The following is the first article of Remote GOATs, a newsletter and community I’m building, to share my researches on “where and how to set up life and business as someone earning money online/remotely”.

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Without further ado…

Checked how much I spent in Zurich, how much abroad.

Benchmarked that with the taxes I pay in CH and those that I’d pay if I were to relocate (to Poland, as an example).

Drew some conclusions.

In this article I will share numbers, findings, and final considerations.

Hope you’ll enjoy!

Now, I didn’t spend all my time outside of Zurich in Warsaw - I was also in Italy, Spain, France etc.

But, I like Warsaw as a city and it’s one of these places where I’d consider relocating to if I were to leave CH. So, I’ll focus on cost of living (CoL) here.

As a single man (as in, with no kids - I do have a gf that I take out / give gifts to, but I’d have similar costs being single, so you can consider my costs as single man costs) with a fairly comfortable / somewhat luxurious lifestyle.

And, again, it allowed me to have a pretty good lifestyle both in Zurich and during trips abroad.

As I just mentioned, I spent roughly the same this year splitting my time between Zurich and other cheaper locations, and in previous years when I was living in Zurich full-time.

Having a hybrid setup is not operationally cheap: sometimes you’re paying double-rent, sometimes you need to ship stuff, you fly frequently, etc.

For instance, the famous “trifecta” from Nomad Capitalist required him to own a house in each of the location he spent time in (very expensive).

When I’m in Warsaw or Southern Europe, I go out many times every week.

When I’m in Zurich full-time, I don’t do that (I do it more rarely: couple of times per week on average).

You could live cheaply in a low-cost location if you were frugal, but then what’s the point of being there? Saving more money? I don’t know… I think there are better strategies to maxx out savings.

In general, lifestyle bends to the place you’re in.

In Warsaw or Milan it’s common to go out often, for restaurants or bars, going to events or concerts, taking private classes of Tennis, going to workshops etc.

In Zurich not so much.

I remember when I was making 200k a year in Zurich I didn’t know too many people that were up for going out often and “balling”.

And even when I did that, it didn’t feel like it was good value/fun for money.

That’s how I ended up spending my weekends travelling/balling in central/eastern/southern Europe instead of burning money senselessly in Zurich.

Each place commands a bit of a different lifestyle.

Zurich is more nature-oriented, Warsaw/Milan more outgoing oriented.

When I’m in Zurich, I usually spend 100-400 CHF each weekend, either going out for dinner, brunch, coffee or going to a small trip to the mountains, or to some SPA.

During the week, I mostly cook my own food, order a few times, and that’s it.

In Warsaw, I go out and/or order 2 to 10 times per week, and buy more services like Tennis classes and so on.

Now, we’ve assessed that I’d spend around 60k eur/year whether I live in Zurich full-time or part-time (being abroad for a few months each year).

Looking at the above table, to get a lifestyle equivalent to what I have now, I’d spend roughly 48k eur per year.

Seems high, but the majority of people I know in Warsaw spend that or more.

You need to account that while some things costs much less in Warsaw, like rent, sports classes, or going out, others have the same costs: travelling, shopping, etc.

OBVIOUSLY, you can spend much less than that, if you’re frugal.

In the same way as you can spend less than 60k eur/year in Zurich.

(I know Zurich Googlers spending 35k eur/year, for example, as they’re frugally grinding their way to FIRE)

I’m comparing apples with apples here, so comparable lifestyle levels in different places.

After all: one thing is visiting as an expat, another is being there full-time.

It seems somewhat likely, actually.

Looking at EuroTopTech Data: people in Zurich on average spend 43k eur/year per person, while people in Warsaw spend 21k eur/year per person.

43k is twice as much as 21k. Whereas in My case 60k is not much different from 48k. I don’t know why that is. Maybe devs in Warsaw don’t travel/shop all that much?

I don’t know. In Warsaw, for instance, I only buy grocery from organic delivery shops, buy European wines, etc. If I were to be there full-time, I would still spend some weeks/months abroad, etc. Likely all these things compound.

I also feel like devs are very frugal 😄 Cause 40k a year in Zurich is like 3.5k/month - health insurance and rent alone can easily go up to 2k-2.5k+, so I’m not sure…

But, as I mentioned above, I’ve met people (devs) in Zurich that live on 3.5k a month. So I guess that’s the explanation.

Also 20k a year in Warsaw is quite low. It’s 1.6k a month. Rent alone can very easily be above 1k if you live in the centre.

So I guess the more frugal you are the larger the difference, and the less frugal you are, the smaller the difference. Makes sense.

Anyway…

Let’s assume roughly 65k eur in profits/income per year, for example.

In Warsaw, you can account for 20-25% total tax. Which is not uncommon if you’re an entrepreneur.

It can be less if you’re a b2b freelancer (like a freelance dev): in that case it’s more like 15% total.

If some of your business is in the b2c consulting realm (like my coaching), you’d need to pay also 20% Polish VAT, even if your customers are abroad (whereas you usually don’t need to pay that in Switzerland on foreign customers, and you have a ~100k CHF VAT-free threshold on local customers).

Obviously this is not tax advice.

Just what I understood after consulting with lawyers/experts and researching things myself. Taxation outcomes are often very individual and specific circumstances can change the whole picture quite a bit.

In Zurich, on 65k eur/year income/profits, you can expect something like 8% income tax and 8% social security.

In this case, you can assume 12.5% total tax / “lost money” and about 3% going to some sort of pension fund.

Similar to my case.

Let’s say about 22% income/profit taxes: 14k eur.

Then the usual 3% (~2k) going to pension.

And another 10% going to VAT (assuming roughly half of the income/profit coming from consulting): 6.5k eur.

This leaves us with 22.5k eur spent in taxes and social security if based in Poland.

Considering how much of it goes into pension, and how much these contributions are likely to get you in pension, I’d say about 21k eur would be “lost money”.

In Zurich, as I mentioned above, on this level of income, you can assume roughly 8% income/profit and 8% social security.

The 8% social security is NOT lost money. In fact, you’re basically being subsidised by richer Swiss people for your pension, if you’re at these low levels of income (because the minimum Swiss pension rarely goes below 2k CHF/month).

I’m not considering health insurance costs here, because I’ve partially accounted for them in the cost of living considerations, and also because they’re a cost of a service: in Poland you’d also get a private health insurance for 100-150 eur/month on top of free healthcare, and I think the 200-300 eur/month difference compared to the Swiss health insurance can be reasonable if you’re considering of the overall higher quality of healthcare in CH, especially for emergencies or major treatments/operations (which in Poland you’d have to do in the public hospitals even if you have a private insurance).

The difference between 5k and 21k is 16k (= saved tax money by being in CH instead of PL - as a biz owner with some VAT costs).

Which is higher than the above-mentioned 12k eur difference in cost of living between CH-based life and PL-based life.

Comparing tax savings and cost of living savings:

Let’s say my estimate costs for Warsaw at 48k was too high. At 44k it’d still be cost-neutral. And at 40k cost in Warsaw you’d just be saving 4k compared to having a CH base.

If you’re a freelance b2b dev, you’re instead only “wasting” 5k in taxes (compared to CH-base) and gaining 12k in cost of living. So:

This difference can become significantly bigger if you’re very frugal. I.e. if your CoL difference wouldn’t be 12k like in my case, but 20k like in eurotoptech.com/data case, then you’d be saving 15k eur/year by being based in PL instead of CH. Which on 65k eur/year income is a lot.

If your job is business but no consulting / you don’t need to pay Swiss VAT, you’re roughly ending up with the same math across the 2 places (again: assuming 65k income and mid/high lifestyle). Basically:

Give or take.

Interesting when you look at it like this, isn’t it?

It’s always hard to make these comparisons. Take them with a grain of salt!

If you want to expand on the topics of social security and pension, you should check this articles:

Later, we’ll discuss how this math varies with higher and lower income/profits levels.

Here I’m using PL just an example of an efficient and good low-tax low-cost choice (similar to LATAM/SEA), and CH as an example of a low-tax high-cost place (similar to Singapore or UAE).

Both of these options have pros and cons.

In some occasions, having Swiss standards (stability, infra, healthcare, school quality, clean nature etc) will bring you happiness and quality of life.

In others, having more “financial power” can make your life more easy and enjoyable: you can afford more fun activities, help in the house, larger apartments, etc.

A bit similar to this comparison on LATAM “Pablo-life” vs USA “Joe-life”.

In the end each place has its own vibe, people, weather, food, culture, etc.

These things (and others) will yield a significant difference at the end of the on the quality of your experience living somewhere.

It’s more fun, more young, people are more chill. More vibrant, etc. I talked a bit about this in this other article.

Zurich can be challenging, when it comes to fun and happiness.

I think it’s objective that Switzerland can be a challenging place to be happy in.

If you enjoy being on your own, working a lot, going to the nature, etc. It can be ok. But otherwise…

For me, personally, the social life there is not great.

The fact that I have a more frugal lifestyle is also limiting: you can do fewer things, go out less, etc.

Above, I explained how in Zurich I don’t spend much more than in Warsaw.

But the truth is: if I wanted to have a comparable lifestyle in Zurich to what I have when I’m in Warsaw, I’d need to spend A LOT.

Spending so much money “for the vibes” is too much for everyone, which is why people don’t do these things in Zurich, and which is why you ultimately end up with “less vibes”, “at scale”, than in places like Warsaw.

I don’t want to be too doomy about life in Zurich. Some things are really great: nature, for instance, it’s quite top tier (lakes in summer, mountain in winter, forests in autumn/spring).

Of course, there’s a cost here too, which is that it can be a bit complicated and tiring to build such a setup.

As well as making other things in life a bit more challenging: such as expanding on a local community and building solid roots.

But, after trying it out for just one or two years, I think it’s doable. I’ll report what I think of it, as time goes by and I gain new insights.

With kids going to school, you need to spend at least 9-10 months in the same place.

Be it CH or PL or whatever.

In my case of a CH-base setup, I believe it wouldn’t be an issue.

Because after they’re born, I wouldn’t send them to childcare in CH for the first 4 years of their life, since that costs 3k+/month in CH.

I’d probably either raise them at home with me or my partner working part-time, and/or spend months abroad and other months host grandparents in CH to help out with the kids.

At that time, kids would go to public schools, which are high quality in CH, and enjoy the good nature and child-friendly options of growing up in CH.

Probably by the time they turn 18 or so, and start going to uni.

Then you can go back to spending several months abroad.

In CH, it’s full of people who’re partially or fully retired, and spend half the year in Italy, Greece, etc. Enjoying a more relaxed and mediterranean life there, while keeping ties in CH for stability, healthcare, etc.

Depending also on how much your partner is making.

But, from the analysis I did some time ago:

Assuming remote-flexibility and at least one of the parter working only part-time.

Otherwise, you’d need more (or, you’d need to be quite frugal).

In the end each place is gonna be different: LATAM, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, Dubai, etc.

I just focused on expanding on the CH-base setup which is the one I know best and I’m using for myself.

What if you’re making less than 65k eur/year, or more?

As mentioned above:

You can go down until 40k eur/year income, then you’d be paying around 5k a year in taxes and social security, and be left with 30-35k eur/year to spend.

You’ll also enjoy a Swiss pension (2k+ CHF/month).

35k eur/year means you kinda need to spend half the year in a cheaper location.

But:

When in CH, you’ll need to be a bit frugal.

But when abroad, you can have a comfortable life.

CH stays a solid option.

Depending on how much exactly you’d be making and how many people you’re supporting, you’re gonna have different levels of frugality you’d have to put up with.

As always, having flexibility in your work (remote etc) will boost your lifestyle and overall geo-arbitraged purchasing power.

For a couple of kids, you’d need 130k+ eur/year in family income.

Because you’d have an LLC to retain the profits, and only pay yourself a salary to support your living costs.

As I mentioned a few weeks back, in 2025 I made about 70k eur, give or take.

I want to stay a bit generic in what I share because on one hand is a bit hard to come up with specific numbers, as there’s no “single number”, and on the other I’d like to keep at least some privacy.

So, after having shared my expenses for last year (also these were rough numbers/estimates btw), you can assess that right now my income is enough for me to support my desired, comfortable lifestyle, while keep working on building my Swiss pension and working towards Swiss citizenship.

I’m OK not saving money on the side for some time, since I already have a comfortable buffer, and since I see capital as not just money in the bank but in various forms:

etc.

Anything can change, but I’m currently on a path to starting a family in a few years.

My current business goal is to grow 20% YoY, plus my gf has her income too, so I should be able to afford a Swiss-based family by the time I build one.

I.e. just moving somewhere for the vibes / because I’d feel happier there.

I will report on how it goes :)

That’s a wrap!

Sharing numbers like this is always a bit uncomfortable, but I’m paying this “privacy cost” in the hopes that such detailed breakdowns can actually help people out there.

Let me know if you appreciated it!

Cheers

Nic

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