Hey All,

Today, just two things:

1. Products & Courses Updates
2. Getting Rich in Denmark - I wrote a long-ish essay (below) on the best path to get rich in Denmark. (It’s quite blunt and might rub some people the wrong way, beware.)

🎉 New Stuff From Me

I'm well on the way to move my courses and services to a new platform that - I hope! - will help me scale up and deliver more value faster.

In the meantime, I shipped this:

1. 🏡 Dream Home Denmark. I launched this two months or so ago and it has been a hit. I’m constantly updating it with buyer feedback and e.g., this week I added sensitivity tables for the Excel models. (More is coming!). You can check it out here.

2. 💰 Online Business Email Course. I’ve been making money online for 15 years now (!) and - finally - I put together an email course that is action-packed and that can guide you too to make money online. It’s free. If you click here you’ll immediately get the first email.

3. ☎️ Community. I also started a community, and it has all these amazing benefits: a) intro 1-1 call with me, b) monthly group coaching, c) access to a back-catalogue of great courses, and more. You can check it out here.

💕 LAST - If you have enjoyed any of my videos, emails, courses or anything, I will appreciate a lot if you can leave me a testimonial or review. You can do so super easy clicking here. It makes a ton of a difference.

There will be some secret goodies for those who leave me one 😀.

(And I've been super bad collecting these, so appreciate you help me catch up!)

🇩🇰 Getting Rich in Denmark

Denmark is a rich country but one where it’s especially hard to become rich individually.

To clarify, what I mean as rich is - like, real rich - we can say, for example, a net worth of €1m and up.

(Though, in 2023 many people wouldn’t consider a net worth of €1m “rich” anymore. But alas.)

In Denmark it’s hard to be rich BY DESIGN. I’ll give you two examples:

• In Denmark, if you earn in the top 10% (and even less than that), you pay 50%+ of your salary in taxes. This means that if you get a raise of 10K kr., in your pocket you’ll get only 5K kr.
• Denmark also has - by far - the highest and most complex capital or investment taxation in the world. For index funds - which is the investment vehicle that most people use, and what most rich people use to grow their money - you pay 42% of the investment gains in taxes and even if you don’t sell (one way or the other).

It’s bru-tal.

Again - This is by design. Call it the Janteloven or whatever you want, but in Denmark it’s hard to accumulate wealth, and - topic for another video - to use that wealth as a “rich” person would do in another country.

(Just look at the car taxes. If you want to get a Porsche or a Mercedes in Denmark you can, but it costs you so much that it’s off the table to all but the most wealthy.)

BUT … There are two exceptions, and they’re what made most “rich” people in Denmark “rich”. These are: real estate (but narrowly defined) and launching a business.

Rich By Real Estate

In Denmark, capital gains on the sale of your primary home are not taxed. You can be like this person:

​
- Bought a House - 2003, for ~4m kr.
- Sold the House - 2020, for ~16m kr.
- Profit: 16 - 5 = 12m kr.
- Taxes: 0.

Yep: 12m kr profit, in Denmark, and not taxed at all.

But it’s a much bigger deal than I thought. It’s not wild to say that this one rule explains a lot of who is rich and who is not in Denmark.

🍾🐷 Party Peter vs. Saver Sarah

I’ll invite two people to put this into perspective.

First, let me introduce you to Party Peter. He’s a joyful, “life well lived”-type of guy, and his story is:

• 2011: He’s in university. With his parent’s help, and bought a small apartment in Copenhagen for 2m. Importantly, that was the maximum the bank would allow him to borrow for.
• 2017: The real estate market boomed. His apartment was now worth 4m (double!). He sold, and used that for a downpayment for a new and bigger apartment at 7,5m. Again, he borrowed every cent the bank could give him, which - with a 3-4m downpayment is a lot.
• 2022: The market kept going up. His apartment was now worth 10m. He sold, and - with his new wife, bought a house for 16m. (Almost all cash.)

Peter never invested. (He doesn’t know what an index fund is). He never really “saved”: aside from his (low) house payments he never put money aside. He even occasionally struggles with credit card debt.

But Peter is - by our definition above - literally rich. He has a net worth of 7-8m kr: an euro millionaire.

Peter’s story is multiplied through Denmark. The strategy, again, is very simple:

• Buy the most expensive house you can afford
• Sell at zero tax on the gain
• Repeat

In the last 10+ years this worked wonders.

But now let’s contrast Peter with someone else who didn’t buy a house, let’s call her Saver Sarah:

• 2011: Sarah - to the great envy of many - got one of the many subsidized “public housing” options in a nice part of Copenhagen. Those come with a very low rent.
• 2017: She needed more space, but with real estate prices - (so she thought) “peaking” - she didn’t want to buy and decided to move to another rental. She was lucky and found an incredible rent-controlled flat close to Norreport.
• 2022: Sarah got two kids, and with her expat husband decided they wanted to move to the suburbs. They were good savers through the past years, and could buy a nice house for 10m kr.

Sarah could pay for the 10m kr. house because she and her husband were diligent investors. Starting early, Sarah saved 2.000 a month, then 5.000 month, and last - together with her husband - 20.000 kr per month. (It helped she got cheap rentals throughout.)

Those savings were invested in good funds - 8%+ per year returns, which is the market average - and after paying the 27%-42% taxes on gains (unrealized, remember) each year, by 2022 Sarah and her husband had built a nice portfolio of 2-3m kr.

Just what was needed for the downpayment for the house 😉.

It’s wild, but Sarah could be - in the day to day, and for the past ten years:

• Earning much more than Peter - i.e., have a much better paid (but potentially more stressful) job
• Making much bigger sacrifices than Peter - i.e., you don’t save 20K/m without making big trade-offs.

Yet, Peter has a net worth 3x Sarah’s and lives in a nicer house. Crazy, isn’t it?

Some Conclusions

It’s not a given that Peter should’ve been better off than Sarah. It just happened that, through these ten years Peter:
- Borrowed aggressively
- Paid zero taxes on his house gains

While Sarah:
- Didn’t borrow, and
- Paid 27-42% yearly on her investment gains

In other words, Peter played the right game for Denmark. Sarah didn’t.

In other countries like the US, UK, or elsewhere in Europe, Peter wouldn’t get to borrow as much, and then would pay 30%+ on the gains. Sarah, in contrast, would be much better off as her investments would be taxed much less heavily and only at the sale.

So - In conclusion, at least for the last ten years, the right strategy - Peter’s strategy - to become rich in Denmark has been to:

1. Buy the most expensive house you can, and do it as early as possible
2. Sell, pay no taxes and, buy, again, the most expensive house you can again
3. Repeat

Does it mean that you need to get into real estate?

🤷‍♂️ Maybe? In investing circles, it’s always said that “past performance is not a guarantee of future results”. I can’t fathom that real estate prices would keep rising the way they did, but - hey - who knows…

But it’s unquestionable that it was the right call the last decade. (And there’s a lot of people who’s situation looks like Party Peter’s.)

📚 What I’m Doing Myself

Personally, I like a third approach - you could call it the “Have It All” Approach. (“Have It All” Hans’ Approach, to follow the naming convention above 😀):

• Buy real estate, also maxing out the loan - (but only after a good dose of due diligence, and only if for a good deal), and also
• Build an investment portfolio, using the lower-tax options (Aktiesparekonto) and only up to the point it makes sense (1-2m kr.) - (Spoiler for the Future) Invest in yourself and/or build a business

But I’m also a bit conservative. I’m still in my (owned) two-bedroom apartment, and - though I would like some more space - I couldn’t get myself to move out yet… Let’s see.

If you want to discuss this in more depth with me 1-1, check out the Community. (Yep, you can also sign up, have the 1-1, and cancel. ⛵️)

📌 Starting a Business - My New Email Course

I just launched my new free email course on building an online business. You can sign up just by clicking this link.

It's my best email course yet, and if you join now you can also give feedback and direction as I look to improve it 💕.

I'm sorry I've been out of touch. I’ve been quite busy at work, building these courses, filming videos and (as of a few weeks back!) playing Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

I'm off to Alaska with the family in the coming days and look forward to come back recharged to share some amazing work.

AND - That’s all from my end for today. If you’ve any questions/comments, I’m always happy to hear from readers 😀. (And would love your testimonial or review.

Until next time,

Mario