I was eating lunch outside with a couple of my coworkers the other day. While we were eating, a little brown bird flew over and hovered at eye level between the three of us for a moment, eyeing our sandwiches. One of my coworkers, a Canadian, proudly told us that he had finally signed a mortgage for a condo in nearby Ranheim.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been tough,\u201d he said. \u201cWe have to compete with all these Norwegian college kids.\u201d He picked off a bit of bread and held it out on an open palm, and the bird hopped right into his hand, snatched the bread, and hopped back down under a nearby table. \u201cIf you\u2019re Norwegian, your parents can co-sign and put their house down as collateral, and then you aren\u2019t required to put in a down payment. It\u2019s the Norwegian hack.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe entire Norwegian economy is based on debt,\u201d explained another of my coworkers, an Englishman. \u201cThere\u2019s a wealth tax, so if you\u2019ve got too much money, you get taxed. However, any payments towards loan interest is tax-deductible. Furthermore, your house only accounts for about ten percent of its actual value towards your net worth. It\u2019s really quite silly, you\u2019ve got all these young Norwegian families taking out huge loans to buy houses they really shouldn\u2019t be able to afford, but it makes more sense economically to do that than to save your money.\u201d<\/p>\n
My first thought was that such a financial state is dangerous. What if an unexpected expense arises? Instead of asking the more general question, I chose a specific example. \u201cWhat happens if you break your leg and suddenly have to pay $10,000 in medical bills?\u201d I blurted out.<\/p>\n
Everyone at the table laughed. \u201cThat\u2019s not the way we do things here,\u201d said the Englishman. \u201cYou\u2019ll learn to think less like an American after a while.\u201d He reminded me of one of my other new colleagues, who broke his ankle in a skiing accident and had to be airlifted off the mountain. He paid either nothing, or the maximum deductible, which is around 2000 Norwegian kroner ($250).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was eating lunch outside with a couple of my coworkers the other day. While we were eating, a little brown bird flew over and hovered at eye level between the three of us for a moment, eyeing our sandwiches. One of my coworkers, a Canadian, proudly told us that he had finally signed a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-norway","post_format-post-format-aside"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikegerhardt.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikegerhardt.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikegerhardt.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikegerhardt.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikegerhardt.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1359"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mikegerhardt.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1583,"href":"https:\/\/mikegerhardt.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1359\/revisions\/1583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mikegerhardt.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikegerhardt.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mikegerhardt.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}