[mrmekon]

I moved to Stockholm from the US earlier this year. The salary is supposedly good for Stockholm, but about 20-30% lower than offers I had in the US. I took it because I particularly loved the idea of living in Sweden, and I was not disappointed.

Comparing the cost of living is difficult. I don't know anything about the lifestyle in Moscow, but the US is so extremely different from Sweden that it turns out I did all of my comparisons wrong... I thought my expendable income would go down by moving here, but it actually went up. This is not because Stockholm is cheaper (it's much, much more expensive), but because I imitate the Swedish lifestyle, and the Swedish lifestyle is much cheaper than the American lifestyle :)

Swedish salaries aren't going to make you wealthy, they are just going to make you comfortable. And if you live your whole life here and retire here, the government programs will keep you comfortable through your retirement. It's a good system to live in long-term, but it's not the most competitive for short-term positions.

Most of my friends here are non-Swedish europeans, and I really only see two stances: either they moved here because they needed a job and they can't wait to move home, or they moved here because they wanted to live in Sweden and they love it. Marriage complicates it even more... some love it, but their spouses desperately want to move home. (good news: young children seem to transition very well)

If you or your wife is particularly against moving to Sweden, drop it immediately. You'll probably never get over that. But if it sounds like a fun adventure, then it probably is! If the first thing you want to do here is find some surströmming and köttbullar, you'll have a good time... if the first thing you want to do is find other Russian expats and a Russian food market, it's going to be a long winter.

[mjn]

Out of curiosity, what do you find cheaper about the Swedish lifestyle? Moving from California to Denmark, I have sort of a vague feeling that's true for me also, but having trouble coming up with any specifics! I did get rid of my car, which is one big source of savings on insurance/gas/maintenance (plus a nice one-time $10k from selling it). But apart from that, I'm not too sure what's different. Maybe I eat out less as well, and do more picnics in the summer.

[zalew]

I haven't been to Sweden, but I assume he's talking about not being that keen on hanging out at the shopping mall where you get overcharged for shitty food when you get hungry from buying too much stuff you don't really need and spending half an hour looking for parking space after a 30km high-traffic ride from home.

[karhu]

I'm having thoughts on moving from Stockholm to the US (NJ or NY). It would be interesting to know how e.g. taxes are different between the US and Sweden.

Where do I find information like this? Taxes, costs of living - everything. How did you do before you moved to Sweden?

[mrmekon]

Taxes are easy to look up. There are calculators where you input your salary and the state you will live in and it'll spit out a pretty close number. Expect somewhere around 30% income tax for a middle-class salary.

Numbeo is ok for comparing the cost of items, but it's not clear how your consumption will change. My consumption is much lower in Stockholm.

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?coun...

Cars are expensive, but hopefully you don't need one if you're looking at NY metro.

The big differences that are harder to predict are insurance, healthcare, and retirement. Healthcare costs can be sudden, large expenses ($2-20k USD) even if you have insurance through your employer... to be safe, you need to keep a pretty gigantic emergency fund. If you don't have insurance through your employer, you will probably bankrupt.

Children, college, and retirement cost more than you will ever earn. Don't do any of those things!

[dan1234]

Do you find there's any language barrier or have you picked up the language?

[mrmekon]

I'm terrible with languages... it will probably take 5 years to reach 'conversational' levels.

My company is extremely international, and all business is done in english, so there is no problem. Other companies I interviewed with did bring it up as a problem. Startups seem to care very little, major corporations care a lot.

[FireBringer]

I would think that since you are living in the country if you take a night course (or something equivalent) you could probably learn a lot quicker than someone living outside the country.

Immersion helps a lot for languages.

[mjn]

Immersion helps, but it's pretty easy not to become immersed in Scandinavia, because everyone both speaks good English, and switches to it quite quickly when they realize you're a foreigner. It's possible to ask them to please speak Danish/Swedish/Norwegian because you're learning, and many people will then switch back, but the immediate switch to English is basically default (especially in Denmark).

I've lived in Denmark for 2 1/2 years and probably have had less real need to speak Danish here than in the 3 weeks I spent in Spain! More Spaniards are either unable or unwilling to speak English, so that trip was much more immersive language-wise, in that I actually had to interact in Spanish.

[sentenza]

Don't be to hard on the Spanish. I lived there for some time and can attest to that most Spaniards really would like to improve their English but find it incredibly difficult to do so. This is especially true for the spoken language.

My personal theory is that Spanish Spanish (i.e., from Spain) has a range of spoken sounds that is to a large part complimentary to that of English, thus making the transition between these two languages particularly difficult. (Note that there is significantly less of a difference between the sounds of American Spanish and English).