I’m much further away not far from St Gervais les Bains. The commute is a real hassle but if you love the mountains then there’s nowhere better.
I guess it all depends if you have a car, and if you would be happy to spend your time chilling in the village or at home. Or you do it just to save extra money?
I don’t know your situation but if you regularly save 40/50% of your salary, you can totally afford some extra comfort.
I moved from Saint-Genis Poully to Geneva, as paying extra 200-300 chf on rent (I am lucky at finding good rents in Geneva) and slightly more expensive grocery (I dont buy meat), was worth it.
I can go for a walk to the lake, choose in which bar to stop for a coffee, see friends without too much planning for bus/tram.
I gladly pay extra for my happiness.
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Commute? I would call that traveling (daily) 
Honestly, you are close to the mountains, but do you really have time to enjoy it during the week with a 2x1h+ of commute?
The way I see it it’s better to do 2x2x1h+ to do Geneva>> Mountains (assuming you go Saturday+Sunday) than do 5x2x1h+ Geneva>> Home, Monday-Friday to be able to have them next door on the weekend. Not to talk that you probably have traffic each way with the commute.
Just my opinion, you are free to do what you want of course.
Fair comment. Other life choices are available. I live where I do because it’s where I want to live the next couple of decades.
I have kids. It’s a lot easier to move me a few times a week than move the whole family. Not to mention having to own or rent two houses seems pretty impractical to me but I’m sure it can work.
I haven’t been to the office in a year so commuting is not much of a problem at the moment. If I had to go back to commuting three days a week I would probably get tired of it and maybe get a remote job or reduce my hours further. No pressure to do that any time soon and maybe never again.
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Rinch, you seem to have a nice life; it’s great that it works for you!
I am contemplating doing the same: moving to the french alps. But being Swiss, I have no idea of french taxes. How do you get taxed in France if you have little or no income (basically an early retiree)? Where can I find a tax calculator?
You can certainly do an advance simulation using this form.
However France is not really keen with FIRE movement.
- You will also need include the 30% flat tax on dividend and capital gain.
- Last but not list, you need to be aware of the Cotisation subsidiaire maladie named Protection Universelle Maladie or PUMa which is similar to LAMal. You will have to contribute to the national health care system if you have no activity at all (for Early Retiree) as it is taken out of your salary in France.
There are specific rules to not target everyone but only people that could.
If
- you are not a retiree getting your pension or any unemployment benefits;
- your revenu from your employment is less than 10% Plafond Annuel de la Sécurité Sociale (PASS). As it is updated every year in 2021, you will need a minimum of 4 113 euro generated from your activity for you and same for your partner so a total of 8 300 euros yearly for the whole family.
- your Net Worth revenu are above 25% of the PASS. In 2021, it will be 10 300 euros.
This cotisation is collected by Urssaf at the end of November of the following year (y+1) and it is 6,5 % of your Net Worth revenu above 20 568 euros.
The tax is limited at 8 x the PASS or a total of 329 088 euros in 2021. So your maximal contribution will be 21 390 euros. Which is in addition for the Revenu tax or any other sociale contribution (CSG).
It is targeting about 45 000 french residents.
You can contest it but it is not an easy process for a French speaker.
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At the moment I’m a frontalier so I I pay income tax on my salary in Switzerland. I have a French accountant who does my French tax return. Given I have hardly any income in France I don’t have much to pay at the moment. This will clearly change when I eventually retire.
As a frontalier you can choose between LaMal in Switzerland or the french system. As a relatively high earner the swiss system works out cheaper. As a lower earner the french system would be cheaper as it is 6.5% of income not a flat rate. At the moment I have LaMal but this would change if I stopped working in Switzerland. You can use the French healthcare system even if you opt for LaMal.
It’s a very good point from FunnyDjo that the flip side of all the nice things about France are high taxes. You can reduce them to some extent using the Assurance Vie or the PEA (investment vehicles) but there is definitely none of this zero capital gains business, like in Switzerland.
I haven’t really worked out how to make it all work. I’m not sure if I would ever stop working even if I could afford it. This series of articles (in French) discusses some of the pros and cons of FIRE in France.
My personal take is that France is a difficult place to be rich but an easy place to avoid being poor. Once I want to move towards less work I would probably set up as a microentrepreneur. I know lots of people who work under this system for sporadic or seasonal work. As long as you earn more than about EUR4000 per year then healthcare is covered. something like Barista FIRE but ideally with a little bit of relatively well paid work.
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