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5 Sure Ways to reach Financial Independence

Mr. The Poor SwissNovember 14, 2018November 16, 2018FIRE, Frugality, Investment, Real Estate, Side Hustle2 Comments

We have seen that there are many reasons to want to reach Financial Independence (FI). Once you reach FI, you can do what you want without having to worry about money. This is awesome! You only keep working if you want to. This is something most people would want to achieve. For me, my ultimate goal is to reach FI.

There are several ways to achieve Financial Independence. Indeed, there is not a single path to go from where are you now to the point where you are financially independent. Of course, there are some similarities between some of these ways. But they are different enough. Most of the time, you will need to follow several of these ways to reach Financial Independence earlier.

In this post, we are going to see the different paths you can take to become financially independent. There are surely other ways to reach Financial Independence. But these are the main ways and the ones I know. If you know of another sure way to become financially independent, I would be glad to hear about it.

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7 Simple steps to change bank account

Mr. The Poor SwissNovember 12, 2018October 25, 2018Investment, Switzerland, TipsLeave a comment

Recently, my previous bank increased their fees. So I decided to change to a new bank account. After some research, I switched from PostFinance to Migros Bank. It may seem very easy to change your bank account. But there are many things you need to think about when you are doing it. Before I switched, I was thinking it was some work. But I was not thinking of everything I had to change. In this post, I am going to detail the things you have to think of for changing to your new bank account.

Another thing I tried to do during this change of bank account is to make it easier for the next time. I do not think it is a good thing to be tied to a single bank account. Next time, I want the process to be easier. So I am also going to share what I did to make it easier for next time. Hopefully, I will not have to change my bank account for a long time. But in the event of a change, I will be more prepared for it.

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Should you contribute to your second pillar ?

Mr. The Poor SwissNovember 9, 2018November 9, 2018FIRE, Investment, Switzerland8 Comments

In Switzerland, you can do a voluntary contribution to your second pillar. The second pillar is the Swiss equivalent of a 401(K). These contributions come with some tax advantages since you can deduct that from your income. Therefore, you have a return equal to your marginal tax rate. However, the money is then blocked into the second pillar. And the returns on that blocked money have been very low in recent years. Finally, you can only withdraw the money from your second pillar if you retire, if you buy a house or if you start a company.

One question that I actually ask myself these days is whether I should contribute money to my second pillar or continue investing in stocks. These days we are able to invest enough money each month that I am wondering about this. I could contribute some money to my second pillar and continue to invest enough in stocks. But is it a good solution. In this post, I am going to try to answer this question.

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How to build a nice shoe rack for 35$

Mr. The Poor SwissNovember 7, 2018November 7, 2018DIY, FrugalityLeave a comment

I have finally been able to do my second Do-It-Yourself (DIY) furniture. I have built a nice shoe rack. And I managed to keep it on a nice budget! I wanted to do this project for a long time now. But either I did not find the time or our budget was too bad to afford this. It is not a big price. But I did not want to make some months even worse than they already were.

But finally, here it is! Four months after our DIY bookshelf project, I have been able to build my second DIY furniture. Since Mrs. The Poor Swiss joined me in Switzerland, the number of shoes in our apartment exploded. I have only three pairs of shoes for the entire year. But Mrs. The Poor Swiss already has about ten pairs ;) So we needed a new shoe rack. And I wanted to build it myself :)

I managed to build a nice enough shoe rack for about 35 dollars. For the size of it and the look of it, I think it’s a really nice price. But I will let you judge. Remember that I am no expert in wood or furniture making! I am just starting out. So if you have any advice for me, I would really appreciate!

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Quickly learn Mandarin Chinese online with FluentU

Mr. The Poor SwissNovember 5, 2018October 23, 2018China, Goals, TipsLeave a comment

Since I have met Mrs. The Poor Swiss, I have tried to learn some Chinese. For now, it is pretty laughable. But I think I am making progress. Between Mrs. The Poor Swiss arrival in Switzerland and our wedding, I was not very astute to this. However, since September, I have decided to start again harder. I am now practicing every day for at least twenty minutes.

At first, I was thinking to enroll in a real course with a teacher. I checked the courses offered in my region. But I did not find some good options at a fair price. Most were either too expensive or too far away. I tried to enroll in a Migros course. But the course was canceled for lack of students and I did not want to wait several more months for the next course to start.

So I started looking at online solutions. Online solutions have the immense advantage that you can learn how long you want and at the time you want. There are many solutions that can be used for this. I have compared several of them and tried a few as well. In the end, I decided to go with FluentU. I am greatly satisfied with their offer. In this post, I am going to explain how I am using FluentU to learn Mandarin. Since they have several languages, you can also use it, in the same way, to learn German for instance.

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October 2018 – Quiet Month and Stock Market Correction

Mr. The Poor SwissNovember 2, 2018November 1, 2018Investment, Monthly6 Comments

October 2018 was a really nice and quiet month. It was not very eventful but we had several family events. And overall, we had a lot of fun and we did not spend a lot of money. Isn’t that the definition of a great month?

Compared to the expensive month of September 2018, we are much better off financially this month. We still had a few expenses that I would have liked to remove. But we are getting closer to a good budget month after month. In the future, there are some expenses that need to be reduced and some expenses that need to be eliminated. We managed to save more than half of our income this month!

While the month was very quiet for us, the stock market was far from being quiet. We arrived into correction territory for most of the major indexes. And our investment portfolio is down a lot this month. Since our portfolio is not yet huge, our net worth is still up since what we invested is more than what we spent. But this will not last. In the next correction, we will probably be down a lot more.

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How to open a VIAC third pillar in a few easy steps

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 31, 2018November 1, 2018Investment, Switzerland2 Comments

I recently compared the different third pillars available in Switzerland. I quickly came to the conclusion that VIAC provides the best third pillars in Switzerland. VIAC third pillars are cheap and have a very good global diversification. Moreover, you can have up to 97% of your portfolio invested in stocks. Before, my only problem with VIAC was that they are mobile-only. But I need to go over this small problem and be smarter about it! And since PostFinance increased their fees, I decided to walk away from them earlier than I planned.

Now that I have chosen my new third pillar, it is time to do the transfer. For this, I first have to open an account at VIAC. Then, I have to transfer my existing third pillar money from PostFinance to VIAC. In this post, I am going to describe the steps necessary to open a VIAC third pillar. In a second time, I am also going to describe how to transfer an existing third pillar to VIAC.

As you will see it is incredibly easy. If you think it is difficult to open a new third pillar and transfer your existing third pillar money on it, then I hope I will convince you that it is trivial! You should not delay changing a bad third pillar for a good one by the fear that it is difficult. Because it is not!

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Is DEGIRO really cheaper than Interactive Brokers?

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 29, 2018October 29, 2018Broker, ETF, Investment, Switzerland2 Comments

You may have read that I am using DEGIRO has my broker. In fact, I chose DEGIRO mainly because of its very low fees. I am very satisfied with my experience with DEGIRO. I have not had a big problem since I started using it, about a year ago.

Interactive Brokers is also a very popular broker. It has been there for much longer than DEGIRO who is a very young broker. And it also has very low fees. When I chose DEGIRO over Interactive Brokers, I did it because I thought it was cheaper.

In this post, we are going to compare once again DEGIRO and Interactive Brokers. I am going to do the comparison in details including the two different account types of DEGIRO. In the default account of DEGIRO (Basic), your shares can be lent to other investors. This is not something that is done by default with Interactive Brokers. Therefore, my previous comparison was not very fair! This time, I am going to try to make it better.

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7 simple ways to grow your career income

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 26, 2018October 20, 2018FIRE, Self-Improvement, Tips6 Comments

I recently wrote about whether you should spend less or grow your income. The answer was that ideally you should do both to reach Financial Independence (FI) faster. In this post, I am going to focus on growing your career income. There are other ways to grow your overall income such as side hustles or real estate investment. But I am not going to cover them in this post. I am also not going to talk about starting your own company. I will only cover your main career income in this post.

There are several ways to grow your main income. Some of them are easier than others. And some of them are best applied to some field but may not work on some fields. There are no simple get-rich-quick ways to increase your income. It will take time and commitment. But if you are really committed to increase your income, you will get a better salary.

In the next sections, I am going to talk about increasing your salary. However, you may also try to get new advantages. Getting Restricted Stock Units (RSUs) from your company is very good. If you can participate in an Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP), you will also get some very interesting extra income. You could get your company to participate in your fees for commuting or your health insurance fees. Or you could get a better pension plan. There are many other things that you could get. You need to look at the bigger picture!

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Money lessons from animated series – South Park #1

Mr. The Poor SwissOctober 24, 2018October 29, 2018Budget, Frugality, Investment, Side Hustle6 Comments

Have you ever wondered if you could learn money lessons from animated sitcoms? If you have, this post is for you! Today, we are going to learn money lessons from five South Park episodes!

This post is going to be very different from my usual posts. We are going to learn money lessons from animated sitcoms. I do not know you about you. But I really like American animated sitcoms. I watched several of them in their entirety. I cannot count the times I laughed uncontrollably at some of their episodes. Yes, they are incredibly dumb. It is the point. But that is what makes them incredibly funny! I like dumb things ;) I have watched the entire collection of South Park, Family Guy, The Simpsons, American Dad, and Rick And Morty. And I have watched many episodes many times. I even know some of them almost by heart.

So let’s see if we can learn something from these dumb episodes. The lessons learned can be about investing, personal finance or anything money-related. The first post will be about South Park. For this, I chose five episodes who can teach us something about money. If this post ends up being popular, I am going to try to make several of these posts. I already have several ideas for the next episodes.

The pictures in this post are the property of Comedy Central.

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