Need Career advice

[Padrepapp]

Situation:
- Living in Eastern Europe (Budapest, Hungary; FI is really hard to achieve over here, as your salary is closer to "basic needs" and you can't save much, when you finally achieve good salary, there is not much good investing opportunities)

Financials monthly (converted to USD from HUF):
Income Me (28): 1250 $ (1.6x times the average salary in Budapest)
GF (28, wedding in 1 month):  550 $
Average monthly spending: 1250 $ so my soon to be wife's salary is our savings.

My wife is finishing her PhD and degree in teaching next year. She does not want to continue with research, nor transit to the industry, she wants to become a high school teacher.
We are planning to have a child after she finishes next year, and as we calculated, when my wife is at home, our incomes and expenses would be really close to each other.

I have been working for 3.5years as a physicist at a Hungarian company, which makes automated metrology tools for the semiconductor industry. I design optical systems (microscopes, spectrographs etc.). Company is in a transition phase as we have 600 employees and still work somewhat like a garage company, now there is a lot of bureaucracy (not the necessary and good kind), and a company as a whole is a little bit of mess nowadays. Fortunately we don't really have a serious competition, so the company does great as we sell to rich markets, and the engineering salaries are a joke in Hungary compared to the profits we make.
I progressed and learned quite a lot here (almost doubled my starting salary in 2.5 years, and I expect a raise at the end of this year also). But lately, I'm a bit bored here, I have a lot of freedom in the company, and I don't always have the discipline to learn/do things in my freetime at work; sometimes I learn Python and experiment with new ideas in the laboratory, but most of the time I'm just bored. I am much better when I have clear tasks and goals.

I got an offer from another company. It is an industry giant headquartered in Germany, which has a great office in Budapest employing more than 2000 engineers. The work may not be as exciting as at my current company, but I would always have clear tasks and deadlines (I guess). I would still have to learn a somewhat new area of optical design, which I am sure would be interesting for at least a year. They would pay 1720 $ which is awesome and I would not be so afraid about having a child financially.

I think I could make as much as this offer in a few years at my current workplace also. Also, this is the first job I ever had, so I don't really have a reference, if my current workplace is good or not.
I am also thinking that if I could part ways with my current employer in a good mood, and I don't like the new place as much, maybe I could come back when things settle and they figure out how to run a big company smoothly.

So to sum it:
Company A: OK salary, sometimes really interesting (like 2 months out of 12) but due to changes in the company, really boring in the last half year, and I don't know how long this phase is going to last
Company B: Great salary, probably not that interesting tasks.

What would you guys recommend and why?
Also: If you have good advice how to quit with a good mood, that would be great.

[MrOnyx]

Hey there! I'll do my best to offer advice, but bear in mind that I'm a Brit, so your description of the working and investing conditions in Hungary are just about all I have to go on.

Remember that no job is permanent. I don't know if there is a cultural stigma with using an attitude like that in Hungary, but definitely in the Western World as a whole, hopping from one job to another every now and again is very common - indeed in Britain it's almost impossible to get a raise in some companies without receiving a better offer elsewhere and/or taking it. So do not feel like this new job will be your new, permanent forever-job. Heck - maybe you could apply that - take your salary offer to your current employer and say "Hey, so I've received an offer to work elsewhere for this much. If you can't match it, I'm off" Obviously, you do it more amicably and softly than that, but you get the point!

Have you considered moving elsewhere to work? If you're tied to Budapest, fair enough, but if you're interested in greater investment opportunities, it might pay to look elsewhere. As a Brit, I can say that we do have a good investment climate, but with Brexit on the horizon, it might be worth sitting tight just to see what kinda human movement deal we can get!

With regards to staying on good terms - and again, I don't know what the attitudes out there are like - but an employer should generally understand your need to move from one place to another, especially if they are unable to match the offer you've been given. If you currently have a good rapport with your boss, just use it to your advantage. When you have this discussion with your boss, approach the topic carefully but directly, and be sure to make it very clear that you mean no hard feelings and that you'd like to still remain on good terms with them/the company.

That's all I can think of to say on the topic, but I'd also like to take the chance to say that I've visited Budapest personally and my, what a beautiful city it is! I can totally understand if you choose to stay there, even for no other reason. As a Brit, my currency was converted very strongly - £1 converted to about 400HUF, so with such a low COL, I'm genuinely considering it as a retirement destination post-FI. Y'know, if Brexit doesn't put that idea to bed.

[Padrepapp]

Have you considered moving elsewhere to work? If you're tied to Budapest, fair enough, but if you're interested in greater investment opportunities, it might pay to look elsewhere.

That's all I can think of to say on the topic, but I'd also like to take the chance to say that I've visited Budapest personally and my, what a beautiful city it is! I can totally understand if you choose to stay there, even for no other reason. As a Brit, my currency was converted very strongly - £1 converted to about 400HUF, so with such a low COL, I'm genuinely considering it as a retirement destination post-FI. Y'know, if Brexit doesn't put that idea to bed.

Thanks for the advice! We really like Hungary and our culture, and we are both really tied to our families, and would love to raise our children in Hungary. So we are pretty much tied to Budapest.

I think Budapest is a great choice as a Retirement Destination, just be careful about choosing the correct district/street of the city for your style. Buda in general is more quite and green, and Pest is more noisy and there are the main party streets. There are quite streets with cafes in Pest too but you have to be careful where to buy/rent an apartmen.