Cuéntamo Blog

Raise your savings every time you get a raise

September 17, 2026

You get a raise, and a few months later you’re living exactly as tight as before it. Nothing strange happened: you changed cars, eat out a bit more, the flat is “nicer” now. Each new expense made sense on its own. The problem is that, added up, they swallowed the whole raise, and your savings are still the same number as before.

The tip: raise your savings, not your spending

It’s called lifestyle inflation: the more you earn, the more you spend, in the same proportion, without ever deciding it consciously. It’s not a character flaw — it’s what happens by default if you don’t do anything: the new money lands in the same account as always and quietly splits itself among things you were already itching to upgrade.

"They want to hire me, but only if I go freelance": how to tell a fair deal from a disguised job

September 14, 2026

The offer has landed. You’d be working for that company almost every day, with a fixed desk and a schedule they’ve already told you about. But instead of a contract, they’re asking you to register as self-employed (autónomo) and invoice them every month. And the question on your mind isn’t whether the job itself is interesting, it’s another one: is this even legal? Does it pay off? And above all, how much do you need to ask for so you don’t come out losing?

Buying a home in Spain in 2026: the taxes and costs your mortgage won't cover

September 12, 2026

The sum almost everyone does before buying goes like this: the bank lends 80%, so a €200,000 flat needs €20,000… sorry, €40,000. It’s the wrong sum, and not by a little.

What the mortgage doesn’t cover isn’t just the 20% of the price. It’s also the purchase taxes and fees, paid in cash on signing day, which depending on where you buy can add up to as much as half a deposit again. And there’s one piece that surprises even repeat buyers: the most expensive tax of all is not calculated on what you pay for the property, but on a value set by the Land Registry (Catastro) that you can look up before you sign.

How Long You Can Carry Forward VAT to Offset Before You Lose It

September 11, 2026

You’ve been carrying a VAT balance to offset in box 110 of your modelo 303 for two or three years now. Every quarter you enter it, and every quarter it’s still there, a bit bigger or a bit smaller depending on how the business is going. You’ve never requested the refund, partly because nobody has told you there’s any rush. Is there?

The short answer is yes, although probably not in the way you’re worried about. The money doesn’t just vanish overnight. What has an expiry date is the mechanism you’re using to recover it: offsetting it quarter after quarter. Once that date passes you have to switch to a different route, and if you don’t know that, you can end up with neither.

The 24-hour rule against impulse buying

September 11, 2026

You see something, want it right now, and buy it on the spot, usually from your phone. Two days later you can’t even remember what made it so appealing, or worse: it arrives home and sits unused in the closet. It’s not that you have bad judgment — you’re deciding with the part of your brain that reacts to the moment, not the one that thinks a few weeks ahead.

Company-director autónomos in 2026: the €1,424 minimum base, provisional contributions and the settlement coming later

September 10, 2026

If you are the managing director of a Spanish limited company (sociedad limitada) and contribute to the Spanish self-employed social security regime (RETA), you may have spent all of 2026 paying a monthly contribution that does not match what the law has required since January. That is not a mistake on your part: Social Security allows a provisional contribution during the year. But when the year closes, the bill arrives. This article explains what changed, why, how much the difference could be and what you can do before December.

How a Spanish Autónomo's State Pension Is Calculated in 2026, Step by Step

September 8, 2026

An easy question to ask and a hard one to answer: if you have spent years contributing on a base of 1,200 euros a month, how much pension will you get? The answer, assuming you have contributed enough years, is 1,028.57 euros a month across fourteen payments. And that is not an arbitrary number: it comes out of a public formula you can work through yourself with pen and paper.

Index Fund or ETF: Why the Fund Usually Wins in Spain (and the Condition Almost Nobody Checks)

September 8, 2026

If you’ve read anything about passive investing, you’ve probably come across this idea: an index fund and an ETF tracking the same index are, in practice, the same product with a different wrapper. Similar fees, same diversification, same “don’t try to beat the market” philosophy. And up to that point, it’s true.

What almost nobody spells out with the same detail is that, in Spain, they’re not taxed the same at all. One lets you move your money from one place to another without paying tax along the way. The other doesn’t. And the advantage of the first one is only real if a very specific condition is met, one that most people don’t even know exists, let alone check.

Modelo 349: Spain's EU Operations Return, and Why Buying Google or Meta Ads Counts

September 7, 2026

You run a Google Ads campaign, place a few Meta ads, or rent a server on AWS. These are such routine expenses that you barely think about them: the charge lands, you log it, and you move on. What you probably don’t know is that, the moment you pay that invoice, you’ve just carried out an “intra-community operation” under Spanish VAT law. And that brings two formal obligations almost no digital autónomo (self-employed worker) has ever heard of: registering in a census called the ROI, and periodically filing a form called modelo 349.

Does It Pay to Move to Another Region as a Digital Freelancer in Spain? The Numbers, for Real

September 4, 2026

If your work runs entirely off a laptop, this has probably happened to you: a fellow freelancer, billing roughly what you bill, mentions what they actually keep at year’s end, and the number doesn’t match yours. Same work, sometimes even the same clients, and a real gap in what each of you takes home. The explanation is almost always the same one: you live in different Spanish regions, and that changes what you pay in income tax on the same money.