A tax advisor’s guide to doing absolutely nothing with a house’s worth of cash.

I advise people on tax for a living. So why has a year of cash been lying in my personal account like a retired uncle on a sofa: not bothering anyone, not contributing with anything, and getting slightly smaller every month?

Some of you are already thinking, “I wish I had your problem.” Fair. But let’s look at the problem anyway.

The Advice Buffet

Over the past year, I’ve had dozens of conversations with finance-savvy people. Every one of them had a plan for my money. None of the plans agreed. Here’s the full menu:

Property à la carte:

• 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 will always need somewhere to cry over anatomy.
• 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 for the sensible eater:

• ETFs, especially semiconductors and blue chips
• Crypto, around 10%, “just to have some”
• Physical gold. Actual bullion. In a drawer, I assume, like a dragon.
• Invest in small startups

Today’s special:

• 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.”

The-DO-NOT-EAT-List

Equally passionate was the list of things I must never, ever do:

• Don’t buy a rental in Copenhagen. Why lock €60,000 into a 20% down payment to earn about €700 a month net?
• Don’t buy a summer house in Spain. Denmark and Spain have no double tax treaty. (This one I knew. I just enjoyed hearing it explained to me.)
• Don’t open a restaurant without experience. Best case, around €10,000 a month for 200 working hours. That’s not passive income. That’s a job with extra dishwashing.
• Don’t open a specialty coffee shop. The competition is brutal, unless you franchise. Copenhagen doesn’t need another flat white. Copenhagen is 40% flat white.
  …and many more.

What I actually did:

I did what any self-respecting tax nerd would do. I analysed every option: the tax treaties, the residency implications, the real return after tax and after effort. And the more I researched, the more lost I got. It felt like a Choose Your Own Adventure book where every page says “turn to page 1.”

I know the rules. Diversify. Buy low, sell high. I could recite them in the 6 languages I speak. But knowing the rules is not the same as knowing your next move. A dictionary doesn’t write your novel for you.

Field notes from a year of not deciding

– More opinions don’t mean more clarity.

Every recommendation made sense on its own. Put together, they cancelled each other out, like noise-cancelling headphones for decision-making.

– 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 die on the spreadsheet. They die quietly, in paragraph 23 of a treaty nobody read.

– Passive income is often a job in a fake moustache.

A restaurant, a coffee shop, a seasonal food stand can all be great businesses. But if they need your hours, they’re not investments. Be honest about which one you’re buying.

– Cash has a cost. So does a bad decision.

Yes, the uncle on the sofa eats a little every month. But a rushed purchase can eat the whole fridge, and it’s much harder to undo. Waiting is a decision too, as long as you’re doing it on purpose.

– Fast is not the same as smart.

No ROI to report today. The return so far is knowledge, plus the newly acquired, deeply uncomfortable skill of not moving until the move is right.

Your Turn

So, dear reader: what would you do with a year of parked cash? Bonus points if your answer contradicts someone else’s. I’m used to it by now.

 

Still parked, but now on purpose,

Irina