Annamalai Ramanathan
“…it came as a shock to me that my highly educated friends working as Engineers, Doctors and in management position are not aware of personal finance skills as these are never thought in school or never discussed openly. Hence , I started a Facebook group to help Indian expats living in Sweden in Year 2020 and now it has grown to 7800+ Indians living in Sweden and every day we discuss and help each other on finance topics in Sweden which are important in our day to day life.”
Life as a Young Adult (No understanding of Personal Finance)
I come from India and moved to Norway is year 2011 at age of 26, for my Master degree and I was working happily in Norway. In year 2015 Oil crisis hit Norwegian economy and by year 2016 many engineers lost the job, including me.
I was young at that time and most people would be sad or will be eager to find a new job, but I used that time to travel around Europe & India for 5 months using my Savings (YES, Savings comes handy, please have an emergency savings for yourself and for your family).
And as a young boy, I was stupid enough to spend all my savings in travelling and the reality hits me, I need to find a new job to make my bill payments.
Welcome to Sweden (Awareness and Important of Personal Finance starts)
When oil industry is in crisis and no matter how educated and qualified you are, You will not get a Job, hence I made my mind to apply for jobs in Sweden and moved to Karlstad with my spouse in Year 2017.
Most expats when they move to Sweden, then it's always one person getting a new job in Sweden and the spouse and family follows them to Sweden and we need to live our life with single income.
Me and my spouse decided to educate ourselves with money management, savings and how to monitor our expense, so that we have enough money to live a comfortable live and travel the world which is our passion.
This is also means we need to sacrifice certain things in our life like not owing a car, not eating out often or basically we don’t spend unnecessary, instead we spend our money on where we find happiness like travelling to new places and new country.
Below are the points which our family adapted to live a comfortable live with our single income
How to Reduce your expense in Sweden with family and as single income earner?
- Each supermarket has different offers on food going on, search the internet and plan you shopping or get "Reklam" (advertisement on your post box with all offers & evaluate).
- If you go late night around 8 PM, most of the bread / milks with end date comes in offer/half price.
- Buy 2nd hand dress, games for Kids from Facebook Market or you can visit a physical second hand stores in sweden called as "Loppis". Ask your friends about the location.
- Don’t take a loan in first year itself to buy an apartment. As you need to understand the Swedish Apartment rules, BRF finances and how to maintain an apartment in Sweden.
- Non-Working Spouse shall maintain the expense (Sweden& your home country combined) report of the house in an excel file to evaluate and decided which expense can be reduced.
- Non-Working Spouse shall register with Arbetsförmedlingen when you enter Sweden & after 14 months of being unemployed, Arbetsförmedlingen pays around 4000+ gross benefits per month for next 13 to 14 months or more: Its called "jobb och utveckling" guarantee program only if you fullfill its rules & conditions. Please refer official website for more details.
- You can open online account with Avanza/Nordnet, as both provide brokerage free when you invest for the 1st time in stock market/funds.
- Create a passion for finance (anyone in the house) and read/view article and gain knowledge which will help you in long term to take proper decision in personal finance.
- Initial years in Sweden we never buyed a car as it’s a huge expense. Car is not luxury in Sweden, for a family person it becomes essential , evaluate before buying a car , as monthly expense for car can be in the range of 3000-5000 Kr (EMI for 150 000 Kr cost of car+ insurance + Petrol+ Maintenance).
- Tired of looking for jobs ? Start a blog on your hobbies, believe me if you do it with passion for 2 years continuously, it will be successful and you can start your own company in Sweden! (Change of mindset from being a employee to Entrepreneurship is needed).
Helping Expats in Sweden with Personal Finance
Money management skills are always life long learning, but I can say I have learnt the basics of money management with respective to Budgeting, Saving, Taxes, Insurance, Investment and Pensions and when I look forward to discuss these important topics with my friends, it came as a shock to me that my highly educated friends working as Engineers, Doctors and in management position are not aware of personal finance skills as these are never thought in school or never discussed openly.
Hence , I started a Facebook group to help Indian expats living in Sweden in Year 2020 and now it has grown to 7800+ Indians living in Sweden and every day we discuss and help each other on finance topics in Sweden which are important in our day to day life.
The idea to help more expats in Sweden, never really struck me, but now I planning to spread financial awareness of important topics to Sweden expats and I plan to spread this information via Linkedin post.
/ Annamalai Ramanathan
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