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7 simple things to do to keep your food budget small

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 22, 2018October 22, 2018Budget, Frugality, Spending, SwitzerlandLeave a comment

Our food budget is something that we are managing to keep quite low. Last year, it was still too high. So I changed some of my habits and how we manage to keep our food budget around 400 CHF on average. For two people. This may seem high. But for Switzerland, I think it is quite reasonable. And several months we are quite lower than this. It is the months we are inviting many people over that are increasing the average.

To reach this low food budget, we are doing several things. And by following these simple tips, you can also keep your food budget low! Mainly, the idea is to compare several shops and only shop where you can get the best bargain. If you want to go all the way, you should compare each shop for each product. But who got the time? The idea is more to select one cheap shop as the main shop and then buy some cheaper things in other shops but less often.

So, in this post, I am going to list 7 simple things we do, and that you could do too, to keep our food budget low.

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Adopting the Minimalist Lifestyle Book Review

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 19, 2018October 2, 2018Books, FIRE, Frugality, Minimalism2 Comments

I was thinking to buy a small book on minimalism recently. But actually, I bought a pack of several books about minimalism. To be honest, I was thinking I was buying a single book but ended up with a pack. Oh well. The first book I have read is Adopting the Minimalist Lifestyle by Ariel Horowitz.

It’s a really tiny book. I was thinking the entire set of book was small already, but each book is tiny. It’s a minimalist book about minimalism ;) I have been able to find it for very cheap on Kindle once again. It is difficult to find this kind of books in my used book shop. But if you are patient, it is relatively easy to find them for cheap on Amazon.

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Is VIAC the best third pillar in town ?

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 17, 2018October 11, 2018Investment, Switzerland2 Comments

My third pillar is invested at PostFinance in the PostFinance Pension 75 fund. This is a fund that invests mostly in Switzerland, with 75% of stocks. It is not a bad fund at all. However, a few things made me want to reconsider this third pillar.

First, the TER is a bit high. You pay 0.98% for holding this fund. It is not really bad since TER for retirement funds in Switzerland is quite high. This is already one of the best funds. But it is always better to reduce that TER even further when possible.

Secondly, PostFinance recently increased its account fees. Before, I was not paying anything for all my accounts at PostFinance. However, I will now have to pay 60 CHF per year to keep my money at PostFinance. Therefore, it is time to change. I am in the process of switching to Migros bank for my bank accounts. But I need to find a new third pillar provider to replace the one from PostFinance.

And also, it has been a while I wanted to study in details VIAC. This is a new provider of third pillars. It has some very interesting advantages.

In this post, I am going to try to find a new third pillar for me in Switzerland. Let’s see what Switzerland has to offer :)

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How I blog – How I write blog posts

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 15, 2018October 15, 2018Blogging, Side Hustle, Tips2 Comments

It has now been over one year that I have started blogging. I have already talked about why I am blogging. Now I want to talk about how I am blogging. I am going to cover most of the things I do when I blog. I am not going to cover things I do that are not related to blog posts. But I am going to go through everything I do while writing new blog posts.

From writing new blog posts to finding images for them and share them on social networks, I am going to try to cover all the aspects of blogging. You will see that even for a small blog like mine, it is a considerate amount of work to write blog posts.

I am hoping that this will be interesting for people interested in blogging and beginner bloggers like me. Do not forget that this blog is still quite young and I should be considered a beginner ;)

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PostFinance increasing fees – Migros the best Swiss bank ?

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 12, 2018October 12, 2018Investment, Switzerland13 Comments

I have used PostFinance as my bank for a very long time now. I have used it ever since my first pay, 14 years ago. For the most part, I am quite satisfied with it as a bank. I have a checking account and a few savings account on PostFinance. And I also have my third pillar on PostFinance. I was thinking of staying at PostFinance for most things except for my third pillar which I was thinking of moving to VIAC. However, it seems they decided otherwise.

Currently, I am not paying anything for my accounts. But PostFinance just announced that they are increasing their fees significantly (Source). Starting January 2019, I am going to have to pay 60 CHF per year for my account. This is not acceptable to me. The service will be exactly the same but for a higher price. I know this is not a lot of money. But this is the kind of things we should fight against. So I am going to change bank as soon as possible. In this post, I am going to discuss the new fees and the options I have as a new bank in Switzerland.

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One year blog anniversary! Lessons and next steps

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 10, 2018October 10, 2018Blogging, Goals, Tips6 Comments

I cannot believe it has already been one year since I started blogging. On October 10th 2017, I wrote the first blog post of The Poor Swiss. I have learned a lot of about personal finance in that year. And I have also learned a lot about blogging. Even though this was not my first blog, I still had a lot to learn. And I still have a lot more to learn now!

In this post, I am going to talk about my first year of blogging. If I say this year, it will the year of blogging, it will not be 2018 ;)

Recently, I have talked about the reasons why I am blogging. Now, I am going to share numbers about how the blog is doing. I am also going to share the things I did right and the things that did not go well. However, I still have a lot of work to do to improve this blog. I am hoping that it gets better over time.

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Grow your income or spend less to reach FI ?

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 8, 2018October 16, 2018FIRE, Frugality, Investment, Side Hustle10 Comments

When you are trying to reach Financial Independence (FI), the best way to do it is to increase your savings rate. Your savings rate is the amount of your net income that you are able to save. For this, you have two options. You can either spend less or grow your income. These two options will directly increase your savings rate. And as result, they will speed up your road to Financial Independence and make you reach FI faster.

So which should you focus on if you want to reach Financial Independence ? There are some advantages and disadvantages to each of them. They do not accelerate your path to FI at the same rate. Find out what you should do to become financially independent.

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How I made $2’000’000 on the stock market – Book Review

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 5, 2018October 5, 2018Books, Broker, Investment2 Comments

No, I did not make two million dollars in the stock market. But I just read a book about a man who did ;) I finished reading “How I made $2,000,000 in the stock market”.

This book tells the story of Nicolas Darvas who made two million dollars in the stock market, in less than two years. Nicolas Darvas is not a professional investor, but a dancer. He is touring around the world, going from one show to another. The book tells his story from his beginnings with many mistakes to the successful. I thought it was a very interesting story. You can learn many things from his mistakes and from his successes. Even though the book is quite, I think it is still mostly relevant to today. You

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Seven blogs on FIRE I really like

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 3, 2018October 2, 2018Blogging, FIRE10 Comments

This post is not about my blog but about other blogs! As I mentioned several times in the past, I am reading many other personal finance blogs. Some blogs are purely on investing and some blogs are purely on Early Retirement. However, all of them contain some important lessons if you are on the road to Financial Independence (FI). Some of them helped popularize the Financial Independence and Retire Early (FIRE) movement. I think it is also important to share with the community and not only focus on a single blog.

There are several reasons why I read other blogs. The first reason is to learn from others. Indeed, I am far from being an expert in FIRE. I like reading what people are doing to achieve FIRE and especially what people who already achieved FIRE can teach me. Also, I like reading in general and some of these blogs have really enjoyable content. Another reason is to get some inspiration for my blog.

The seven following FIRE blogs are in no order. I do not have a favorite in these seven blogs. They all are my favorite blogs. I also read many other blogs. But the entire list would be too long to publish here. I strongly encourage you to take a look at them if you are not already reading them!

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September 2018 – Car repair and plane tickets

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 1, 2018September 28, 2018Blogging, China, Monthly, Spending2 Comments

After poor financial results in August 2018, it is time to review September 2018. Even though we had some big expenses this month, the results are better. We were able to save more money this month. It is still not perfect, but it is very slowly getting there.

Not a lot of things happened in September 2018. I spend about ten days in the United States for my company. This was not expensive since everything was paid by my company. I did some shopping though. However, we bought plane tickets to China for next Chinese new year. And we had to pay the repair for the car accident of Mrs The Poor Swiss. This made a very large dent into our budget.

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