Retirement Archives - The Poor Swiss

How to Calculate your Financial Independence (FI) Ratio

Mr. The Poor SwissFinancial Independence, Retirement18 Comments

When you have a goal, it is always good to know your progress towards this goal. If you are trying to become Financially Independent, it will be important for you to know how far away you are from your goal! For this, you will need to know your Financial Independence (FI) Ratio. This ratio will tell you how close, or how far, you are from reaching your goal.

If your goal is to become FI, you will have a certain amount of net worth that you will have to reach before you can become FI. This is your FI number. Once your net worth equals your FI Number, you are financially free. That is the main idea.

Your FI ratio will tell you exactly where you are on your path to Financial Independence. In this post, we are going to see exactly how to compute your goal and then how to compute your progress towards the goal. This could help you a lot to see if you need to adjust your strategy to reach your goal on time.

Stay tuned if you want to know when you are going to be financially free!

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Swiss Life Select will not help your financial life

Mr. The Poor SwissInvesting, Retirement, Switzerland5 Comments

I have already talked about Swiss Life Select (SLS) in the past. I paid for their services. And I consider it is one of my biggest budgeting mistakes. There are many reasons for that. Not only was paying for their services a mistake but so was accepting some of the products they recommended. And I just thought a new thing that I find out about them. They actually screwed me over with bad insurance.

So I want to talk more about that. I do not want other people to do the same mistake as me. While this post is focused on SLS, it applies on most of all the financial advisors and insurance advisors you will be in contact with. They almost all have the same issues.

As a note, this only reflects my experience with Swiss Life Select. Maybe some other people had a better experience with them. And since you have a private advisor in the company, it is also possible that my bad experience is related to that.

So, let’s see what is wrong with that SLS offers you in this post! I hope that this does not come as too much of a rant. I did some bad choice by trusting these people and I want people to avoid doing the same mistake as me! Continue reading “Swiss Life Select will not help your financial life”

Switzerland is unfair to married couples

Mr. The Poor SwissFinancial Independence, Retirement, SwitzerlandLeave a comment

Marriage is a great thing in which I believe. However, something that not many people know is that in Switzerland, you are better off financially if you are not married. There are several disadvantages to being married in Switzerland.

Do not take me wrong, I am not saying you should not get married! We got married last year and I do not regret it at all. Marriage is about love not about money! But I know that in the future, we would be better off financially if we did not marry. This is important to know the differences between married couples in Switzerland, especially if you plan to retire here.

So in this post, we are going to see what financial difference there are between a married couple and an unmarried couple. You will see that there are some substantial differences in taxes and retirement for married couples.

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Interview of Daniel Peter, CEO of VIAC

Mr. The Poor SwissRetirement, SwitzerlandLeave a comment

I had the chance of interviewing Daniel Peter, the CEO of VIAC. If you do not yet know what VIAC is, it is a Swiss company that is providing an excellent third pillar option. If you are not familiar with the third pillar, I wrote an entire post about the third pillar. It is the Swiss equivalent of an IRA but with less choice. It is tax-advantaged and should be used by everyone serious about retirement.

I have already talked about this company on this blog. Currently, VIAC is offering the best third pillar option in Switzerland. They have very low fees compared to the other Swiss options. It is very easy to open an account at VIAC as well.

Moreover, they were also the first company to offer a third pillar account with 97% of stocks. Before that, the best option has only 75% of stocks. This is really great because the investment time of the third pillar is very long. Therefore, we want a large allocation to stocks.

But, Daniel Peter will tell you all about VIAC much better me. So, without further ado, here are Daniel’s answers to my questions!

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Health Plan for 2019 – Retire Healthy And Early

Mr. The Poor SwissRetirement10 Comments

Neither Mrs. The Poor Swiss nor me are in bad health. We are very lucky in that matter. However, being a computer scientist and not going out a lot is not a good long-term prospect for my health. These last few years, I have felt that my health decreased. I am not as much in shape as I was 10 years ago. And my back has been painful a few times recently.

Even though we do not have big problems, health is really important. These days, we focus too much on our finances. I want to retire early and I also want to retire healthy! For this, it is important to try to work on our health as we are working on our finances.

In this post, I am going to discuss the things we want to do in order to improve our health in 2019. Do not expect any fancy cure that will solve all health issues. There is no such thing. We focused on simple things for 2019 to ensure that we stay in good health.

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What Would I Do If I Retired?

Mr. The Poor SwissBlogging, Financial Independence, Retirement6 Comments

There are many people who do not know what they will do in retirement. If you are serious about reaching financial independence and retire early, you should already know what you would do in retirement. You will have a lot of time on your hands.

I already know that there are a lot of things I would do more once I retired. There are a few things I really wish I had more time to do. It is my hope that in retirement, I will be able to do more of these things.

In this post, I am going to describe the changes for me in retirement. As you will see, there are a lot of things I would like to do more in my life. I am also going to describe how I am going to organize my days. Of course, this is only a thought experiment. I am far from retirement. A lot of changes will occur in the meantime. But it is still a nice thought experiment.

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How Much Will You Spend in Retirement?

Mr. The Poor SwissFinancial Independence, Retirement, Travel6 Comments

If you want to reach Financial Independence and be able to retire, you need to know how much you are going to spend while retired. If you are retiring next year, it is really easy to know how much you are going to spend. However, if you are going to retire in a long time, it is not trivial to estimate your retirement expenses.

I have already talked about the different ways tor each Financial Independence (FI). Regardless of which way you choose to reach FI, you will need an accurate estimation of your retirement expenses. Without this, you will not be able to know how much of the road remains.

You could think that you are going to spend exactly the same as you spend now. But this is quite wrong. You need to take into account many things. You will normally pay fewer taxes. But your health expenses are likely to increase. And inflation will increase your expenses significantly over the years.

In this post, I am going to cover the main points that will impact your retirement spending. It is not a surefire way to estimate your retirement expenses. But it will definitely help if you want an accurate estimation.

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Should You Contribute to Your Second Pillar?

Mr. The Poor SwissFinancial Independence, Investing, Retirement, Switzerland10 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 Open a VIAC Third Pillar in a Few Easy Steps

Mr. The Poor SwissInvesting, Retirement, Switzerland34 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 VIAC the Best Third Pillar in Switzerland?

Mr. The Poor SwissInvesting, Retirement, Switzerland9 Comments

In Switzerland, there are several advantages to invest in the third pillar. Mainly, this will reduce your taxes since you can deduct your contributions from your taxable income. Moreover, this is a good way to invest for your retirement.

However, there are a lot of third pillar providers. Basically, every Swiss bank will offer you one or several third pillar accounts. But most of these options are pretty bad. Either they have very little interest or they have huge fees.

Recently, one new actor started to offer options for third pillars: VIAC. VIAC offers very cheap options with up to 97% exposure in stocks. This is significantly better than what I have found before in other third pillar providers.

In this post, I am going to compare the main third pillar providers in Switzerland. And I am going to check which is the best third pillar in Switzerland.

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