I've been using Firefox for almost a year now (on Phone and Desktop) and the only reason I switch to Chrome is to translate websites. I live in Netherlands and don't speak Dutch so to browse any local website I have to rely on Chrome's auto-translate thingy.
I used to hate printers too but that changed when I started using HP Instant Ink.
The printer needs to be connected to wifi all the time but on the flip side, the printer orders ink cartridges well in advance (so they get delivered in time and I have them ready when I need).
The bikes are not very expensive, you can buy them second hand for about 100-150 EUR. And what do you have to maintain in a simple bike? Just adjust air pressure every couple of month and that's all.
Owning a car in Amsterdam is crazy expensive due to parking. For example, the parking costs at my office is about 500 EUR/month (only to park during workdays between 7AM-7PM)
I also had a similar issue, but then it became like a habit – every night I would check my accounts and add day's expenses (it's difficult if you have a lot of cash transactions). For the tip, wouldn't you round off to nearest full digit? You can just add that as an expense.
Not a freelancer, but I wanted to track my everyday finances since long. I tried lot of different tools but in the end ended up using simple Google sheet with some formulas.
The only issue with this approach is – adding expenses is pain. When I am shopping for something, opening Google Sheet (on phone) and adding an expense/income is too cumbersome. So I built a UI for it – https://github.com/mitul45/expense-manager.
I have been using it since last couple of years and have an idea of my monthly/weekly expenses.
I was also having the same dilemma, although not a freelancer. I wanted to track my finances and tried lot of different tools but in the end decided to use plain excel.
But then adding expense on Excel from mobile is real pain, so I wrote a frontend client for it. I've been using it for about 1.5 years now, works like a charm.
I have expense history of almost every cent I spent in last 1.5 years :)
If you are using Excel, I made a frontend wrapper on top of it to add expenses/incomes easily. For analysis you can use whatever methods you are already using.
I'm an Indian living in Amsterdam just because of these immigration rules.
My spouse is an Architect and she won't be able to work in the US due to H4 rules and in Canada because they don't accept the academic credentials for her foreign university. I find Europe a little better option in that regard.
I moved to Amsterdam 5 months back from Bangalore and couldn't agree more on the last paragraph.
Everything here seems so laid back which was one of the reasons why we moved to EU – to have a better/more relaxed lifestyle but at the same time, I do miss the vibrancy and liveliness around me.
Especially as a web developer, I gave Firefox a second chance and tried to use it's FirefoxDeveloperEdition - but debugging JavaScript was so painful. It somehow felt so slow compare to Chrome's JS debugger.
I don't know how but somehow power cut hasn't been a thing in my hometown - Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Maybe privatization has helped.
Torrent Power has completed its acquisition of the Ahmedabad Electricity Company in 1997 [1]. And since then there hasn't been single power cut longer than 15 minutes which I can remember. Same goes for Surat now.
Nah. That's one of the major reasons. Others being - working with a diverse culture, working on a big scale such as theirs, and building things based on data rather than opinions.
Yeah, questions were pretty much same you found on the internet. About the tech stack, they do let us know a little but mostly it depends on the team you land on.