I know you just want to bitch about the vermogensbelasting, but:
- Go work in the HFT industry. :P
- A good freelance dev can pull in about 80-100 euro/hour which leads to a monthly pretax income of >10k euro. This is almost four times the median monthly household income. Even if you maintain a level of spending double that of the median, you can still save 50% of your income.
- Even a "normal" senior dev in the Amsterdam area can pull in 5-6k euro per month, which is still double the median household income.
- Since you are saving so much, buying a house in the suburbs like Almere or Delft or Hoofddorp (assuming you work in/near Amsterdam) becomes much more feasible. If you can work remotely, get a house in the northeast and save yourself another 100k. Make sure to use your continuing savings for paying down your mortgage as early as possible. Most Dutch banks allow for 10% per year early repayment without but some allow for more.
- Simultaneously, invest a little time in skills like cooking that will enable you to have a good life in hedonism terms without having to spend a lot.
- Now that you have a paid off home and low expenses, you won't need to pay a mortgage anymore and can increase your savings rate even more. Start investing in income generating instruments like bonds, dividend generating stocks or even real estate.
- Repeat this last procedure for ~10 years until income from investments exceeds expenses.
There's a whole community of people in various stages of this process at the DutchFIRE subreddit if you want to know more. This strategy won't allow you to spend like a rapper trying to impress his friends, but it's a solid, low-risk approach that has worked hundreds of times already, even in relatively high Cost-of-Living areas like the randstad. Of course, if you just want to bitch about high taxes that's also fine ;)
> A good freelance dev can pull in about 80-100 euro/hour which leads to a monthly pretax income of >10k euro
When I did free-lancing work in the early 2000s, the rule of thumb was that a freelancer income of 1000 euro corresponds to an employee income of 500 euro, if you factor in expenses, sick days, holidays, time to do accounting, time between projects,...
Is that still true? If yes, the 10k euro don't sound that impressive anymore (but still good, of course, compared to the median)
The 2x is a bit unfavorable because it depends on your situation.
IMO, if you're young, healthy, single and can command 100 euro/hour, then you're in a much better position then if you need: a secure cash flow, a lot of sick days or have a demanding SO that doesn't allow you to work weird hours, then 2x seems like a much more reasonable multiplier.
In my particular case, it felt much more like 2.5 to 3x
> I know you just want to bitch about the vermogensbelasting
It's not only that, and I never need to pull out that argument as there are simply much better countries than The Netherlands for FIRE [2], most notably Switzerland. In Switzerland you make more [1]. Moreover, compared to Switzerland, the Dutch simply have worse purchasing power [2].
Amsterdam is one of the major HFT hubs. You can find more HFT opportunities in Chicago, New York, London, but after those, Amsterdam comes next (together with Sydney, Singapore).
Optiver, IMC, and Flow Traders are bigger players. There's also Webb Traders and DaVinci Derivatives, and smaller offices of other players, e.g. Jump Trading, Mako, and there's always a rumor that DRW is planning to open an office in Amsterdam, etc. etc.. There are also some non-HFT shops but I'm not very knowledgeable about them.
Speaking for software engineering (not quant or trader positions): They're quite selective but if you have a decent resume, you can get an interview and it's not extremely hard to get in. Although, you need to have strong interest in trading, and good CS fundamentals, and ability to think quickly on your feet.
Decently big because of the Amsterdam Internet Exchange I think. There are 2 pretty big players, Flowtraders and Optiver.
From what I know getting in requires a decently impressive resume and passing some tough tests. I also expect it requires a masters or even PhD in a very mathematical field. That is the context where I saw them at the very least.
I feel like I'd stand a decent chance at getting in if I could bring up the required enthusiasm in the interviews. But I do have a decently high opinion of myself.
How? In The Netherlands, I don't know how to do this other than working in the HFT industry.