I've seen numerous posts here about people living in a EU country and wanting to work through a company set up in Estonia. Since the work has been done primarily in the country of residency then the tax agency could claim its a taxable event and trying to charge for it from another country is tax fraud.

Then what is this good for? is this only good for digital nomads, moving between countries all the time?

Hi, I’m a dual German/Latino citizen living in Germany, and I have 2 goddaughters living in the Latin American country as I born in.

My 2 goddaughters also have a German passport.

I’m trying to do research if I can open an investment account where I can put a small amount like €200 on ETFs to their name for when they become adults. Is this possible? I tried researching on the platforms/banks I already use (Trade Republic, Commerzbank) but couldn’t find anything.

Or you just say that you will invest X per month and then you randomly pick a day in that month?

Hi everyone.

Right now I've been living in France for almost a year (I'm 24), working as a freelance (autónomo in Spain). Although I don't know what my future will look like, as I'm planning on travelling a lot, I think about what would be economically more efficient.

I'm paying taxes in Spain, so my healthcare system is in Spain, I'm only covered in France by the European Card (but still have to pay for everything and then ask for reimbursement). I'm about to go above the 45€/year barrier which is not worth being an "autónomo" in Spain and then it's better to become a society (SL).

What would you advise on doing? If in the short-medium term, I'm staying in France or working with international clients, continue being tax-wise in Spain? Move everything to France? Is there any way to get full private health insurance in France (like I had in Spain)? 

It's difficult to find people who know about both financial systems. Also, good to point out that I've just moved to living in a camping car as I spend a lot of time travelling for work and going to hotels, so I don't even have an apartment in France anymore.

Thanks!

What would be the best countries to change your financial residence to, given the following criteria:

• you have 500 k eur invested in sp500 and want to live off a 4% yield
• you want to pay the least amount of taxes possible
• you can get by with English language
• affordable health care
• cheap cost of living

Pretty much the title.

Lets say you have a portfolio like :

• 80% allocated to an all world index (DM + EM) IUSQ
• 10% allocated to ZPRV
• 10% allocated to ZPRX

If the intention is to invest €1000 a month, does it make sense to do:

a) buy €800 IUSQ, €100 ZPRV, €100 ZPRX

b) buy €800 IUSQ, (every other month alternate between €200 ZPRV & €200 ZPRX)

IMO, scenario b seems to be preferable because the transaction cost is limited but I am curious to see if my understanding is correct.

Hey guys!

Maybe this question has been asked tons of times here but I think mine differs a bit from others. I'm a Spanish citizen, and I'm moving to Czech Republic soon. The company I work for -which is based in Spain- with a permanent contract has given me the option to work as a freelance if I wanna live there. I have more or less solve the contractor part -I'll most probably create the company in Estonia with an e-Residence- but what is ticking me is the salary thing, because if I'm not mistaken I will get it as an 'employee' of this company that will act as a contractor for the current company I work for.

Maybe I'm not understanding this correctly, but because I will live > 6 months in Czechia I will need to have my tax residency there - and tax-wise I think it's the best idea. Is this correct? Thanks in advance for your help. I see a great and helpful community here :)

I'm 19 with $30K in a HYSA earning 5.25%. Already maxed out my Roth IRA for the last two years with a Bogleheads strategy, and have $4K in qqm and $3K in VT for taxable brokerage accounts,
Considering my low expenses at this age, I’m thinking about moving $20K into more ETFs or individual stocks for potentially higher returns, given my ability to handle risk. But, I'm also wondering if it's smarter to keep ALL money in the HYSA as a safety net.
Would love some advice on whether to invest more or keep saving. Thanks!

I try to be as quick as possible with my question. Yesterday I bought exactly one share of Philip Morris CR at 589 EUR. I thought that everything should be alright and stuff but then I double checked and I realised that I was charged 601 EUR. I know that one EUR is the fee but why did they charged me 11 Euros too much?? Like what?? You may think that the stock went up minutes later or stuff but later the price of the stock dropped to 575 EUR so I don’t understand why I got overcharged. Please help and tell my why

Link to ETF Profile: iShares S&P 500 Information Technology ETF (QDVE)

Ticker for EUR: QDVE
ISIN: IE00B3WJKG14

While it’s often advised not to focus solely on specific sectors when investing, I’m interested in diversifying my portfolio.

My current holdings include:

• SXR8 + IMAE (over €100k)
• 12 independent dividend-paying US stocks (over $100k)
• VUSA (S&P 500) - distribution (over €100k)

I'm heavily invested in the US, particularly in the S&P index.

Although I'm aware that the iShares S&P 500 IT (QDVE) sector overlaps with my existing portfolio, I'm considering it as I aim to add a more risky ETF to my holdings, diversifying beyond individual stocks. The 12 stocks I've chosen are from various sectors such as consumer staples, utilities, and finance, unrelated to the IT sector. Given the inherent risk in IT stocks, I see investing in this ETF as a safer option.

I'm particularly drawn to this ETF due to its low Total Expense Ratio (TER) of 0.15%, compared to the alternative Nasdaq 100 (iShares Nasdaq 100, IE00B53SZB19, CNX1) with a TER of 0.33%.

Do you have preferences for other ETFs? Would you recommend investing in the Nasdaq ETF over the S&P 500 IT? Why or why not?

I'll start by saying that my parents haven't invested a single euro in me since I was born. And even though we've never been badly off as a family, they've spent most of their money and haven't even thought about investing for themselves or for me.

Did your parents make any investments, open minor accounts, or save money for you and your future when you were little?

Obviously, we're only talking about the financial side of things, and we're not going to touch on the personal and emotional aspects at all in this thread. Far be it from me to discuss other aspects, let's just talk about the economic and financial side.

If so, has this helped you a lot when you became adults?

How did you use this resource?

If you found this thread interesting, upvote it if you want.

PS.

I don't blame my parents for anything, except for not believing much in studying and therefore not supporting me much in this area.

In their own way, they have always helped me in the best possible way, but they have never planned anything since I was little, but have made do from time to time. I consider this a mere financial mistake that they could have managed better, but I have never lacked anything.

Hi There!

I am a Dutch citizen and currently (financial) resident in Portugal under the NHR-regime.

I am currently in a situation where I am planning to establish an operational company in the Netherlands with a business partner. The ownership structure will be divided between us as 90% for them and 10% for myself at the start. I will be appointed as the statutory director of this company.

I have been advised that it would be wise to set up a Holding company in light of potential future considerations such as the sale of the company, transferring assets between the operational company and the holding, and segregating ownership, etc.

At the operational company, I will have a management agreement between the company and my holding.

In addition to this role, I also engage in freelance activities from my Portuguese freelance entity.

As I am officially no longer a resident of the Netherlands but reside in Portugal, where I benefit from the NHR status, I am seeking the most tax-efficient way to establish this structure

In discussions with my accountant in Portugal, we concluded that it might be most advantageous for me to bill the Holding company from Portugal as a freelancer. This Holding company would then invoice the operational company under my management agreement. This arrangement would mean that I do not draw a direct salary from the Holding company (as an employee/director) but instead distribute some of the revenue to myself by invoicing the Holding.

I'm exploring the possibilities of where to create this holding to set it up in a financially interesting way. If I start the holding in Holland i'll have to pay myself a salary of approximately 51K yearly before being able to take out any dividends, so that's not preferred..

Does anyone have any experience being financial resident in one country and having a company in another? Struggling a lot with finding the right setup!

Hey! What do you think of the following allocation, would it be good for long-term investing?

• USA 42,25% (VWCE has +60%)
• European Union 26,75%
• Europe (non-EU) 9,6%
• Emerging markets 16,57%
• Japan 5,02% (VWCE has 6,3%)

Hello!

I am 27 years old and live in Estonia. I’m planning to invest long term (20+ years) and I have recently been researching the best investment options.

I currently have positions in 3 funds of my bank:

• Swedbank Robur Access Edge EUR (fees + costs 0.45% yearly)
• Swedbank Robur Access Edge Japan (fees + costs 0.35% yearly)
• Swedbank Robur Access Edge USA (fees + costs 0.37% yearly)

These are all index funds and after doing some research I’ve realised that the costs are pretty damn high for an index fund.

I have a couple of questions that I would love to hear your opinions on:

1. Does it make sense to cash out these positions and reinvest them in something cheaper, like any S&P 500 funds (VUAA) or World index funds (VWCE)?

2. Should I invest in different markets separately, like I did before, or simply invest in a broad world index fund to have the easiest way of diversification?

My current JP market position is a bit too big to my liking and it’s been underperforming recently.

If I should move my funds away from the bank, the most obvious choice would be a broker. I’ve done some research and it looks like the most trusted option is IBKR. However, it has rather high fees for transactions and an extremely over complicated UI.

I’ve also been using Lightyear for my smaller investments. It’s a smaller broker that has been operating for about 4 years and I really liked the design and simplicity. You can buy ETFs with no fees with them and they promise that in case of insolvency all ETFs and Shares will be given back to the clients. Is being new on the market something that I should be worried about? They are regulated in both UK and Estonia, is that good enough? Have you had any experience with them and do you think it’s safe to keep more than the law-protected 20 000 € with them?

tldr: my bank’s fees are high for index ETFs, should I move to brokers? Which ones?

Hi all. I need some assistance. I am a dual Austrian and Spanish citizen, and I have a significant amount of funds that I would like to invest. I would like it to be a very conservative investment such as a bond or high interest savings account. However, first of all, I believe that the amount that the government will reimburse you if the bank goes out of business is relatively low? I am new to investing, but I’m certain that I would like to remain relatively conservative, with a small amount of the funds in ETFs.

Specifically, can people recommend a bank or wealth management service that is great but has low fees? Thank you!

Hello everyone, let's play this "game", hoping to bring out interesting ideas:
- imagine it is November 2025
- at the end of 2024 the collapse of Tesla shares was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. Panic selling kicks in, Nvidia halves its value and the Nasdaq reaches -60% compared to the peaks of summer 24. To make things worse, the structural crisis of Alphabet which is unable to find an evolution for Google, slowly replaced by searches via ChatGPT, Perplexity etc
- the S&P500 is down 40% and kept oscillating at those levels for months
- in the following 12 months, dozens of technology companies fail, those that survive decimate their workforce, condemning tens of thousands of people to unemployment: what will go down in history as the AI ​​bubble burst
Here on EUPF we are licking our wounds but keeping on our strategy because our horizon is longer than 10 years (right??), but what I ask you today, November 2025 with a lot of hindsight, is:
- what would you have liked to have done to protect your investments before everything collapsed?
- what would you have liked to do to take advantage of this collapse, therefore even making money from it?
-- End of role-playing game --
Please know that I will seriously consider some of the answers you give me, especially to the second question, for future investments

I know this feature was recently added to Trading212. I see it in the app, and for outgoing transfers it gives these steps:

1. Contact your destination broker to initiate the process
2. Your broker will request the transfer from us
3. We will notify you and ask you to approve the transfer
4. We will transfer your portfolio for free

I guess I just wanted to hear other's experience with doing this, since I plan to transfer my small portfolio from Trading212 to IBKR once my account is approved.

How did you reach out to IBKR to initiate the process, and was everything smooth? How long did it take?

Hello everyone!

I decided to invest in the market, I'm currently living in france as a foreigner, and taxation here is very high (like most of EU countries), and I wanted to know if I can open an account let's say in TD Ameritrade or Interactive Brokers, and use an Acc Index just to get things rolling, and after some years moving out to a less-taxed country. Is that possible?, to start investing in France, and then moving out to another country and changing the tax residence in the platform?.

Thank you

Hello everyone,

I'm going to receive a 50k cash and In the near future I could need these money to buy/renovate an house but I don't know when. The idea is to start looking house opportunities next year and the process can take 1 year AVG.

I was considering of course trade212 and trade republic, however I've had a bad experience with trade republic recently and I'm not sure I want to give it another chance to fuck up with my money.

So, what it could be another possible approach?

Thanks

Hi everyone, I'm a 22yo university student living in the eu, and I'm new in the world of ETFs. I spent the last weeks learning about those investment tools, and I found them very interesting and promising. I was thinking about investing most of my savings in them, and i would like a word of advice from someone wiser than me.

First of all, I don't know whether splitting my portfolio into government bonds and ETFs (i was thinking about maybe splitting them respectively 30/70). For the bonds, I would have an interest rate of about 3.2% per year for a total of 6 years. However, I feel that by investing solely in ETFs, I may take on more risk but also potentially earn higher returns. On the other hand, part of my portfolio would have a lower risk rate. What do you think about that?

My second doubt is the composition of the ETF portfolio. I searched a lot these weeks, and came out with this:

VWCE (55%) VWCG (30%) VFEA (15%)

I aimed for diversification while focusing on the USA and European economies with moderate risk. I chose accumulating ETFs to avoid dividend taxes and ensure automatic reinvestment. My long-term goals include saving for future expenses and trying growing wealth.

What are your thoughts about that? Thank you all for your time!

This is going to be a rant. With the rising prices of rent in almost every city not just Munich and Berlin, the net salaries are laughable. If you haven’t inherited an apartment, you are just filling up pockets of rich apartment owners of Germany with letting go of 40-50 percent of your salaries after giving 30-40 percent to the government. Is moving to low cost of living countries in South east Asia or finding a Job in Dubai,US, Switzerland only solution? Anyone able to make it big without generational wealth? I don’t think so putting 300-500 euros in piggy bank or world ETF will take you 50 years to have a decent Corpus. And to add yearly hike is also laughable. How are people okay after doing Masters and still not able to afford a decent apartment of their own on rent. Young employees of Europe are getting robbed I feel.

Basically the title. In case the answer was yes, is there's a US-domiciled version of the Ireland-domicilied VWCE?

Thanks in advance

I'm considering parking some money into short-maturity German bonds via XG01 (DBX0T8) ETF. It's an accumulating physical ETF domiciled in Luxembourg. Is there any withholding tax or similar that would reduce the ETF's effective yield (currently 3.5% before TER)?

I still don't entirely get how exactly bond ETFs that do not hold bonds to maturity generate income that is either accumulated or distributed as dividends.

I understand that interest rates fluctuations will importantly impact the share price of a bond ETF. But let's take a very low-volatility, ultra-short maturity bond ETF like Xtrackers II Germany Government Bond 0-1 UCITS ETF 1C. It's an accumulating ETF that invests in German government bonds with maturity of up to 1 year, so it is supposed to have very low volatility. This ETF is rebalanced monthly.

1. Does this mean that it will sell its holdings every month and buy new bonds with similar maturities? How many assets are actually sold - all of them / it depends / there's no rule?
2. Is income generated primarily through coupon payments of existing bonds? Or perhaps by selling bonds at premium? How predictable is this?
3. Will a subset of bonds be held until maturity regardless to increase NAV? Is this knowable? Is it even relevant?
4. Will YTM of the ETF closely follow the rate of German government bonds with similar maturity (well, the underlying index, which from what I understand should be similar), and its NAV predictably increase with this rate (minus costs etc.)?

If you look at the Euribor rates historical data, the last two times it was high for long it gave us the 2000 and 2008 crisis.

Now it's looking again like 2000 and 2008. Does this means a crisis is right around the corner?

Thank you

Did anybody else have issues verifying their IBKR account email in order to open a brokerage account?

I've had a trial account for a while, but decided to try Trading212 as I liked the UI more, but now I'm looking to switch to IBKR. In my account it states I need to verify my email however I'm only receiving an email with a link to start my application, never one to verify my account. Even when I click to resend the verification email.

I contacted support but they only suggested to whitelist certain emails which is not the issue since I'm still receiving IBKR emails, just not the verification email. I haven't heard back from them after telling them that.

Has anybody else experienced this or is it just me? Do I need to call them maybe?

Hi, to park money the EUR Ultrashort Bond from iShares has performed well since Jan.

What would be the expectation in the next 6 months to 1 year, taking in account the next expected moves from the ECB ?

Any other EUR ETF you would suggest to have a low steady return with minimal volatility ?

Thanks for any response, good or funny

​

Hi everyone,

I'm an investor and not a trader- my portfolio is around 25k€. I have around 19 of that in Degiro since I had started investing there around 3 years earlier. I opened a TR account recently just to make use of the 4 interest rate and park some cash there when the markets are a bit unstable. Recently I saw that the TR buy cost for a stock is much cheaper than Degiro. Like i think Degiro charges anywhere between 3-3.9€ for a stock/ETF. But TR charged 1€. Should I switch?

Also I see with Degiro, i have flexibility to choose the exchange that I want. TDG I know has cheaper fees as compared to XET. But I recently found some weird scenarios that I can't follow:

1. When I buy on TR, it shows the "market price" different to what's the market price showed on their screener. For example - when i go to buy a share of Darktrace today, it shows 7.11€ as market price but the market price on their screener shows 6.92€. I have no transparency into this except that they maintain a Buy and Ask price. I can't place a limit order.

2. Keeping with the example of Darktrace- it's London listen so the share price everywhere I see in GBP and it is not listed in any DE markets but I see it on TR at a price that is nowhere close to Degiro. Degiro shows the market price as 599GBP and this is correct. But on TR they show the price as 6.92€. Even the % increase or fall is totally different between the brokers. Everything looks correct and that this is the right stock but I don't follow this at all.

Maybe it's me being a noob or maybe I just get Degiro, but wanted to understand from the folks here your opinions or suggestions? Thank you in advance.

Hello,

I keep looking around and can't seem to get a clear answer.

I am looking to buy a vehicle in Amsterdam and import it to Haute-Savoie France. Now, I think in France you don't have to pay the VAT on a used vehicle. But in the Netherlands you must. So, I want to know - if I buy it without paying the tax and get a tax clearence certificate, can I then import it into France and not pay TVA on it? Or would I be liable to this?

Any help would be really appreciated as I am ripping my hair out here.