another norwegian chipping in with some pros and cons: Cost: very high, among the highest in the world, but housing isn't the worst exept the biggest cities, nothing like London though. If you like cars, EXTREMELY high costs for both the car and the fuel. Musclecars get punished worst, smaller cars not so bad. A Corvette would be like > 100k dollars roughly. Taxes, If you make over 100k, calculate 50% in taxes if you're single. 100 sq.meters ~900 sq.feet apt in one of the cities (Oslo, Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim) would be roughly 2k a month (all prices in US dollars) Oslo highest, the other ones a bit lower. 50 sq.meters roughly 1.2-1.5 k Eating out, chinese/pizza/cheap stuff - calculate 20 bucks. Decent place - 50 bucks ++ for drinks So with all these costs, what do we get? - Free healthcare - Free edu. system, colleges aren't the best though. Top business school is roughly 30th in europe. - If you have worked and get fired, expect at least 30k per year from gov. Infrastructure - like every other developed country. Probably a bit ahead exept roads Girls - Only Sweden has more beautiful girls in the world, and that's pretty much a fact... 95 % + is white if you prefer something else. In general not much racism, a bit more on the countryside than cities, but not from people of age below 40-50ish though. Americans I know find norwegians as quite reserved, until you get to know them, but people don't mind getting approaced, but don't expect too many to come and talk to you. Expect to come to a country that's quite socialist, don't like capitalists and don't like people who brag (read americans.... lol) (mostly media and the cultural elite in the cities, I have very few friends who's like that) Feel free to ask if you need more info. A beautiful country, but defenitely on the expensive side. Trading hours is already mentioned: US market open at 15:30 aka 3:30 PM (get used to 24 hour clock and metric system) and close at 22:00. If you want you can trade from local markets open (like dax/fesx) at 9:00 until US markets close.
Nobody exept students earns below 50 k per year. As students you get roughly 1k per month in subsidies. It's this expensive for example beacuse the waitress make 50k + per year and so on. Norway has the highest income per capita in the world. Why? mostly because of Oil . 6th largest producer in the world (i think)on 5 mill inhabitants. In my opinion way to expensive. Looking to move if I can get my wife to follow
How is the weather like? I am into south California type weather. My guess is that it is nothing like that. I spent some time in Northwest like Portland and Seattle. The winter was way too long.
Nothing like California type wether no!! It's a country far north. If I was to compare with a state in America, it would have to be Minnesota type wether. Or in east coast probably Main type. But of course, it has a great deal to say where you live in Norway as well. The states I compared with now, would be probably like living in our capitol, Oslo. The furthest south in our country rarerely have much snow, if any at all, during winter. But not warm anywhere in Norway during winter.
Considering south of norway is as far north as Anchorage, you can rightly assume that it's cold Nothing like Alaska though because of the gulf stream. Southern part where I'm from: Winter - between -5 to +5 degree celsius Spring - 5-20 degrees celsius Summer - 15-30 degrees celsius Fall - 0-20 degrees celsius Coastal weather
Just another piece of information that might be of interest : The Government Pension Fund - Global (Norwegian: Statens pensjonsfond - Utland) is a fund into which the surplus wealth produced by Norwegian petroleum income is deposited. The fund changed name in January 2006 from its previous name The Petroleum Fund of Norway. The fund is commonly referred to as The Petroleum Fund (Norwegian: Oljefondet). As of the valuation in June 2007, it was the largest pension fund in Europe and the second largest in the world [1], although it is not actually a pension fund as it derives its financial backing from oil profits and not pension contributions. As of 31 December 2008 its total value is NOK 2.275 trillion ($325 billion), holding 0.77 per cent of global equity markets. [2] With 1.25 per cent of European stocks,[3] it is said to be the largest stock owner in Europe.[4] The purpose of the petroleum fund is to invest parts of the large surplus generated by the Norwegian petroleum sector, generated mainly from taxes of companies, but also payment for license to explore as well as the State's Direct Financial Interest and dividends from partly state-owned StatoilHydro. Current revenue from the petroleum sector is estimated to be at its peak period and to decline over the next decades. The Petroleum Fund was established in 1990 after a decision by the legislature assembly Storting to counter the effects of the forthcoming decline in income and to smooth out the disrupting effects of highly fluctuating oil prices. The fund is managed by Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), a part of the Norwegian Central Bank on behalf of the Ministry of Finance. It is currently the largest pension fund in Europe and similar in size to the California public-employees pension fund (CalPERS), the largest public pension fund in the United States. NBIM forecasts that the fund will reach NOK 2.794 trillion ($399 billion) by the end of 2009 and NOK 4.769 trillion ($681 billion) by the end of 2014[5]. Since 1998 the fund has been allowed to invest up to 40% of its portfolio in the international stock market. In 2007 the Ministry decided to raise the stock portion to 60 %. As of August 2008 the stock portion is 50 %.