Kuaishou – The weird Chinese side hustle of Mrs. The Poor Swiss

Author Mr. The Poor SwissPosted on Categories China, Side HustleLeave a comment on Kuaishou – The weird Chinese side hustle of Mrs. The Poor Swiss

Mrs. The Poor Swiss started a new side hustle recently. She started video streams on Kuaishou. It is a very popular app in China. She actually managed to get some money out of it. I wanted to talk about this because I have not seen any other blogger mention it. It is a bit like Twitch but not related to gaming at all.

Even though the application is mostly used by Chinese, there are more foreigners that start using it. Almost every people speak Chinese on it. But you can run a show in any language. The problem is that there will not be a lot of people to understand you if you do not speak Chinese.

I am not sure I understand the success of Kuaishou. But this is something that is really working in China. And it seems to be working for Mrs. The Poor Swiss as a side hustle. She actually helped me complete the facts on this article.

Continue reading “Kuaishou – The weird Chinese side hustle of Mrs. The Poor Swiss”

What Would You Do If You Got Given 1 Million dollars?

Author Mr. The Poor SwissPosted on Categories Budget, FIRE, Investment, Real Estate, Spending2 Comments on What Would You Do If You Got Given 1 Million dollars?

Today, I am going to go through a simple thought experiment: What would I do if I were given one million dollars. I am thinking of several things I could with one million dollars. I am currently at the beginning of my journey towards Financial Independence. One million is more than eight times my current net worth. So this could mean a lot of different things for me!

Now, I did not invest this thought experiment at all. It was introduced by the Saving Ninja. Actually, I did not discover it on the Saving Ninja blog. I discovered it by reading about this experiment on Retire In Progress blog. You can find many answers by other bloggers in the original post. I thought it was interesting. So I decided to try it and report my thoughts on the blog.

The original thought experiment, proposed by The Saving Ninja, was in British Sterling Pounds. And Mr. RIP did it in Euros. In this post, I am going to talk about a million Swiss Francs (CHF). But, this is currently the same as a million U.S. Dollars. So, it is the same thought experiment as getting one million USD.

Continue reading “What Would You Do If You Got Given 1 Million dollars?”

Not all assets are created equal – Introducing the FI net worth

Author Mr. The Poor SwissPosted on Categories Broker, FIRE, InvestmentLeave a comment on Not all assets are created equal – Introducing the FI net worth

Your net worth is a very important number. This is the number representing the value of what you own. We have already seen how to calculate your net worth. This is especially important if you want to become financially independent. For this, you will need to accumulate a large net worth that is able to cover your expenses.

However, something we have not discussed in details is the difference between the different parts of your net worth. In this post, we are going to discuss that exactly. You are going to see that not every part of your net worth is equal. Some parts of your net worth should be treated differently.

If you want to become financially independent, you cannot consider all the parts of your net worth as equal. Some parts of your net worth will not help reach Financial Independence (FI)! And some assets will not evolve in the same way over the years. If you are serious about reaching FI, it is very important to know of what your net worth is composed of.

To improve, you can use two different net worths. Your regular net worth as you know it and your FI net worth that will help you towards Financial Independence. So let’s see where all the different assets fit in the grand scheme of net worths!

Continue reading “Not all assets are created equal – Introducing the FI net worth”

A weekend in Brussels, Belgium – Beautiful monuments and good beer

Author Mr. The Poor SwissPosted on Categories Budget, Spending, Travel8 Comments on A weekend in Brussels, Belgium – Beautiful monuments and good beer

Last weekend, we went to Brussels, in Belgium to visit one of my family members that has been living there for a few years. I had not seen him since last Christmas, so it was quite cool to meet him again. We always had a very good relationship.

Brussels is the capital of the country of Belgium. We had quite a good time in Brussels. It is a really nice city with some very nice monuments. There are also many nice wall paintings. And Belgium is also famous for its beers. You can find many pubs and bars in Brussels where you can drink quite good beers.

The weather was not great during the weekend. Nevertheless, we had a really good time in Brussels! I did not manage to take really good pictures, sorry about that.

Continue reading “A weekend in Brussels, Belgium – Beautiful monuments and good beer”

Automating your personal finances is a mistake

Author Mr. The Poor SwissPosted on Categories Broker, Budget, Investment12 Comments on Automating your personal finances is a mistake

In the Personal Finance community, many people are advising everybody to automate as much as their personal finances as they can. I am not one of them. I do not automate anything in my personal finances. In fact, I do not like automation for my personal finances. I think it is a big mistake. It is a lazy excuse for not being rigorous enough to manage them yourself. The worst is actually the “set it and forget it” advice for automating your personal finances!

I will not deny that there are some advantages to automate some things in your personal finance routines. But I believe there are mostly disadvantages in doing it. Many people will not agree with my point of view. But this is something I have wanted to write about for some time.

In this post, I am going to describe the reasons why I do not like money automation. In fact, I believe it may be a bad idea for most people to automate their finances. This is an advice that is given on way too many personal finance media. As you will see in this post, there are many reasons why this is a bad advice!

Continue reading “Automating your personal finances is a mistake”

November 2018 – Brussels and too much shopping!

Author Mr. The Poor SwissPosted on Categories Goals, Monthly, Spending, TravelLeave a comment on November 2018 – Brussels and too much shopping!

Once again, it is time for a new monthly update from us! This month has passed incredibly fast. I do not know what happened. But I fell that the month was twice faster than other previous months!

There were not many big events this month. But a lot of small events. We went several times to restaurants. We spent a weekend in Brussels, Belgium. And we also had many events with our friends and family. And we went to two concerts. All these small events and some shopping by Mrs. The Poor Swiss made this month more expensive than usual. We managed to save about 45% of our income this month. Although it is not really bad, it is not as much as last month and not as much as I was expecting.

The stock market continued to be very volatile this month. After last month big loss, the market started going up for the first week of the month. But then, it started going down once again to reach a new low for the month.

In this post, I am going to describe all that happened for us, and especially for our finances, for November 2018.

Continue reading “November 2018 – Brussels and too much shopping!”

How we saved 50 CHF with our vegetable garden

Author Mr. The Poor SwissPosted on Categories Budget, DIY, Frugality, Side Hustle2 Comments on How we saved 50 CHF with our vegetable garden

This year was our first year with a vegetable garden. There were several goals in growing our own vegetable garden. The first was because we wanted to have fresh vegetables. The second was that we actually like gardening. And finally, we also wanted to see if it was possible to actually make a profit with a garden.

Since it is now the end of the gardening season, I am going to summarize the results of our garden. It is pretty empty right now since we only have a few winter vegetables. During this season, we kept a precise list of what we got out of our garden. And we of course also kept the list of our expenses. With this, we should be able to know if our garden was profitable or not ;)

Regardless of its profitability, it was a great experience for us. It is so good to be able to enjoy healthy and home-grown vegetables in our dishes! In this post, we are going to show what we got from our vegetable garden. I am also going to share what we learned and the mistakes we did for our garden.

Continue reading “How we saved 50 CHF with our vegetable garden”

Who is John Bogle? Founder of Vanguard

Author Mr. The Poor SwissPosted on Categories ETF, Investment2 Comments on Who is John Bogle? Founder of Vanguard

A few months ago, I talked about Warren Buffet, an incredible investor. Today, I am going to talk about another great man of finance, John C. Bogle. John Bogle is especially famous for being the founder of Vanguard. Vanguard is probably one the most famous mutual fund company. I have recently talked about several things that makes Vanguard unique. It is a great company. Its greatness is mostly due to the way John Bogle founded Vanguard.

Not only did he create the first index fund. But he also advocates for very cheap fees on mutual funds. He did a lot of good for investors like us! Without him, we would have to pay much more fees for our investment portfolio. He has a lot to teach us in terms of investing philosophy.

In this post, I am going to talk about the history of John Bogle and of the Vanguard company. I am also going to talk about his investing philosophy and the man he is. He led a very interesting life.

Continue reading “Who is John Bogle? Founder of Vanguard”

What kind of FIRE are you?

Author Mr. The Poor SwissPosted on Categories FIRE, Frugality, Switzerland10 Comments on What kind of FIRE are you?

The Financial Independence and Retire Early (FIRE) movement is not very old. But now it is starting to get traction. There is a ton of blogs on the subject and we are starting to see several articles on the media about the FIRE movement. With many different people starting to follow the movement, there are now several sub-movements. You probably have heard of the FIRE way. But have you heard of Lean FIRE or Fat FIRE?

I thought it would be very interesting to see what are all these different FIRE ways. All these acronyms are a bit ambiguous and can make matters a bit complicated. It is not extremely important to know which kind of FIRE you are. But it is an interesting thought :)

Once you finished reading this post, you will know what kind of FIRE you are! Or maybe you will define a new kind of FIRE! And that is perfectly fine. Each way to FIRE has its differences.

Continue reading “What kind of FIRE are you?”

Fair Comparison of Brokers: Interactive Brokers Tiered Pricing

Author Mr. The Poor SwissPosted on Categories Broker, Investment8 Comments on Fair Comparison of Brokers: Interactive Brokers Tiered Pricing

A few days ago, I posted a comparison between Interactive Brokers and DEGIRO. It turned out from this comparison that DEGIRO was always cheaper than Interactive Brokers.

While the comparison was fair, I did a “mistake”. Indeed, one of my readers pointed out that I only considered Fixed Pricing of Interactive Brokers. I forgot to consider Tiered Pricing. Tiered Pricing is a much more complicated pricing system that Interactive Brokers offers. I was thinking that it was only an account for big traders. But it turns out it is not the case. Indeed, it may be cheaper in some cases.

In fact, I did two “mistakes”. I also realized I did not take currency exchange into account. With these two mistakes, I thought it would be best to update my comparison in order to be fair. I do not want to present incomplete comparisons on this blog.

In this post, I am going to present this pricing system and compare once again the two brokers. Thanks a lot to cashfl0w for pointing out my mistake. Once again, I always welcome comments, especially when they help me learn new things.

Continue reading “Fair Comparison of Brokers: Interactive Brokers Tiered Pricing”