moving to cyprus for tax benefits taught me that you can't spreadsheet your way to a fulfilling life. the numbers looked perfect, but reality hit different...

when you organize your entire life around tax optimization, you end up dividing yourself as a person.

sometimes you have to optimize for the wrong thing to discover what the right things are. and no tax saving is worth the cost of putting your actual life on hold.

wild story, good takes. obsessing on numbers is something you encounter frequently in crypto space - but also in current neo-capitalist society in general. but a lot of times people are mistaking the map for the territory. I think life is much more complex than what looks most rational on a spreadsheet, not all is quantifiable (like health and free time for example).

It's the classic example of an American pointing at their GDP chart and saying that they're much richer than people in Sicily/Europe. Meanwhile in Sicily people buy fresh fish directly at the pier from their friend and spend their free time on the beautiful beaches. Science then finds that a Mediterranean diet actually improves longevity and especially consuming olive oil!!! So it must be the olive oil that the Californian entrepreneur consumes that extends his life, not the laidback island life of people from the Mediteranian!!!

Came across a great German word for this desire to quantify everything: Quantifizierungswut - quantification rage - it definitely is something people in crypto have.

I lived in a place with much lower taxes for freelancers just before moving back to Germany (UK) but I wasn't happier at all.

For one, it's still an expensive af place, and also just meant I didn't get to see my family much. I also had less free time to see the fun things in London because I had to work more and spend more time in transit. Plus I hated not having my own flat.

Even though I pay much more taxes now, I'm in a better place.