The Poor Swiss -

How to open an Interactive Brokers account

Mr. The Poor SwissFebruary 14, 2019January 14, 20195 Comments

In 2020, Swiss investors will lose access to U.S. domiciled Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). This is because of a new set of laws from the Swiss government. These laws are following the ones already impacting the European investors. Unfortunately, DEGIRO decided to implement these laws in advance and therefore I already lost access to these funds one year in advance. Therefore, I decided to create an Interactive Brokers account.

Interactive Brokers is an excellent United States broker. It is known for its cheap fees and its excellent range of offered investment products. It is being used by many personal finance bloggers for instance.

In this post, I am going to go over the reasons I need to open a second broker account. I am also going to go over some detail about Interactive Brokers. Especially, I am going to go over the details of how to open an Interactive Brokers account. It is not very difficult but there are a few things you need to know before you start your application.

Continue reading “How to open an Interactive Brokers account”

What is your Financial Independence (FI) Number?

Mr. The Poor SwissFebruary 12, 2019January 24, 20196 Comments

We have already covered a lot of matter on the subject of Financial Independence (FI). Your FI number is the amount of net worth you need to reach before you are financially independent. It sounds simple. But it is not as simple as it looks.

If you want an accurate view of your FI number, you need to estimate how your expenses will be once you are financially independent. And you also need to consider your future income. There is also a second, more simple, strategy where you simply consider your current expenses. We are going to see all, and more!

In this post, we are going to cover in details how to calculate your Financial Independence (FI) number.

Continue reading “What is your Financial Independence (FI) Number?”

January 2019 – Off to a good start!

Mr. The Poor SwissFebruary 7, 2019January 31, 20193 Comments

It is already the end of the first month of 2019. I am still doing the mistake of writing everything with 2018 so far. I need to get used to the new year. So far, the year started well for us and our finances.

In January 2019, we managed to save a nice percentage of our income! This is great to start the year with more than 50% of savings in the first month! Moreover, the stock market finally started recovering from the terrible last months of 2018. With this, our net worth got a very jump ahead!

As you read this post, I will already be in China where I will be celebrating Chinese new years with family in law. Thanks for the magic of scheduling posts, you will still be able to read my posts! I shall be able to read comments normally.

In this post, we are going to see what happened to us and our finances during the month of January 2019.

Continue reading “January 2019 – Off to a good start!”

Financial Freedom – Book Review

Mr. The Poor SwissFebruary 4, 2019January 4, 20194 Comments

Financial Freedom is a book by Grant Sabatier. Financial Freedom is about reaching Financial Independence, or Financial Freedom as the author is calling it. The book is set to be released on February 5th. Grant was nice enough to offer me access to a pre-release Kindle version.

It follows mostly the story of Grant who achieved FI in about five years. He was able to become more than a millionaire in less than five years although he was unemployed at the beginning of his story. His story is really interesting and motivating. Oh, and by the way, Grant Sabatier is the successful blogger behind the Millenial Money blog.

However, the book is not only about the story of Grant Sabatier. It is mostly about the lessons that Grant learned during his journey. He will try to teach you all there is to know about how to become Financially Independent yourself.

In this post, I am going to go over the Financial Freedom book into details. The things I liked, the things I did not like and what the book has to offer you!

Continue reading “Financial Freedom – Book Review”

How much we spent in 2018 – Detailed expenses report

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 31, 2019January 31, 20196 Comments

Now that the year 2018 is finished, I thought it would be interesting to go over our entire expenses of the year. The idea is to see the aggregate view of the entire year. Most people only look at their expenses on a monthly basis. But a yearly basis can have a lot more information than that.

For instance, if you spend a relatively low amount on something, you may think at the end of the month that it is OK. But if you do the same thing every month, it can quickly pile up. Therefore, I think it is important to view the total amount of expenses as a whole for the year.

Moreover, there is also another advantage to this. It makes you check your expenses to be sure they are well categorized. Sometimes, I mix French and English names and therefore the categories are a bit screwed. Once this is fixed, it is better to have a good view of the entire budget.

In this post, I am going to go into details on the biggest expenses and the most important of the year 2018. I am also going to try to see where we can improve our expenses for 2019.

Continue reading “How much we spent in 2018 – Detailed expenses report”

Buy or Rent – Which is Right for You?

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 29, 2019January 29, 20197 Comments

This is a guest post by Jasper L. Stojanovski from Stojfinance.com. Jasper is a 19 years old man with a passion for investing that hopes to pursue a career in finance. I am very happy to have him contribute to this blog.

Are you moving out of your home and cannot decide whether to buy or rent?
Many people prefer owning a home. However, financially, this might not be an option for you now. In this post, I will explore the pros and cons of each, so you can decide what is best for you. But before I begin, you will need to answer a few questions:

How long do you plan to live here?
What is the price of housing in your area?
Do you have any savings?
Do you have a good credit rating?
Can you afford to perform regular maintenance?

Once you will have the answers to this question, you will be ready to consider whether you should buy your home or rent your home.

Continue reading “Buy or Rent – Which is Right for You?”

2018 Top Five Posts from The Poor Swiss

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 24, 2019January 24, 20192 Comments

Now that the year is over, I thought it would be interesting to see which of the posts I wrote in 2018 have been the most popular. Therefore, I collected the list of the Top Five posts from the blog in 2018.

For this Top Five list, I took the five most visited posts of the year, counting page views. I did not take any pages from my blog into account. In fact, the most popular page on the website is the home page, closely followed by the About The Poor Swiss page. I should note that this may not be the best metric to check popularity. Indeed, some posts are older than others and as such have more views than really recent ones. Moreover, even though some posts have a lot of views, they do not have a lot of comments. So this is not a perfect list. Regardless, I thought it would be interesting to see what come out!

Stay tuned for the five most read articles from The Poor Swiss blog in 2018!

Continue reading “2018 Top Five Posts from The Poor Swiss”

How much do you spend to work?

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 22, 2019January 22, 201914 Comments

Many people do not realize this, but it is actually not free to work. You are probably spending more than you think to work and earn an income. This may sound counter-intuitive. But many people are spending a lot on their work without realizing.

Of course, you should still earn more from your work than what you are spending to work. But you may be surprised by how much you can save by stopping working. For some people, this could actually mean that it is better for the budget to have only one income rather than two in a family.

In this post, we are going to see exactly how much we spend on our work. I am also going to discuss some of the ways you can mitigate these costs. You will see that some of these items can be reduced. The first step is to realize this and the second step is to act on them.

Continue reading “How much do you spend to work?”

My 2019 Goals – More ambitious and original

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 17, 2019January 5, 2019Leave a comment

Now that the year is over, it is time for me to set new goals for the year 2019. Last year, I started setting goals for myself. I really liked this experience. So, I am going to do the same once again with my 2019 Goals. In 2018, I have been able to reach most of my goals.

Earlier, I have reviewed the goals for 2018. I have seen that several of the goals were not really interesting. And most of the goals were not ambitious enough. For 2019, I am going to try to set better and more ambitious goals. Of course, these goals still need to be attainable. There is no point in setting myself the goal of earning one million in a single year.

In this post, I am going to go over all my 2019 Goals. It is going to be a big piece of words!

Continue reading “My 2019 Goals – More ambitious and original”

Good New for Revolut: Swiss IBAN and banking license

Mr. The Poor SwissJanuary 15, 2019January 15, 20196 Comments

Some good news has just arrived for Revolut! Recently, I saw by luck that there was a Swiss IBAN available when adding money to the application. This is really great since that was missing from the start on the Revolut account.

And probably even bigger news for Revolut: they got a European Specialised Bank License! This is a big deal. Revolut is now officially a bank and will soon start offering new services. I have been using Revolut for about six months now and I really like it. I have saved some money by using their free currency exchange services. I am really interested to see how they are going to implement this banking license in the future. I would really like to have a cheap and good bank account in the future.

In this post, we are going to see what do these changes mean for me and other Revolut customers! If you do not know about Revolut, stay tuned!

Continue reading “Good New for Revolut: Swiss IBAN and banking license”