> be me
> live in a relatively new part of town in the Netherlands
> bike 20 minutes to the city center
> no hills or mountains because netherlands
> See almost no cars because most bike routes are completely seperated and shorter than car routes
> Park my bike in a surveilled parking area funded by the city
> Do all my shopping for the day and return
> MFW my friends and family don’t even realize how good we have it
So how easy is it for an American to move to the Netherlands? Asking for myself
If you are skilled labor, yes: https://www.expatica.com/nl/finance/taxes/the-dutch-30-ruling-explained-101641/
But what @abbadon420 said is equally true. Housing market’s fucked beyond belief. Now, if you want to WFH and live out in the sticks, you’d be set.
1 gal of gas: ~29k calories - $4.609
~29k calories of rice: ~$600 <-- sus math btw 🤔It’s simple: drink the gas.
okay, update:
my math was wrong. new cost of rice: ~$11.5 (ordering in bulk)CONCLUSION
Drink the gas.Actual unironic gigachad moment
> be me
> be downtown on bicycle
> actual protected bike lanes
> zipping past hundreds of people that decided to drive for some reason
> bumper to bumper traffic
> road capacity literally maxed out
> honking and yelling at almost every intersection
pic related
My job is 15 mountainy miles away, and when I show up drenched in bicycle sweat everyone in the office says I smell bad
You could get a decent e-bike?
“But they’re so expensive, I’m not paying that much for a bike! I’d rather pay 10 times as much for cheap car that’ll sell all my text messages to data scraping companies while polluting the environment and destroying my future.”
Bro my car cost $4k, has no radio and manual windows, if this 20 year old civic can sell my data, it’s earned it
Even more reason to get an e-bike lol. Too late I guess since you already decided to pay 4000 dollars for a shitty car. :p
4k for a top of the line e-bike.
Or 5k for the best e-bike in the world.
None of these have radios either. And you don’t have to work up a sweat by rolling down the windows because there’s no windows!
Sure, but that doesn’t allow me to bring home a family worth of groceries, or let me drive 4-5 hours away to see family for the holidays, or give me a way to drop my partner off at the airport with three suitcases for work conferences, or a way to get my 110lb dog to the vet.
The bike is not a replacement for a car, not even if it’s an expensive e-bike.
People shouldn’t live that far away from their workplaces. They didn’t used to, before we invented shitboxes.
I would love to live 5 minutes away from my workplace
But I saved about $300,000 on my mortgage when I bought a more rural house that isn’t near the city/my office building
If it’s cheaper to live in the middle of nowhere, with water and electricity and internet needing to be piped all that way out there, and the gas bills, and the road wear, then the government has failed. High and medium density housing costs the government less in maintenance, stimulates the economy, and is cheaper to build. Any functioning economy would price those homes cheaper. If you’re saving 300,000 by costing the government all that extra money and polluting the environment, someone fucked up on a colossal scale.
Be American
Living paycheck to paycheck
Need job
Good worker
Work overtime when needed
Trying to pay off car
Smug biker does a driveby near open car window
Rethink my life
Realize U.S. infrastructure often requires vehicles
In middle of daily 40min commute, one way
Realize the same distance on bike would be two hours
Depresso
Get a closer job or move closer to your job if it’s a good reliable job. I did and it’s fucking wonderful! Riding gets easier and easier as you get stronger and better cardio too.
Took me a long time, a lot of work, and some luck but I can’t recommend it enough. Most days I ride my bike or skateboard, but even walking doesn’t take long. I only resort to a car if I’m too injured to ride/skate/walk far or the weather makes it too dangerous (which is rare, I’ve ridden through more storms than I can count lol, icy conditions suck though).
Damnit, now I want to go for a ride.
>just get a job closer to your home
>just moveIdk man, not sure either of those are the easy solutions you’re implying them to be.
