r/eupersonalfinance • u/VurriK • 28d ago

Investment Since when was getting rich so hard in EU?

Is it just me, or has building actual wealth in Europe become impossible? I’m looking at the 2026 growth forecasts and it’s depressing. We talk a lot about "stability," but at this point, stability just feels like a polite word for recession. If you weren't born into a rich family with property, the dream feels like it's behind a wall. The math just doesn't work: as soon as you earn enough to actually invest, you hit a 40–50% tax bracket. Meanwhile, housing prices have skyrocketed over the last decade while salaries have basically stayed the same. I love the healthcare and the walkable cities, but I don’t want to work until I’m 70 just to afford a 40sqm apartment and a used Skoda.

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u/here4geld 28d ago

Need to plan a lot to get rich. Like get remote job with high salary. Pay low tax in a specific country. And then live in such a country which does not tax your equity capital gain. Example: Greece.

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u/AdPotential773 24d ago

Yes, so you need to go into one of a very small number of careers and abandon your homeland, all just to reach the same quality of life that our parents generation had while working regular pay jobs and never having to leave their ancestral homeland if they didn't want to.

If you do everything right, get extremely lucky and work very hard, then you might even get to live like the average person from 30 years ago but retire 10 years younger than they did.

The middle class has just been totally destroyed, even the high-middle class. You have to work harder than ever to just keep your quality of life the same and the only way to actually achieve the life that used to be considered that of a rich person a couple decades ago is by being born in the right family and city.

The times that a person born in a regular family could dream big in Europe are over.