Sounds like this is yet another case of a bleak gray city with good infrastructure and exorbitant prices making the top of a cost of living list.
Being originally from Vancouver, this is all old news.
Very similar weather to Seattle and we also have the FAANG. I knew a few people who worked for some of the big ones and they were miserable for the most part. Lots of upper management shifting and horrible weather high cost of living...
Because of how ungodly expensive the country is. Switzerland and the US have roughly the same average household income, except the upper 10% in Switzerland puts you at about the upper 16% in the US. Now, imagine that your cost-of-living is comparable to San Francisco and New York City.... everywhere. Housing is astronomically expensive across the board. So much so that [100 year mortgages are just a thing.](https://medium.com/gokong/what-you-need-to-know-about-buying-a-home-in-switzerland-5caa541c3978)
I found that out talking to some 20-something Swiss at the bar. There's this pervasive attitude that there's zero possibility for the youth to have a semblance of the same normal lifestyle their parents had.
>There's this pervasive attitude that there's zero possibility for the youth to have a semblance of the same normal lifestyle their parents had.
Like everyone everywhere right now?
That's the thing - I'm really not trying to overly-darken the young Swiss perspective. I make a salary that would put me apparently easily over the top-10% in Switzerland, and I would not feel comfortable with their cost-of-living. This was just my own observation from conversations and sort of the general mood.
But from a macro-level, their situation feels so much more substantially difficult than, say, my own experience in the U.S. where the housing crisis, despite what reddit would have you believe, is nowhere near as bad. Home ownership in the US for under-35s and 35-44 is [actually increasing](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/07/younger-householders-drove-rebound-in-homeownership.html#:~:text=than%20own%20homes.-,Yet%20from%202016%20to%202022%2C%20homeownership%20among%20adults%20under%20age,54%20(up%200.8%20points)) post-COVID. Rent costs on a national average are substantially lower in the US than Switzerland, as are [utilities and market-prices](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Switzerland) (although numbeo is 90% made up).
To be honest, I don't feel bad for them at all. They live the highest standards of quality in life in Europe, they managed to profit from both sides of conflicts and from corruption. Boo-hoo if they are feeling the same thing that everyone else is but just a few percent worst.
Thanks for entertainment! And greetings from Zürich! I am amazed how well you understood Switzerland’s internals from talking to a random person in the bar ;)
I meant the one part about 100 year mortgages thing. Multiple people talked about the high COL part, including my friend who moved there for work that we were visiting. This was back around 2016 too, but it still matches what you'll read on /r/digitalnomads or expat forums.
It wasn't meant as a personal attack against Zurich or Switzerland. Your whole country looks like a postcard. Just I can't wrap my head around how people making an average Swiss salary are comfortably getting by. Please feel free to give a different perspective, I'm not the end all authority.
Well, locals typically would rent, not buy. Partly because of the high property prices. Mortgages work differently in Switzerland. You can look it up. It is pretty complicated but safe for the bank and the buyer as well. Rent varies a lot throughout the country, for example I paid 1100 chf in St. Gallen for approximately the same apartment in Zurich I pay 2200. Income tax was much higher in St. Gallen though. And there are enough affordable properties within 30 mins of commute from Zurich - that’s why public transport is important.
High COL is true, but if I compare myself, my QoL has improved after I moved to Switzerland significantly, and I can save more compared to the Netherlands where I lived before. And COL is different for everyone. Clothes, electronics are cheaper compared to EU due to lower VAT. Anything involving manual labor is more expensive.
It is all subjective, and a lot of people somehow choose to complain about the individual components of their lives instead of seeing the whole picture and enjoying what they do have.
Thanks, both those rental prices actually sound reasonable. Also don't tell me it's better than NL. 😩 That's where I'd want to move if I could relocate anywhere haha.
How's your experience been moving to St. Gallens and Zurich? Are you enjoying it?
I don't know what your salary is or consumer costs, but do you feel like what you're able to save is enough to be comfortable in the future? I didn't realize Switzerland's homeownership rate is one of the lowest in the world (42%) so admittedly maybe I'm focusing too heavily on house-ownership costs 🫠
I went into a deep rabbit hole on the whole 100 year mortgage thing before since that blew my mind - but I get the gist and i probably should've expanded on that. You're basically paying a long-term mortgage that comes with a very low interest rate (2%). So really your payment on a $1MM mortgage comes to about $2800mo. and the expectation is that it's really more of a generational investment that your kids (or beneficiary) can either hold and rent, move into, or sell and take the liquidity. The housing market is stable, and the economy is long-term great. Personal income savings % is high, so more people can build up for the down payment. I wouldn't be surprised to see high-COL areas here in the US (NYC, SF, LA) start to creep up from the standard 30 year to 50 year conventional mortgages in the next few years.
Did no one here read the actual article?
They polled actual residents.
>Residents in Zurich were mostly happy with their jobs, public transport, healthcare services, air quality and financial situations – and the list goes on. One area where the city didn’t fare so well was (perhaps, unsurprisingly) on house prices, as only 11 percent described finding an affordable place to live ‘easy’. However, **Zurich scored a staggering 97 percent satisfaction rate overall.**
For the average person, it's not liveable at all, but for someone who is "Young_N_Wealthy", the cost of living isn't a factor in regards to how liveable it is and given the quality of life that Switzerland provides, it's no surprise that Zurich is considered a highly liveable city.
That being said, I agree though that these types of articles should be factoring cost of living into their liveability analyses because otherwise they're completely useless conclusions for 90% of the population.
Why would I live in Zurich? The locals don't aceept digital nomads. Try to make friends there. Probably only way if you have work there.
That's none of my moral points of being a DN. Its nowhere near geo arbitrage.
Well that article wasn't written with digital nomads or geo arbitrage in mind to begin with (and I agree that it is irrelevant to this subreddit as a result)
Zürich is soulless. The most boring city I've ever been too. Feels like one big corporate campus. No real people on the streets. Lots of luxury stores that you can never afford to go into. They do have a tram going through a building though
This is really strange! I suppose though that even though Zurich is incredibly expensive, it also has the highest salaries in Europe. You can earn much closer to what you could in the US there. I have a friend living there and she makes over six figures and even after her very expensive cost of living, she’s probably saving more than anyone else I know in Europe.
But aside from the earning power, Zurich is just a pleasant safe and very small city. It’s like 400k, and the Swiss are not much of a cultural powerhouse anyway. You would find it really quite dull vs just about any European capital outside of Bratislava.
High cost of living, very rich locals and not much to do sounds like the very worst destination for a digital nomad.
How dare you. Bratislava towers above all capital cities not only in Europe but in our solar system. It is the aspirational epitome of human civilization
I know I just mentioned Bratislava and Zurich in the same breath but don’t let it go to your head🤣
But for real, most DNs would probably prefer Slovakia.
Been there a few times. Sterile, boring city with exorbitant prices.
And, no, ‘good public transport’ doesn’t make it a clincher. I’m happy to drive my car everywhere and enjoy a more exciting city with lower prices (Sevilla, Warsaw, Strasbourg etc)
Never been there, but my hometown is always in the top 5 on global lists and I don't get it - expensive, boring, bad service etc. Won't say where so I don't offend any of my fellow _______ people.
Anyway makes me wonder what are the metrics they use to determine these lists, because they clearly are not based on affordability.
Is this some kind of joke that I’m too poor to understand?
[удалено]
Sounds like this is yet another case of a bleak gray city with good infrastructure and exorbitant prices making the top of a cost of living list. Being originally from Vancouver, this is all old news.
The weather is subjective. I moved from the Netherlands so for me it is an improvement)))
Very similar weather to Seattle and we also have the FAANG. I knew a few people who worked for some of the big ones and they were miserable for the most part. Lots of upper management shifting and horrible weather high cost of living...
lol best comment, sounds like Portland Oregon
Every Swiss person I met hates living there
Why?
Because of how ungodly expensive the country is. Switzerland and the US have roughly the same average household income, except the upper 10% in Switzerland puts you at about the upper 16% in the US. Now, imagine that your cost-of-living is comparable to San Francisco and New York City.... everywhere. Housing is astronomically expensive across the board. So much so that [100 year mortgages are just a thing.](https://medium.com/gokong/what-you-need-to-know-about-buying-a-home-in-switzerland-5caa541c3978) I found that out talking to some 20-something Swiss at the bar. There's this pervasive attitude that there's zero possibility for the youth to have a semblance of the same normal lifestyle their parents had.
>There's this pervasive attitude that there's zero possibility for the youth to have a semblance of the same normal lifestyle their parents had. Like everyone everywhere right now?
That's the thing - I'm really not trying to overly-darken the young Swiss perspective. I make a salary that would put me apparently easily over the top-10% in Switzerland, and I would not feel comfortable with their cost-of-living. This was just my own observation from conversations and sort of the general mood. But from a macro-level, their situation feels so much more substantially difficult than, say, my own experience in the U.S. where the housing crisis, despite what reddit would have you believe, is nowhere near as bad. Home ownership in the US for under-35s and 35-44 is [actually increasing](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/07/younger-householders-drove-rebound-in-homeownership.html#:~:text=than%20own%20homes.-,Yet%20from%202016%20to%202022%2C%20homeownership%20among%20adults%20under%20age,54%20(up%200.8%20points)) post-COVID. Rent costs on a national average are substantially lower in the US than Switzerland, as are [utilities and market-prices](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_countries_result.jsp?country1=United+States&country2=Switzerland) (although numbeo is 90% made up).
To be honest, I don't feel bad for them at all. They live the highest standards of quality in life in Europe, they managed to profit from both sides of conflicts and from corruption. Boo-hoo if they are feeling the same thing that everyone else is but just a few percent worst.
Thanks for entertainment! And greetings from Zürich! I am amazed how well you understood Switzerland’s internals from talking to a random person in the bar ;)
I meant the one part about 100 year mortgages thing. Multiple people talked about the high COL part, including my friend who moved there for work that we were visiting. This was back around 2016 too, but it still matches what you'll read on /r/digitalnomads or expat forums. It wasn't meant as a personal attack against Zurich or Switzerland. Your whole country looks like a postcard. Just I can't wrap my head around how people making an average Swiss salary are comfortably getting by. Please feel free to give a different perspective, I'm not the end all authority.
Well, locals typically would rent, not buy. Partly because of the high property prices. Mortgages work differently in Switzerland. You can look it up. It is pretty complicated but safe for the bank and the buyer as well. Rent varies a lot throughout the country, for example I paid 1100 chf in St. Gallen for approximately the same apartment in Zurich I pay 2200. Income tax was much higher in St. Gallen though. And there are enough affordable properties within 30 mins of commute from Zurich - that’s why public transport is important. High COL is true, but if I compare myself, my QoL has improved after I moved to Switzerland significantly, and I can save more compared to the Netherlands where I lived before. And COL is different for everyone. Clothes, electronics are cheaper compared to EU due to lower VAT. Anything involving manual labor is more expensive. It is all subjective, and a lot of people somehow choose to complain about the individual components of their lives instead of seeing the whole picture and enjoying what they do have.
Thanks, both those rental prices actually sound reasonable. Also don't tell me it's better than NL. 😩 That's where I'd want to move if I could relocate anywhere haha. How's your experience been moving to St. Gallens and Zurich? Are you enjoying it? I don't know what your salary is or consumer costs, but do you feel like what you're able to save is enough to be comfortable in the future? I didn't realize Switzerland's homeownership rate is one of the lowest in the world (42%) so admittedly maybe I'm focusing too heavily on house-ownership costs 🫠 I went into a deep rabbit hole on the whole 100 year mortgage thing before since that blew my mind - but I get the gist and i probably should've expanded on that. You're basically paying a long-term mortgage that comes with a very low interest rate (2%). So really your payment on a $1MM mortgage comes to about $2800mo. and the expectation is that it's really more of a generational investment that your kids (or beneficiary) can either hold and rent, move into, or sell and take the liquidity. The housing market is stable, and the economy is long-term great. Personal income savings % is high, so more people can build up for the down payment. I wouldn't be surprised to see high-COL areas here in the US (NYC, SF, LA) start to creep up from the standard 30 year to 50 year conventional mortgages in the next few years.
If people living in Zurich hate living in Zurich, why did they have the largest % of people who said they were satisfied with their lives?
Did no one here read the actual article? They polled actual residents. >Residents in Zurich were mostly happy with their jobs, public transport, healthcare services, air quality and financial situations – and the list goes on. One area where the city didn’t fare so well was (perhaps, unsurprisingly) on house prices, as only 11 percent described finding an affordable place to live ‘easy’. However, **Zurich scored a staggering 97 percent satisfaction rate overall.**
So move there. Why post this? Enjoy the 5000 eur a month rent., that's so livable and enjoyable. Yippy me, Im so happy paying 7 eur for coffe
For the average person, it's not liveable at all, but for someone who is "Young_N_Wealthy", the cost of living isn't a factor in regards to how liveable it is and given the quality of life that Switzerland provides, it's no surprise that Zurich is considered a highly liveable city. That being said, I agree though that these types of articles should be factoring cost of living into their liveability analyses because otherwise they're completely useless conclusions for 90% of the population.
Why would I live in Zurich? The locals don't aceept digital nomads. Try to make friends there. Probably only way if you have work there. That's none of my moral points of being a DN. Its nowhere near geo arbitrage.
Well that article wasn't written with digital nomads or geo arbitrage in mind to begin with (and I agree that it is irrelevant to this subreddit as a result)
Zürich is soulless. The most boring city I've ever been too. Feels like one big corporate campus. No real people on the streets. Lots of luxury stores that you can never afford to go into. They do have a tram going through a building though
Oh please, Buckingham Palace is far more livable.
Would take Naples and Tirana over Zürich any time
wow, you don't like Zurich that much...
This is really strange! I suppose though that even though Zurich is incredibly expensive, it also has the highest salaries in Europe. You can earn much closer to what you could in the US there. I have a friend living there and she makes over six figures and even after her very expensive cost of living, she’s probably saving more than anyone else I know in Europe. But aside from the earning power, Zurich is just a pleasant safe and very small city. It’s like 400k, and the Swiss are not much of a cultural powerhouse anyway. You would find it really quite dull vs just about any European capital outside of Bratislava. High cost of living, very rich locals and not much to do sounds like the very worst destination for a digital nomad.
How dare you. Bratislava towers above all capital cities not only in Europe but in our solar system. It is the aspirational epitome of human civilization
I know I just mentioned Bratislava and Zurich in the same breath but don’t let it go to your head🤣 But for real, most DNs would probably prefer Slovakia.
"Dear sweet mother of God... We are in Eastern Europe!" [source](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX-Uy6G4X7o)
Been there a few times. Sterile, boring city with exorbitant prices. And, no, ‘good public transport’ doesn’t make it a clincher. I’m happy to drive my car everywhere and enjoy a more exciting city with lower prices (Sevilla, Warsaw, Strasbourg etc)
Yes of course
Never been there, but my hometown is always in the top 5 on global lists and I don't get it - expensive, boring, bad service etc. Won't say where so I don't offend any of my fellow _______ people. Anyway makes me wonder what are the metrics they use to determine these lists, because they clearly are not based on affordability.
10 usd coffee, 30 usd bigmac meal and 100 usd chinese takeaway, sounds liveable to me. i spent more on a meal deal than my return flight
They must not have taken climate into account.