I advise people on tax for a living. So why has a year of cash been sitting in my personal account, doing nothing?

A year ago, I sold my house. The money has been parked ever since, and every month it sits there, inflation eats a little more of it.

Some would say: “I wish I had your problem.” Fair enough. But let’s look at the problem anyway.

Over the past year, I’ve had dozens of conversations with finance-savvy people.

Here’s what they recommended:

Property

• Buy an apartment in Malmö, because Copenhagen prices are insane.
• Buy an apartment in Copenhagen anyway, because prices will keep climbing.
• Buy an apartment in Chișinău. The war in Ukraine is driving the market up, and it’s your motherland.
• Buy an apartment in Romania near a medical university, because foreign students always need rentals.
• Buy off-plan during construction and sell on completion (beware of the risk).
• Buy a hotel room and collect a commission on the nights booked, while the hotel runs it.
• Buy land, apply for an EU grant for women entrepreneurs and build a hotel outside Chișinău. Moldova has lots of visitors now.

Markets and assets

• ETFs, especially semiconductors and blue chips
• Crypto, around 10% of the portfolio
• Physical gold, as actual bullion
• Invest in small startups

Business

• Get a stand at Reffen. “It’s risk-free. They bring the crowd and the setup, and you only run it six months a year.”

What everyone told me NOT to do:

• Don’t buy a rental apartment in Copenhagen. Why lock €60,000 (20%) into a mortgage to earn about €700 a month net?
• Don’t buy a summer house in Spain. Denmark and Spain have no double tax treaty.
• Don’t open a restaurant without experience. The best case is around €10,000 a month for 200 working hours. That’s a job, not passive income.
• Don’t open a specialty coffee shop. The competition is brutal, unless you go the franchise route.

…and many more.

What I did:

I analysed each option: the tax treaties, the residency implications, the real return after tax and effort.

And the more I researched, the more lost I got. I know the rules: diversify, buy low, sell high. Knowing the rules is not the same as knowing your next move.

What I’ve learned so far

1. More opinions don’t mean more clarity.
Every recommendation I got was reasonable on its own. Together, they cancelled each other out. Copenhagen is too expensive and Copenhagen will keep rising, both from smart people, both said with confidence. At some point, you have to stop collecting advice and start setting your own criteria.

2. Tax and residency come before returns.
A 7% yield means nothing until you know where it’s taxed, how many times and what it does to your residency. Cross-border investments rarely fail on the spreadsheet. They fail on the treaty.

3. Passive income is often a job in disguise.
A restaurant, a coffee shop or a seasonal food stand can all be good businesses. But if they need your hours, they’re not investments. Be honest about which one you’re buying.

4. Cash has a cost, and so does a bad decision.
Yes, parked money loses value every month. But a rushed purchase can lose far more, and it’s much harder to undo. Waiting is a decision too, as long as it’s a conscious one.

5. Fast does not always equal smart.
No ROI to report today. The return so far is knowledge, and the patience to not move until the move is right.

Patience,

Irina