Hello listeners! Today we interview Jesus, a Spaniard who has lived and worked in the UK reaching financial independence at the age of 33. He now lives in Barcelona and travels around the world. We talk with him about his perspective on FI from his point of view in Spain, the implications and strategies this implies and the advice he can give to other Spaniards on the way.

We also talk about:

Investment tax regimes in Spain and UK

Pensions

Real estate investment

Benefits of working in the UK

Financial education in Spain

The importance of measuring

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Spain, a place to build FI or to retire in?

Jesus has worked as an IT consultant in the UK for most of his professional life: this ensured that he could get better salaries than in his home country, but also exposed him to the FI movement in the first place. In Spain there are many obstacles to a financial independence path, from low wages to cumbersome bureaucracy processes and high taxes, although quality of life is very good. Having said that, it’s possible to pursue the FI goal, but it requires a great effort in terms of discipline and saving strategies.

Starting a business in Spain: pitfalls and advantages

Typically, starting a business in Spain isn’t the easiest and the country scores very poorly in the related rankings. Again, bureaucracy and tax regimes make it very difficult to be an entrepreneur, especially compared to countries like the UK. For this reason, when possible people who want to start businesses move their investment to countries like Estonia. We review with Jesus some options that can be viable for Spanish people.

Putting financial independence to use

In a first phase, Jesus has lived his new FI status travelling around the world for 20 months. Then, he chose Barcelona as his base of operations and has started focusing more on long term projects, be it meditation, learning a new language or starting his own blog, which has become his main interest and focuses on the importance of having the right mindset to reach financial independence.

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