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Frugal Living in Switzerland Interview 3 – Thomas Sparkojote

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 23, 2020January 9, 20207 Comments

Recently, I have started a series where I interview people living frugally. People have really well received these articles. So I am going to try to keep them going!

Today, I am interview another frugal person living in Switzerland, Thomas “Sparkojote”. He is a young, 23 years old, blogger, living in Zurich, one of the most expensive cities in the world. And he is actually saving more than 80% of his income! This makes him the most frugal of the persons I have interviewed so far! It is incredible how little he is spending.

So here are the answers of Thomas to my frugal interview questions!

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Why and How to Go Paperless in 2020?

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 21, 2020January 22, 202016 Comments

I think a lot of people will agree that having lots of paper documents at home is a hassle. Who would not want to get rid of all this for a better solution?

Recently, I decided to become paperless with my administrative documents. It was a long work. But now, I am finally done. All my documents are available as electronic documents now. I have been able to throw away five big document binders!

I have used my phone as a scanner and uploaded all my documents to the cloud. Now my documents are accessible from anywhere. And they are safely stored in the cloud.

Find out how I became paperless for free in this post. And how you can do it too!

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Updated Trinity Study for 2020 – More Withdrawal Rates!

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 18, 2020January 18, 202049 Comments

Would you like to know precisely which withdrawal rate is safe and will sustain your lifestyle for a very long time? You will find the answer in this post with updated results from the Trinity Study!

I have recently talked in detail about The Trinity Study. This study researched different withdrawal rates for retirement. Although the original research was not about early retirement, it is referred a lot in the Financial Independence and Retire Early (FIRE) movement!

However, for me, there are two caveats with the original study. First, they are only covering the period until 1995. And then, they are not covering more than thirty years of retirement. Thirty years is not enough for some people wanting to retire early.

Therefore, I decided to reproduce all the results of the original study. I used much more recent data from 1871 to 2019. I have also considered periods as long as 50 years. It means many more withdrawal simulations than the original study.

In this post, you will find how I did it, and all the results I have been able to gather from this data!

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2019 Goals Review – We are getting better at it!

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 16, 2020January 22, 20204 Comments

Now that the year is over, it is time for our 2019 Goals Review! At the beginning of 2019, I have set myself several goals for the year. 2019 was the second year I did set goals for myself.

In 2018, my goals were too easy and not original. For 2019, I have tried to make them more ambitious and more interesting. I think I have succeeded in that matter. The goals were more ambitious. But several of my goals could be improved. And I think I can try to challenge myself a bit more next year.

Overall, I have met most of my goals for the year. You are going to see which goal I did, and I did not succeed in reaching it.

In this post, I am going to review how I did with each of my goals. And I am also going to discuss the goals themselves. I plan to improve them for my 2020 Goals.

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Does The 4% Rule work in a low-yield environment?

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 14, 2020December 19, 20196 Comments

Many people are using bonds in their portfolio to make it less volatile. And many people are basing their retirement on the 4% rule. But bond yields have never been so low. So how does the 4% rule work when yields are lower?

I am going to try to answer this question in this post. I am going to simulate the chances of success with the 4% rule with different bond returns. The idea is to lower the historical interest rate to see what would have happened.

This is only a simulation of course. But given that the recent average bond returns are much lower than historical returns, it is interesting.

This is something that many people suggested. If you have bonds in your portfolio, this is an interesting question.

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All you need to know about The Third Pillar to retire in Switzerland

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 10, 2020January 20, 202022 Comments

In our Three Pillars of Retirement of Switzerland series, we already talked about the first and second pillar. We now have to cover the most important of the three pillars: The Third Pillar.

The third pillar is the only one that is not mandatory. Everybody is free to choose to invest in the third pillar or not. It is simpler than the second pillar. But there are many more choices than you can make. You can optimize a lot of things for your third pillar.

I believe it is essential to optimize the investment of the third pillar as much as possible. Once you reach retirement, your second pillar should still be larger than your third pillar. But there is not a lot of things you can do with your second pillar.

In this post, you will find all the details you need to invest in a third pillar. And also, what you can do to optimize your use of this last pillar.

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How to set goals to improve your life

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 9, 2020December 19, 20197 Comments

It is essential to set yourself goals. And it is even more important to set yourself some good goals. Indeed, not each goal is the same. Having good goals will make it easier and more motivating to reach them.

And the beginning of the year is the best time to start setting goals! But this time, you are going to reach them!

Since I have started to work on my personal finances, I have set myself some goals every year. It helped me a lot to increase the shape of my personal finances.

As I said, a goal can be good, but it can also be bad. Some of the goals I set in the past were not good. I realized this, and I have been improving my goals.

There are many things you can learn to make better goals for yourself. If you do not set goals at all, then it is the perfect time to get started.

In this article, I am going to go over what makes a good goal and how (and why) you should set goals for yourself.

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All you need to know about The Second Pillar to retire in Switzerland

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 8, 2020January 12, 202020 Comments

We have studied the first pillar in the previous post in the series. Now, it is time to see the second pillar. The second pillar is an occupational pension for people working in Switzerland.

The first pillar covers the basic needs of everybody. If you did not read the previous part, I would encourage you to do it before you read this article. The second pillar is here to cover a larger part of your salary than the first one. It is an occupational pension. If you never worked, you will never pay anything for this, and you will never receive anything from this. It is significantly more complicated than the first pillar.

In this post, I am going to give you all the important details as possible on the second pillar. I am also going to help you understand what you can do to improve it.

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All you need to know about The First Pillar to retire in Switzerland

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 7, 2020January 20, 202017 Comments

The retirement system of Switzerland is a system with three pillars. Each pillar is paid differently and will cover different needs. The first pillar is the state pension.

If you are working in Switzerland, it is essential to know these three pillars. Even if you do not plan to retire in Switzerland, it is essential to understand how they work. It will help you plan your retirement.

In this post, I am going to talk in detail about the first pillar. This post should contain everything you need to know about the first pillar to be able to retire in Switzerland. I am also going to provide an overview of the three pillars system.

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December 2019 – Quiet month

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 7, 2020December 26, 20194 Comments

I cannot believe that 2019 is already over! It flew by us! December 2019 was no exception. It went by really fast. And before I forget, Happy New Year to you all!

This article will be the last monthly update for 2019! December 2019 was a quiet month for us. As it is usual at this time of the year, we had many parties with friends and families. But nothing out of the ordinary happened this month (which is good!).

From a financial point of view, it was a good month. We had a few unexpected expenses, but nothing catastrophic. We managed to save 57% of our income this month.

Let’s see in detail what happened to use in December 2019.

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