Dear All,
I am living in Netherlands from past 5 years. But still I don't understand the salaries in Netherlands. So far I have been working as a contractor and now I have plans to move to a permanent role or in a job that has more visibility. To my surprise the salaries that are offered are not all inline with the experience we have and also doesn't suite the expenses we have.
I have refered couple of websites to check the salary ranges. Even the results there are shocking. For a software developer who has 12years of exp is only earning avg salary of 55K EUR per year. Out of this almost 38% is taken away as taxes. I am wondering how can people are managing with such low salaries. Especially expats have big troubles with these low salaries. Because they end up paying huge rentals and high fee for international school fee for their kids.
On top of that, they also need to save some money to fulfil their commitments in their homeland.
Let's take a simple use case with a salary of 51K without holiday allowance. Holiday allowance is generally one month salary in Netherlands.
Note: %1K salary is considered as very very good salary according to people in Netherlands. Don't know whether they really mean it or they just say it like that.
Considering the above sal and taking in to 30% ruling the expected take home salary(netto) is 3500EUR to 3600EUR .
Netto : 3600
Rent : -1200 (unfurnished inc of G/W/E and local taxes) (assuming a normal city and a 2bed room house)
Medical insurance : -200
Internet bill : -40EUR
Phone bills : -50EUR
international school fee for one kid : -500EUR
Car : -250EUR (very normal small car and old one, inc of taxes, insurance, and petrol )
Food : -300EUR
Misc : -200EUR (clothing, kids unforeseen expenses, fines u get, medical expenses incurred etc)
We are only left with : 860EUR (the above is only very very basic estimate not considering yearly trip to their motherland which may cost 2000 to 3000EUR)
Looking at the above figures it's clear that a family with 2 kids can't afford a living here.
Can you all please share your experiences and advise what's wrong with NL or am I the only person who is having this problem.
Please don't compare these figures with local Dutch people, because they have mortgage which is less than rent we pay and more over they don't have the burden of international school fee. Please share your exp from expat point of view.
If both partners work then the other partner mostly is not entitled for 30% ruling and the money they bring in is enough for the daycare costs that we have to pay. As far as I know the daycare costs for one kid (full time ) is 1750EUR assuming you get 600EUR back from govt, you end up paying 1100EUR for one kid. The sal spouses get is around 2000EUR to 2300EUR.
On the whole I would like to hear all your opinions on this. If this is same for all then how come so many expats are living here. Can' this be changed. Especially we are expats and we never make use of any social security benefits that NL govt offers to their citizens. Yet we pay huge money towards it. I feel this as not good. If you are living for so many years and has paid huge amount of money for nothing, this is really not good. Can't we do anything to correct these? Ideally expats if they leave the country they should be compensated at least with 50% of their social security contributions, because they are not all utilizing it.
Looking forward for your experiences.