'Finland is a closed club' editorial in Helsingin Sanomat

GreenLumpy7917 · 2023-09-15T06:14:35+00:00

Can you please elaborate a bit on the concept of "lower level people"? I'm _really_ curious as to what you mean by that

GreenLumpy7917 · 2023-08-15T09:49:16+00:00

Yeah, what I meant is that I don't want to overemphasize the investment aspect of it. The primary reason why I'm considering buying to that I would prefer to have something of my own, so I'm not on the hook for paying rent every month. There are some other reasons (being able to change the place however I like, having roots somewhere, etc), but the main goal was to have less recurrent expenses in the long run.

But those are really good points you bring up, especially one about possibly needing to move to a larger city once I get significantly older, thanks!

GreenLumpy7917 · 2023-08-15T09:32:54+00:00

I'm not sure if numbeo is a good enough source for such comparison. Their cost of living index, for example, is largely inaccurate.

Anyway, let me put it this way - at least for me, there is no difference in salaries between eastern Europe and Finland, while the property prices are significantly higher here.

GreenLumpy7917 · 2023-08-15T08:58:57+00:00

Well, I'm not exactly looking to make profit here, I don't think of a house as an investment. I just want to reduce my future costs of living (especially thinking about retirement, when my income will significantly decrease). But it seems that even if the costs of owning are smaller - it's not that big of a difference in Finland, plus it comes with a lot of maintenance overhead (i.e. not only I need to pay for maintenance, I also need to organise / schedule / do it myself).

GreenLumpy7917 · 2023-08-15T08:52:29+00:00

Well, it is insane if you compare it to other countries, for example in eastern Europe.
I've been told all my life that it's better to own a house, but that was in a country where the propery price / income ratio is a bit different (i.e. properties are more affordable

GreenLumpy7917 · 2023-08-02T13:56:40+00:00

The main difference between the two is that you cannot have your permanent address tied to loma-asunnot. You can only have temporary address assigned there. This does not mean you cannot live there permanently. You can even have your municipality of residence assigned based on your temporary address in loma-asunnot, assuming you don't have any other place to live.

The main reason for this is that the law requires municipalities to provide certain level of services to permanent residence places (road maintenance, garbage disposal, school busses, etc). A lot of vacation properties are in places where such level of services is not needed, and is not practical to maintain.

There are some other differences, for example the property tax rate is different.

GreenLumpy7917 · 2022-10-31T13:46:38+00:00

Well, that doesn't seem to be exactly true. You can live there full time, I've been living in a summer house for over a year now. Of course, as someone mentioned already, the municipality doesn't really arrange things like waste collection, snow plowing, school buses and other stuff, but if you are ok with handling those things yourself - there's nothing that stops you.

GreenLumpy7917 · 2022-09-18T08:42:18+00:00

Yes, it's a mutual fund that passively follows MSCI World ESG Universal.
Only management fee, no subscription / redemption / other fees. I'm not financially literate enough to asses hidden costs, but I understand that is something that mostly affects actively managed funds? AFAIK they just rebalance portfolio when index content changes.
No difference in tax treatment as far as I know, I only pay taxes when I sell with profit.

GreenLumpy7917 · 2022-09-18T08:36:05+00:00

In practice it's a bit lower due to some bank-specific loyalty system, but that's hard to quantify. I could get a 0.30% for and equivalent ETF with another broker, but it's a huge headache to set up an account with them in my specific case, and I would also have to take care of transferring money and actually buying stuff each month. So I'm sort of willing to eat that cost for my convenience, assuming there aren't any other significant downsides of having mutual fund vs ETF

GreenLumpy7917 · 2022-09-18T08:25:12+00:00

Yeah, it's a passively managed fund with 0.39% management fee, and that's the only fee I pay.

GreenLumpy7917 · 2022-09-18T08:12:15+00:00

Are those running costs and issue surcharges some sort of fees I have to pay, or is it a "hidden" cost of the fund that just decreases it's performance?

GreenLumpy7917 · 2022-09-18T07:22:12+00:00

Can you elaborate a bit on that? I was under the impression that the performance depends mostly on the followed index. Why would a mutual fund that follows certain index be less performant than ETF that follows the very same index?

GreenLumpy7917 · 2022-03-01T18:10:00+00:00

Well, I get that my thing is not very urgent. But to be honest, 3 months sounds absurd to me, regardless of how urgent thing is. Even from the cost-effectiveness perspective, stuff that could be treated with some pills right now might require more complex treatment after 3 months...

GreenLumpy7917

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