Understanding taxes, banking, and everyday expenses is essential when building a life in Sweden. This section guides you through the financial basics: how to open a bank account, manage your budget, and make sense of the Swedish economic system.
Getting a Swedish bank account will make your life in Sweden a lot easier. Most things are paid for by credit/debit cards. Newbies often find it surprising and a bit costly – considering the international fees. So, it might be a good idea for you to open a Swedish bank account. It is not really difficult to do but you need to take some previous steps before you do so.
Having a bank account is pretty much vital in Sweden, especially as Sweden goes more and more towards becoming a cashless society. However, it is unfortunately often the case that banks deny newbies (and others) a bank account for sometimes rather flimsy reasons. If this happens to you – this is what you can do.
A guide to where our tax money goes and the pros and cons of a high tax society. Sweden has a progressive income tax and income thresholds are regulated each year. On each earning over this figure you will also pay national income taxes, with the money going to the state.
Have you figured out your Swedish pension yet? In the next few weeks, 6.7 million people in Sweden will receive their “orange envelope” – which is your pension statement. Every other person will be worried by the envelope and many do not even open it. But this approach won’t get your more pension. The Swedish news paper Dagens Nyheter called the Pension Agency and asked them to help out with a little guide to the “orange envelope.”
The requirement to obtain the maximum guaranteed pension (garantipension) is with some exception, that the person has lived in Sweden for 40 years. This means that many foreign-born Swedes are left out of the basic protection.
Compricer is Sweden’s largest comparison service for personal finances. Every day, they help thousands of consumers save money by comparing and changing suppliers in areas such as insurance, electricity and loans. The service is completely free of charge for you and Compricer also helps by phone if you wish.
It’s a common knowledge, I think, that living in Sweden is not cheap. According to a data from Numbeo (February 7, 2018), “Cost of living in Sweden (rent is excluded), is 15.47% higher than in United States.” However, thanks to the Swedish ways of life, there are some things that we can do to save a little bit of money. Here is the list based on my personal experience.
Living cheaply in Sweden is possible I promise! When I first moved to Sweden I saw that everything here is much more expensive than in my home country. But doesn’t have to be very expensive if you know how to live cheap in this country. I would like to share some advice on where to buy cheaper food and how to live cheaply in Sweden.
Autumn is here and soon it will be winter. To several, this is a time to make subscriptions to new services like gym, to compensate for the changing seasons. With subscriptions, of any kind, it is always good to know the exit strategy. You don’t want to end up with an Inkassokrav at Kronofogden. I use the gym subscription example because I found it to be counter-intuitive and I found myself chatting with companies I never thought existed.