Having decided to start investing in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), I needed a broker account. I decided to open a DEGIRO account. In this post, I am going to go over the reasons for this choice and over how to open a DEGIRO account and start trading.
DEGIRO is a cheap broker for European people. It is well priced and offers a great choice of investment products.
Continue reading “How to Open a DEGIRO account and start trading”
This is the first monthly update of my budget and finances on this blog. I will try to do this every month and normally earlier than this. I was on vacation.
Welcome to The Poor Swiss blog :)
If you arrived here through The Blog Archives, you have now reached the very first post from The Poor Swiss blog. On the other hand, if you are just starting reading through my posts, you can take a look at my Introduction for New Readers.
This is the first post on the blog The Poor Swiss. On this blog, I talk about many subjects:
The year I created this blog, in 2017, my savings were getting worse and worse every month. This was due to many big expenses such as plane tickets and unexpected health care. But this made me realize that I am not saving enough at all. Although I have a good salary and live quite well, I have a tendency to spend too much.
In 2016, my savings rate was around 18%. This is not really bad. But still lower than I would have liked. But in 2017, my savings rate is down to around 7%. This is way too low and made me realize that my expenses are way too high. Moreover, the last two months have been negative months although not by a long shot. This month is also likely to end up being negative. Given my salary, I should easily be able to save at least 25% of my income each month.
Since this point, I started reading many personal finance blogs and websites. I have learned a lot of things about investments and spending. In the coming months, I plan to put these lessons to work. My main change now will be to reduce my spending. I will then continue to learn about investments and I will try to put my money to work. For now, I did not start investing at all. But I plan to fix this. I believe it is important to start improving the budget first before starting to focus on investment.
For some context, I am a 31 years old software programmer. I just finished my Ph.D. in Computer Science and I am still working in my school. I live in a small village in the countryside area of the Fribourg state, in Switzerland. Currently, I plan to stay in that area for many years. But I am hoping to find a better job next year once my contract with my school is finished.
My main goal with this blog is to motivate myself to improve my finances. But I am also going to write personal finance tips and in-depth analysis of some important investing topics. I am hoping that you will learn from my mistakes and improve your finances with me :)
And do not forget that I am not very good with my money, so do not follow everything I do. But you may try to learn from my mistakes. I am not a financial advisor. You should only take financial decisions after having consulted many points of view on the subject.
