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The basics of investing – Why do we need to invest?

Investing is something that not enough people do. It is something that I started to do too late myself. For some people, it can be intimidating to begin investing.

But investing is not as complicated as people think. While it can be intimidating, this is something that everybody can do. But people should not start investing without doing their research.

I have now been investing for several years. And it has become an important habit for me. Over the years, it has helped my financial situation.

This article is the first in our Investing Guide For Beginners. This first article will cover what investing is and why investing is very important to reach your financial goals.

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May 2018 – Wedding and 100K net worth milestone

A lot of things happened in May 2018! The most important event of this month is of course that we got married! We had a nice and simple wedding with close family and friends.

And as you will see, we have reached the 100K CHF milestone in our net worth! This is the first time :) We can now hope that we will stay at this level for some time!

Even considering the wedding expenses, this month has some good savings rate. This is mostly due to the extensive gifts we received. This month is the month with my largest income yet. We should have been able to turn it down. Let’s hope we can keep expenses to a low next month.

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We Got Married! Our Wedding in Switzerland

We got married! Last Friday (18.05.2018) Mr and Mrs the Poor Swiss got married! It was a charming and straightforward official ceremony in our state. We invited our closest friends and family members to the ceremony. And then we did a simple party at our apartment. Find out about our wedding in Switzerland.

This post is mostly an occasion for me to share the good news ;) And some photos! I will also share information about how weddings in Switzerland. It is nothing extraordinary. But it could help some readers if they do not know how it works here.

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My 7 Biggest Budgeting Mistakes – How to fix them!

Over the years, I have made many budgeting mistakes. In this article, I list a few of the big mistakes I have made. I am talking here about mistakes in the way I did my budget. And I will also talk about spending mistakes. Some of the mistakes are not a big deal. But some of the others made me spend too much. Overall, I would be better off if I had known this a few years ago.

Find out how I fixed my budgeting mistakes. I have learned a lot from my budgeting mistakes, and I hope you can learn a lot from them too! The idea is, of course, to avoid them now that you of them!

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Reasons to Start a Vegetable Garden

When I was young, I was gardening with my father in our house. And before that, my grandfather was often taking me to his big garden. I always enjoyed it. However, since I moved into my current apartment, I never took the time to start a vegetable garden. Now that my girlfriend moved in with me, we decided it was time to start a garden again.  The idea was to grow some of our own vegetables.

With our apartment, we have a large lawn, filled with grass and a few trees. We asked the owner if we could remove the grass to start a garden. Since she accepted, we started our garden.

I am going to present all we did with our garden in this post. Neither of us is any gardening expert. We maybe did some mistakes, but we are having fun :) And I wanted to share this project. Also, my English gardening vocabulary may not be great. So, gardening experts, do not get offended ;) I would be glad to hear all your tips!

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I Will Teach You To Be Rich – Book Review

I just finished reading I Will Teach You To Be Rich, by Ramit Sethi. This book will give you a lot of advice on how to improve your finances. It may not make you a millionaire. But it is a great book, full of helpful recommendations on how to improve your finances!

This book has been great to read. It is one of the best from the personal finance books I have read so far. Like the last book I read, I have been able to buy it for a few dollars on Kindle. If you want to be lucky, look at my techniques to find cheap Kindle ebooks. It is nice and light to read. It is not too dense and still contains quite a lot of information.

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How To Buy an ETF on DEGIRO

In this post, we are going to see how to buy an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) on DEGIRO. The process is going to be the same regardless of the ETF you want to buy.

I decided to use DEGIRO after comparing it with several other brokers. The main advantage of DEGIRO is its very low fees. You can read my full review of DEGIRO if you want more information.

We are also going to see how to deposit money into your account. You will need money on your account before you can buy an ETF.

Update: DEGIRO stopped access to U.S. ETFs, but this process works for any ETF still available, VUSA or VWRL for instance.

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My Investor Policy Statement – You Need One Too!

We can all agree that having a clearly defined strategy is very good for your investing and your personal finances. It is very important to have goals and a long-term vision.

An Investor Policy Statement (IPS) is a tool helping you do just that. It is a way of writing down why and how you are investing. Your IPS helps you have a clear view of why you are investing and how you should invest to attain your goals.

It has been a long time now since I wanted to write my Investor Policy Statement (IPS). I just took some time over the last week to write it down completely. It took me about two hours. It was a really good exercise for me.

In this post, I am going to give you my own IPS and explain exactly the goals of an IPS. Each IPS will be different because each investor is different. You can follow my own example in order to start your own. But you still need to think about each point and adapt it for your own needs.

Stay tuned to learn about my Investor Policy Statement!

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The Millionaire Next Door – Book Review

The Millionaire Next Door: The Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy, is a book by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko. This book is a study of millionaire households in the United States. In this post, you will find out precisely what this book is about and what I thought about it. I was lucky to find it very cheap on Kindle.

This book is one of the best personal finance books I have read. The authors have gone into a lot of effort to collect all the data from millionaires. And they have drawn some fascinating conclusions from this data.

I am still reading many new personal finance books. And so far, it has been a great ride. There are some great books about personal finance, investing, and frugality. It is just a bit sad that most of these books are missing any international content. They are made for the United States. However, a lot of their lessons can still be translated into Europe.

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April 2018 – Birthday and new savings record

After a record-breaking March 2018, April 2018 is even better :) In fact, in terms of savings rate, it is the best month ever! I am really glad I achieved that good result.

Although I had some significant expenses this month, the savings were great. This is partly thanks to the gifts I received this month for my 30 years birthday! I also managed to keep my expenses quite low. And my net worth made a very nice jump. Overall, a great month!

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