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7 Great Frugal Tips to Keep Your Food Budget Small

Many people spend too much money on their food budget. And even worse, they do not realize that they can spend much less on their food budget!

Our food budget is something that we have optimized very well. We keep our food budget, for two people, below 400 CHF per month, on average.

For Switzerland, it is a very good food budget. And several months we are quite lower than this. It is the months we are inviting many people to our place that are increasing the average.

To reach this low food budget, we do several things. And by following these simple tips, you can also keep your food budget low!

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Adopting the Minimalist Lifestyle Book Review

I was thinking of buying 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 is a really tiny book. I thought the entire set of books was small already, but each book is tiny. It is 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 book 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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Migros Bank Review – Best Traditional Bank in Switzerland

For several years, I have been using Migros Bank as my main bank account. They are offering good service at excellent prices. And in the days of expensive bank accounts in Switzerland, it is important to look at these fees.

In this article, I review the bank account offering of Migros Bank in detail. We see all their prices and how it compares against other Swiss banks.

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One Year Blog Anniversary! Lessons and Next Steps

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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How I Made $2’000’000 on the Stock Market – Book Review

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 his successes. Even though the book is quite old, I think it is still mostly relevant to today. You

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7 Best Blogs on FIRE

This post is not about my blog but other blogs! As I mentioned several times in the past, I am reading many other personal finance blogs. Some blogs are purely about investing, and some blogs are entirely about Early Retirement. However, all of them contain some valuable lessons if you are on the road to Financial Independence (FI). Some of them helped make the Financial Independence and Retire Early (FIRE) movement as popular as it now. 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 love reading in general, and some of these blogs have really enjoyable content. Another reason is to get some inspiration for my blog. I am not talking about copying their blog posts. But I am talking about making my blog by learning from others.

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

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 spent 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 the 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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9 Reasons to Live in a Small Village

I have lived in a small village all my life. I have lived all my life inside the same village. And I do not want to change this. A lot of people find this very surprising. Today, we are going to discuss why anyone would want to live in a small country village.

For me, there are too many advantages to living in the countryside and especially in small villages. Of course, there are also disadvantages and some people may not like it. But for me, it is excellent!

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What is an Opportunity Fund? Be Ready for a Bear Market

I have already talked about the emergency fund before. Today, we are going to cover a different kind of fund: the opportunity fund. It is not as well-known as the emergency fund. And it is not nearly as used at the emergency fund either. However, I think it is important to know what it is.

As its name indicates, an opportunity fund is a fund that contains money waiting for an opportunity. The idea is to get ready for investing opportunities. The best opportunity in the stock market is a full-blown bear market. In this post, we are going to see exactly what purpose this kind of fund serves. And also I am going to discuss its downsides.

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