zlacker

So an extra ~4k take home.

Invest that on the side and you'll have built a fortune within a decade and a half, while your German friend has nothing significant in savings and is still living hand to mouth.

And we haven't even mentioned the differences in career steepness: After a few years it's not 80k vs 160k anymore, but more like 90-100k vs 200k+.

Also if you compare the best places in each country than you are looking at something like 100k vs 300-400k.

Again, I have been trying really hard to see if all the benefits you mention really offset this monetary discrepancy, but it's just too huge.

>>jdthed+(OP)
Yep that's definitely true. Just comes down to what's important to you. You can fall hard and fast in the states but that's a lot less likely to happen in Germany.

The 4k extra take home is more significant if you move to a LCOL place once you have acquired your fortune, not if you stay in the States. I would argue things like FIRE or Lean-FIRE are only slightly easier to achieve in the US than in Germany because of the comparably HCOL.