Switzerland Archives - Page 2 of 3

How to get Swiss Marriage Visa for a Chinese

Mr. The Poor SwissSwitzerland, Tips, TravelLeave a comment

Before Mrs. The Poor Swiss could join me in Switzerland, we had to go through the procedure to get her a visa. Since we knew that we wanted to get married in Switzerland, we used a visa for marriage. This kind of visa allowed her to come to Switzerland and to get married to me :)

The steps are not really intuitive and take a lot of time (and money). For us, it was a bit overwhelming. In this post, we are going to cover all the steps that we had to do. From the application in China to the reception of the residence permit in Switzerland. This should help any Chinese that wants to get married in Switzerland to get a Visa for this!

Before you do any procedure, there is one thing you need to decide together. The wife can take the name of the husband after the marriage. This is optional. This can surprising since people do not change their name after marriage in China. Even if the wife is from China, she can decide to change her name after the marriage. However, her name in China will not change. And you will also need to decide which name will the children take. In our case, Mrs. The Poor Swiss decided to take my name after the marriage and our future children will take the same name as well. This is an important decision of course for the couple.

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Ricardo increases its fees for selling online

Mr. The Poor SwissFrugality, News, Side Hustle, SwitzerlandLeave a comment

I am selling a lot of things online. For this, the main site I am using is Ricardo. This is an auction website. You set a start price and an optional instant price and people can bid on your item. The highest bidder will win after a set time for the auction. I have found out Ricardo to work quite well for my needs. I have made several hundreds of Swiss francs on this website.

However, Ricardo is not free. You pay some fees to sell your things online. Even though I would prefer using a free service, I found out that my things sell better on Ricardo than on free alternatives. Yesterday, Ricardo just announced that they updated their fees. The new fee model will be active from September 13th. In this post, I am going to describe the changes and exactly what this means for you if you want to sell things online on Ricardo. We are going to look at when you are actually saving money compared to before and when you are losing money.

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Our wedding ceremony in Switzerland on a budget!

Mr. The Poor SwissFrugality, Spending, Switzerland6 Comments

No, I am not writing the same post twice! You may remember, that we got married in Switzerland in May. At that time, we did a small civil wedding with my close family, followed by a small party at our places, joined by some of my friends. We did not have much time, so we decided on doing something really simple.

However, many of our friends and family could not come. So we decided to throw a bigger party to have more people join us. In this post, I am going to share what we did for our wedding. It was a great time for us and our guests! I am also going to discuss the costs, personal finance blog obligation!

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How to get Swiss driving license as a foreigner

Mr. The Poor SwissSpending, Switzerland4 Comments

Mrs. The Poor Swiss, my wife, recently started the procedure to get her driving license in Switzerland. The procedure is not too difficult. But not all the steps are obvious in the process. My wife is Chinese and she already had a driving license from China. This is what is going to interest us in today’s post.

In this post, I am going to explain the different steps in getting a Swiss driving license for a foreigner. First, it depends if you already have a driving license in your country or not. If you already have a driving license, it will depend on your country. Since Mrs. The Poor Swiss is Chinese, this post will have a Chinese bias but I am going to try to cover other countries as well.

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The three-fund portfolio – Keep it simple

Mr. The Poor SwissBroker, ETF, Investment, Switzerland2 Comments

This post is part 7 of 7 in the series Investing – All about investing.

In the previous posts of the Investing series, we have covered the basics of the stocks and bonds. We also have covered index funds, in the form of mutual funds and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs). You should now have a good idea of how you want to invest. The problem remains on how to invest! One solution to this problem is the Three-Fund-Portfolio.

This is a very important question and one that you should spend some time thinking about. There is no one-size-fits-all investment in my opinion. There are many kinds of investment that work. For some of them, you will need some knowledge and time to make it work. The three-fund portfolio is a very simple portfolio made of three funds that should work for most people.

In this post, we are going to cover two things. How much bonds you should have and what is the Three-Fund Portfolio. Since there are also some direct variations of the three-fund portfolio, I am also going to cover them!

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11 Things I Love about Switzerland – Beautiful country

Mr. The Poor SwissSwitzerland4 Comments

Last week, I published a list of things I hate about Switzerland. Even though there are some things I really dislike about Switzerland, I love living in Switzerland. In this post, I am going to list the things I really love about Switzerland. While there was only 5 things in my hate list, there are 11 in my love list :) And there are not the only things I love about Switzerland. This tells you that I really have many more things I like about it than things I do not like.

Before you read what I love about Switzerland, you should be aware of my situation :) You have to remember that I live in the Swiss countryside. I live in a very small village. And I do not like cities. Some people like cities more than villages. But I would hate living in a city. I also like hiking a lot and I like being outside. This will be reflected in some of the things I like the most about Switzerland.

Below, you will find 11 things I love about Switzerland. They have almost nothing to do with money. And they are in no particular order ;)

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5 Things I hate about Switzerland

Mr. The Poor SwissFIRE, Spending, Switzerland15 Comments

While I really like Switzerland and I plan, and hope, to spend all my life here, there are some things I really do not like about it. In this post, I am going to discuss the five things I hate about Switzerland.

I am not about to leave Switzerland and I hope I will never have to. There will be a post coming up about the things I love about Switzerland and they will be more numerous ;) But I think it is important to realize that no country is perfect. Some things should definitely be improved in Switzerland.

Of course, these things will probably be different from one person to another. I know that there are some things in the list that some people like. Please tell me what you do not like about Switzerland in the comment!

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How to sell things online in Switzerland ?

Mr. The Poor SwissFrugality, Minimalism, Side Hustle, Switzerland, Tips6 Comments

Recently, I did some ordering in my technology closet (yes, I am the kind of guy that has a technology closet…). And I realized that I had way too many things stored at home. I also realized that I had way too many servers. So I decided to sell online a few things. I also decided I was being crazy and started to dismount two of my servers to sell the pieces.

I am mostly using online websites to sell things. To be honest, I am far from being a minimalist. This is easily seen by my technology that is still too full after this first purge. But I am trying to reduce a bit the amount of burden I own. And if I can get some money in the process, it is bonus ;)

In this post, I am going to talk about what am I selling online in Switzerland. And how am I selling them!

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TCS Travel Mastercard Gold credit card – 1% cashback!

Mr. The Poor SwissFrugality, Spending, Switzerland, Tips4 Comments

A few weeks ago, I compared the credit cards in Switzerland. I came to the conclusion that for me, the best credit card would be to use Cumulus Mastercard. Since then, I ordered the card, but I have not received it yet. I am also waiting on Revolut to finally get a Swiss IBAN so that I can top it up for free.

However, there is a card I have not considered in my first comparison. The Touring Club Suisse (TCS) is offering two credit cards for its members. The first one is the TCS Member MasterCard. This is not really interesting since it does not have any cashback, but it is free. What is more interesting is the TCS Travel MasterCard Gold. This card will cost you 100 CHF per year, although it is free in its first year. But they will give you 1% cashback. In this post, I am going to look at this card in details.

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What is the best credit card in Switzerland ?

Mr. The Poor SwissFrugality, Spending, Switzerland, Tips11 Comments

This month I had to use my credit card a lot. We paid for our honeymoon in full in advance. I also had to advance money to my company for a trip that they will reimburse later. Also, we purchased many things online. Finally, we pay all our groceries with a credit card. To make sure I could pay for our wedding lunch, I even had to increase my limit to 5000 CHF.

Once I realized how much I was using this credit card, I started to wonder if my card was the best available for me. Also, I read a lot of stories of people getting a lot of flights and hotels for free using credit cards. I wanted to know if this was possible for me too. Let’s explore the different options that are available in Switzerland.

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