September 2026 – Land register tax

September 2026

Overall, September was a nice month. We got back some colder days, which is great and allowed us to do more things outside since it was not hot anymore. I wish we had more rain given how dry things still are, but there is not much we can do about that.

We had quite a few family events this month, and it was great.

I went to the US for a few days for work. It was not easy to organize ourselves, but we made it work. Also, I tested our new Bank WIR account while I was in the US, and it worked flawlessly. I did not pay much with my own card since my company is paying for food, but my personal expenses went through, and the exchange rate was indeed without surcharge.

Now that summer is past, we finished the work on our broken radiator. They got new pipes for it, and it now works again. Additionally, they have also fixed the water tank issue in the cellar that was awful. This should prevent any new blockage from happening. These two changes are important for the long term.

This month, we finally received the bill from the land register. This is the tax you get for buying real estate in Switzerland. All they have to do is to change two names on a register, and they charge you 39,000 CHF for it. I really do not care for this tax. Real estate is expensive enough as it is without this. But, at least, we are finally done with the house purchase process. It only took them 11 months to change the two names. I am just happy that the bill is finally behind us.

I have not yet talked about this, but in the house we bought, we got a Jabltotron security system. After a year, I decided to at least try it (mostly for fun and education). But then I realized this system is entirely vendor-locked, and the vendor forces you into paid maintenance to use it. This is something I hate. It took me a while, but I was able to reset it myself and reinstall it. And now I can use all the sensors. I hate it that Jablotron makes it so difficult to use a system I own. I will talk about this subject in more detail in another article.

Overall, we did not save any money this month, but this was expected with this bill.

Expenses

Here are the details of our expenses in September 2026:

In total, we spent 52888 CHF in September 2026. Without taxes, this amounts to 45787 CHF. And finally, without the land register bill, this is only 6440 CHF. Our spending is slightly above our goal, but we had multiple bills and events coming this month, so I am happy about that.

Obviously, the big bulk of our expenses is the land register bill of about 39,000 CHF. I hope this is the last time we pay this tax because I find it disgusting. It was actually lower than we expected, so at least there is that to be happy about. But I am just glad it is paid and we can forget it.

While I was in the US, I did some shopping for my son and wife and brought back some beef jerky as well. But this does not amount to much in the end.

On the house front, we also had some special bills this month:

• We paid 236 CHF for the chimney sweep. Apparently, it had not been done in a while, so it is good to get this properly cleaned before winter.
• We paid 237 CHF to get rid of a wasp nest that was in a place we could not reach ourselves.
• We paid 417 CHF in heating for the previous house. I thought we had paid enough, but this was not the case. This expense should never come back either.

Overall, while we spent too much compared to our goals, I am happy about our spending given the circumstances.

2026 Goals

Here is the status of our goals by the end of September 2026:

Overall, our goals are a mixed bunch as usual.

Our expense goals are going terribly, but I have come to accept that. I will still try to reduce our expenses next year. Our earning goal is now below target as well. I think there is something wrong wtih my data here because it should be quite close to last year. The only thing we have reduced is the salary we get from the blog. But looking at the data, I may have missed reporting some dividends. So I will double-check the data.

Our savings rate for now is still great. And we managed to optimize four bills this year, which is quite nice.

For now my workout goal is doing well. As explained last month, I do not have a working way of tracking steps on the treadmill anymore, so I am not tracking that goal anymore.

On the solar panel side, an independent company has done the final audit of the system. Except for some labeling, they did not find anything amiss. I still do not know when we will get the subvention and the last 10% of the bill, but that should be the last step in the system.

Overall, I am happy about our goals this month. We spent slightly less than our average, which is nice for a change.

FI Ratio

Here is the progress of our FI ratio as of September 2026:

As expected, there is a big drop when we paid the land register tax. This is about a 3% drop in our financial independence ratio. However, you may realize that the number is still higher than last month. The reason is that I was dumb and that I forgot to account for some VT shares. The amount in my app was not the same as the amount in IB. So, this year, we were closer to FI than expected, and now we are back to where we were thinking, which makes sense.

Since we received the bill for the land register, we can now start rebalancing our cash again. We have probably waited too long and kept too much cash, but it is not a big deal. We also need to move some more cash out of Migros Bank to Bank WIR.

Our investments have mostly stayed flat this month. But the USD/CHF actually went significantly up. This makes a significant difference since a large portion of our wealth is in USD.

Other than that, not much happened to our net worth.

The blog

As expected, I had little time to dedicate to the blog except for the standard tasks:

• Writing articles
• Answering all emails, comments, and forum threads
• Maintaining the systems

I still managed to do 10 videos. I want to achieve 10 before I publish them (not an intelligent goal given my time). But at this point, I do not expect much from videos on the blog. Now that my son is at school and my wife is back to school as well, I simply do not have the time to do new projects, and it is fine.

Just writing these lines, I realized that next month the blog is going to turn nine years old. I had totally forgotten.

Next Month – October 2026

In October, we have quite a few events planned, but this is usual for us in October, with many typical events like Bénichon and cattle descent. We have nothing else planned for the weekend events, which is nice.

We do not plan anything special on the finance side. Indeed, we might have a house maintenance bill coming our way (for the radiator fix), but it should be the only one. So, we should be good on that end.

What about you? How was September 2026?