You can live in the very core of berlin for around EU1500/mo, and much cheaper in places only a few blocks away from the subway that will get you to work in 1/4 the time. Food costs are about 50% less than in the US, for better quality. You can travel to any other city and other countries by fairly inexpensive train or cheap flights. You can spend 1600 on room/utilities, 400 on food, 100 on transportation and have 1600euros a month for whatever you want at that salary, with no worries about your health or looking after your kids.

But you probably won't have 4000 square foot house to store your 4 cars in.

> But you probably won't have 4000 square foot house to store your 4 cars in.

Or more generally, you'll just have a whole heck of a lot less money, which was the point. I wonder if djsumdog was exaggerating, though, by failing to compare like against like. The numbers he quoted for US engineers represent the pretty high end. Are there really engineers in Berlin making a lot less than 50k Euros/year?

Belgian speaking here. Have 4 years of experience, my first salary was around 40k. Current salary is 46k, and I am moving next month to Paris in a top tech company (reputed to pay very well there), that will offer me 59k + 14k (average bonus, etc.). And I consider myself on the high end of the spectrum, so yeah, I am pretty sure there is a lot of (young) engineers making less than 50k in Berlin.

NL here. From my previous employer I was making more than 80k euro per year as an engineer, but almost half of the money goes to tax.

So what is the point there? So I quit and work for 3 days per week. Much less money before tax but after tax not really. I feel it is good deal to take 2 days back to life.

So if you want to live in Europe, forget about working for someone else.