatically between countries to the point where comparing headline numbers is largely useless.
anon291 2y ago
[flagged]

ysofunny 2y ago

because you're an inmigrant going backwards. move south to stay wealthy

hindsightbias 2y ago

> virtually nothing Older kids will only have virtual needs. They'll have a job and health insurance.

andrepd 2y ago

You look stressed, maybe you can do some talk therapy through the socialised health care system :)

amrocha 2y ago

Idk why you think your kids should get your money when you die. If they didn’t earn it then they should get a small amount and have to work for the rest, just like everyone else.

whtsthmttrmn 2y ago
Because families passing down assets is a tale as old as time?
- amrocha 2y ago
  I guess we should go back to feudalism then?
  - whtsthmttrmn 2y ago
    Be careful making such massive leaps, you might injure yourself.
    - amrocha 2y ago
      You're the one that thinks "it's as old as time" is a good enough reason to keep doing it
      - whtsthmttrmn 2y ago
        1) Sorry I didn't list other reasons in order for you to understand that there is more than one reason it's done. 2) You bringing up feudalism is still completely random lol. I get you're trying to make the point "just because something was done in the past doesn't make it a good idea", but the contrary is also true - just because something was done in the past doesn't make it a bad idea. Using your logic, I suppose we should stop cooking food since it was done in the past and everything done in the past is akin to feudalism lol
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

Pet_Ant 2y ago

Isn't it alarming to you that you are optimising for what you leave behind when you die (stocks) over what you can have while you live (vacations)?

smodo 2y ago
Right. And the vacations are something you ‘give’ your kids too. You won’t lie on your deathbed and think: “I shouldn’t have taken my kids to Vienna that summer. Should’ve put it all in Vanguard ETFs. Man what a bummer.” If your kids appreciate your money more than your time is when you know you screwed up.
kbelder 2y ago
He's optimising for (kids) over (himself). It's noble.
- master_crab 2y ago
  Kids also want to see their parents (particularly when young). That’s also an important gift to children.
  - kazen44 2y ago
    heck, raising your kids is the one and only tasks which should really count in your life (if you have children ofcourse). Wealth can dissapear in an instant, and considering the stability of the world seems to be only decreasing, raising and seeing your kids grow up seems far more important than investing in the stock market to me.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  first the government will take 50+% of everything he leaves to his kids. if there is still significant funds that he leaves them they will 100% become bums. he should spend every penny he’s got to spend every minute he can with his kids - especially while they are young. and his kids will say the same. not noble at all - naive, dangerous and downright stupid thinking

GuB-42 2y ago

I understand why one would prefer the US way, but these are some weird arguments. I understand why you would want higher net income to enjoy a wealthy life, but for "investing in the stock market"? I also understand why you would want to earn more so that your kids can have a better life, but why "after you die"? If anything, the latter can be turned into an argument for the EU way. Your kids don't need you dead, they need you to be alive and caring. So you have vacations so you can spend time with them, public education so that they have the skills to help themselves, so they don't need your inheritance, and healthcare to keep you alive even if your "stock market investments" are at a low point.

com2kid 2y ago

Daycare in my city in the US is around 30k a year. The city just dismantled its gifted program for schools, so if your kid is a high achiever plan on another 40k a year for schooling. Even swim classes have a huge waitlist and are expensive. Any type of children's activity is absurdly expensive due to the high cost of living. Housing is absurd, if you have a couple kids plan on spending 4k a month on rent for a place in a nice neighborhood. Most Americans have around a thousand dollars in savings and that is it. Americans are, by and large, not even able to save up for retirement, with zero hope of leaving anything to their kids. Tech worker salaries are a small bubble in all of this.

jandrewrogers 2y ago
> Most Americans have around a thousand dollars in savings and that is it. Per the US government's own BLS, the median household has >$1,000 leftover each month after all ordinary expenses. Americans may not save much but it isn't for lack of available income.
- com2kid 2y ago
  Medians mean nothing in a society that has a bimodal distribution of wealth. America is full of people who are working a job and a half (with a good chance both are 30hr a week jobs that offer no benefits, and may have "flexible" scheduling where the employee is called in to work different computed selected shifts each week), and people who are working in offices earning good money. In the middle you have some people working trades still. We switched over from a manufacturing economy that made things and gave people stability and enough money to raise a family to a "service" economy, and then we started telling everyone working service jobs that "those jobs aren't real careers, so of course you are being treated and paid poorly!"
eitally 2y ago
I've lived in LCOL, MCOL and VVHCOL cities in the US. Just because everything is outlandishly expensive in the bay area, that doesn't mean the same is true everywhere in the country. In large swaths of LCOL and MCOL areas, your money absolutely goes further in all the areas you listed. I would suggest, though, that if you didn't grow up in the bay area and have family property here, as a relocation target it should be considered similar to gold mining. You're moving here for work because of the amount you can save [as a result of ludicrous tech compensation] and then use elsewhere, not because it makes sense financially to actually be living here.

eitally 2y ago

Several years ago (when I was a manager at Google) one of my employees needed to relocate overseas in order to facilitate coming back under a more preferable visa type, and they were looking at options. For the same role where they were earning $135k base in Mountain View, it was going to translate to about $115k in London, $155k in Zurich, and only $89k in Paris. They chose Zurich and ended up staying there for over five years before moving back to the bay area.

kaimac 2y ago

peak hacker news comment

callalex 2y ago

You can't leave money for your kids in the USA unless you have several million dollars lying around, because health care will eat up all of your savings in old age.

sokoloff 2y ago
If you have a good relationship with your kids, give them (or trusts for them) the money as you are aging (and before the 5-year look-back period). Then, your family will have a choice as to whether to spend that money on you/your spouse or to not spend it on you and to rely on Medicaid.
toephu2 2y ago
Why would healthcare eat up all your savings in old age? Everyone in America is required to have health insurance. No one actually pays $50k out of pocket for surgery. Most of it is covered by insurance.
- dahinds 2y ago
  There are gaps in Medicare coverage. There's long term care that isn't covered by Medicare; people can self insure, or purchase separate coverage, or many rely on Medicaid which requires exhausting assets first. I've watched both my parents go through this, with significant chronic health issues. They had good private insurance on top of Medicare, they routinely had $10-30K annual itemized deductions for health related expenses that were not covered by their insurance. And that was with a daughter who is an MD who invested a massive amount of time and effort to get insurance to cover as much as possible.

sofixa 2y ago

> The taxes are so extreme and salaries so low that no one can even invest in the stock market. There's a special "retirement plan by actions" (PEA) with lower capital gains tax, and the reason why most French people don't invest in the stock market is mostly lack of education around it. For most, real estate is the main way of investing/saving money. The stock market is dangerous and you can lose everything, and many have personal references (their parents/themselves bought stock from efforts such as the Eurotunnel that failed, financially) to that effect.

verzali 2y ago

I live in France and invest in the stock market. Sounds like you just need to find a better paid job.