Mr. The Poor Swiss is the author behind thepoorswiss.com. In 2017, he realized that he was falling into the trap of lifestyle inflation. He decided to cut on his expenses and increase his income. This blog is relating his story and findings. In 2019, he is saving more than 50% of his income. He made it a goal to reach Financial Independence. You can send Mr. The Poor Swiss a message here.
October 2019 started with our vacations in Barcelona. We spent six great days in this lovely city. It was a perfect trip!
Of course, with the vacation, our budget suffered a bit. But we still managed to save a substantial portion of our income. So, I am not going to complain, this time!
Even though we spent more than 5000 CHF this month, we still saved more than 50% of our income. I am getting happy about the state of our finances. And our goals are also going great!
So, let’s see everything that happened to us and our finances during this month.
In October, we went to Barcelona for six days. We had decided to take a vacation during this time for a while. It took us a while to decide on Barcelona.
It turned out that Barcelona was a great choice! It is a beautiful city. We were lucky to have nice weather during our stay!
We enjoyed a lot of sightseeing during our stay. There are some beautiful things to see in this city! There are also some great plazas and magnificent buildings.
In this post, I am going to share everything we have done in Barcelona with pictures. And of course, I am going to share the costs of the trip. It was not as cheap as we would have liked. But not so bad either!
One question that many people have is whether they should rebalance their portfolio or not. And this is even more important in retirement.
Rebalancing is the fact of selling the shares that have overperformed and then buy the shares that underperformed. The idea is to keep your portfolio allocation to the same level.
People do not agree on whether you should rebalance in retirement or not. People do not even agree on that during the accumulation phase. So we are going to cover this subject as well.
And since I have now a lot of data about the stock market, I figured it would be great to use. So, I am also going to simulate whether it has historically been better to rebalance or not.
The data on this article is based on more than 3.2 million simulations of withdrawal rates! Without further ado, let’s delve into rebalancing!
I recently finished Digital Minimalism, by Cal Newport. I have been pleasantly surprised by this book. It is an excellent book!
This book is about breaking our dependence on digital technologies and services and regaining our attention. People are spending more and more time on their phones. Most people cannot keep a conversation without having to check their phones. This book will help you solve this!
I do not think I have a problem with social media or my phone. I have no personal social media profiles. And I use my phone as little as I can. In fact, except for some banking applications, my phone is almost empty.
Even though I am probably a digital minimalist for some things, I still learned some fascinating lessons in this book!
So, let’s see what this book is about and what I thought about it.
If you follow any blog about Financial Independence, you probably have heard about Sequence of Returns Risk. Even on this blog, I talked about this concept. But do you know exactly what it is?
A sequence of Returns Risk, or simply Sequence Risk, affects people that regularly invest or regularly withdraw from their portfolio. When you invest, they should average out. But this is more important when you withdraw. The main idea is that negative returns in the early years are much worse than in the later years.
It is a bit difficult to explain with words. But it is very easy to understand with examples. I will show the difference that sequence of returns risks can make to different scenarios.
So let’s delve into Sequences of Returns Risk and what to do about it.
If you are interested in personal finance, you probably have come across the term Emergency Fund. An Emergency Fund is simply some money, available directly, that you can use in case of emergency. Most people will advise you to get such an account. And they will insist heavily on this subject.
It is an interesting subject since not everybody agrees on it. Some people have an emergency fund that can cover one year of expenses. And some people think you do not need one.
Personally, I do not think an emergency fund is a bad thing. But you should be aware of its cost. It also has disadvantages. And you may not need a fund as big as some people tell you. I think that too much people put too much emphasis on the emergency fund.
In this post, we are going to see both sides of the story. We are going to see in details what an emergency fund is.
Many people want to retire early! The Financial Independence and Retire Early (FIRE) movement is taking in a lot of momentum. But, few people want to retire early in Switzerland. So, is it even possible to retire early in Switzerland?
I believe it is possible to retire early in Switzerland. But for that, you need to know the differences between Switzerland and other countries. Since most FIRE people are in the United States, we need to know what changes here. It is necessary to see if it is possible and how to adapt to it.
Even though it is possible, I think it is more difficult to retire early in Switzerland than it is in the United States. But some people, including me, could not retire in another country than Switzerland. I would rather continue working my whole life than have to move.
In this post, I am trying to see whether it is possible to retire early in Switzerland. And also, how can we retire early in Switzerland?
The Poor Swiss just turned two years old! I cannot believe it has already been two years since I started this blog!
I have learned a lot of things this second year of blogging. And even though not everything went well, I think the blog is much better than it was one year ago.
I am going to do a retrospective on this second year of blogging. I want to talk about the numbers of the blog. But I also want to talk about what went well and what did not!
There are some things that went really well this year. For instance, I am still having a blast at writing articles. And I was able to write more than I thought. On the other hand, some of the articles I wrote did not get as much attention as I would have liked.
Overall, I am happy with how this second year turned up. Hopefully, this blog will live yet another year!
To become more successful with our money, we can copy what financially successful people are doing! We should see the most important money habits and traits that they have. Once we know that, we can imitate them and improve our finances.
I am going to talk about the most essential habits of successful people. I am not only talking about rich people here. But I am talking about people that are smart with money, and that can reach their goals. This could be people that can retire early. Or that can be people that accumulate ten million dollars.
There are many ways to be successful with money. And we can learn from all kinds of people.
So, let’s see what are the eight most important good habits you can learn to improve your finances!
So today, we are going to find out about five more money lessons from Family Guy. Out of the three posts I did so far in the series, the one about Family Guy was the best received. So I figured I better start with this one for a second part!
If you do not know this show, it is an American animated sitcom from Seth Mac Farlane. The series follows the adventures of the Griffin Family. Contrary to some other series, it does not have a focus on one character or even one story. There are generally several stories in each episode. And often, the main one is not the funniest.
In the Griffin family, there is Peter and Lois Griffin, the parents. They have three children, Meg, Chris and Stewie, the baby. And they have a dog, Brian.
For more context, nobody likes Meg, the baby is a Genius, and the dog can talk! And both Peter and Chris are pretty dumb! Oh, and the baby wants to kill his mom. It is a hilarious show!
In this post, we are going to talk about five episodes from the show with some focus on money. The idea of the series is to see if we can learn some things about money from animated TV sitcoms.
The pictures in this post are the property of Fox.
