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July 2022 was a pretty standard month for us, at least on the financial side. It was once again a scorching month, too hot for me.
But we still managed to see friends and family and have an excellent time. Financially, we are back to a standard month and saved about 50% of our income.
So, let’s see in detail what happened to us during the hot month of July 2022.

July 2022
July 2022 was a good month. We did not have many events, but we had pleasant times. We met many friends and family members on two separate occasions. The first half of the month was way too hot, but the end of the month finally cooled down, which is excellent.
However, I am having a hard time with the heat. And given that we will not be able to slow global

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I have talked a lot about budget and net worth on this blog. Now, it is time to talk about which budget application I am using to track my budget and net worth.
I am using a simple tool for doing these two tasks. I also use the tool to generate the graphs in my monthly reports.
While many people in the personal finance community use Personal Capital, Mint, or Quicken, I use a little-known tool called budgetwarrior. I wrote this application myself.
This article presents this tool and how I use it to track my finances.

budgetwarrior
budgetwarrior started as a simple console application to manage my budget. I started this application in June 2013. Before, I used a simple spreadsheet for my budget. I was looking for a new personal

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Trading 212 is a European broker that offers commission-free trading on many stock exchanges. Many of you have asked my opinion about this broker.
So, today, I review Trading 212 in-depth, with its fees, features, and security. By the end of the review, you will know whether Trading 212 is a good choice for you to invest with.

Trading 212
Trading 212 LogoTrading 212 was established in Bulgaria in 2004. They later moved to England but kept their entity in Bulgaria. They now have several entities (UK, Bulgaria, and Cyprus).
Although they have been around for a while, the platform only became well-known with the introduction of its commission-free structure.
As of 2022, they claim about 1.5 million users, most of them created

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Cembra is a well-known credit card provider in Switzerland. They are primarily known for their Cumulus card with a good cashback. After stopping this card, they started a new set of cards: The Certo One Mastercard World and the Certo Mastercard World.
And these cards look even better than the last card from Cembra. So, let’s delve into the details of these two cards and see how interesting they are.
By the end of this review, you will know whether you should use one of these new cards from Cembra.

The end of the Cumulus Card
Until recently, Cembra issued the Cumulus Mastercard, an excellent free credit card in Switzerland. I have used this card for several years.
However, in May 2022, Migros Bank announced they would issue

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I can summarise June 2022 in two extremes: heat and taxes.
It has been too hot this month. I do not handle heat well, so it has been hard for me, especially adding on top of sleep deprivation.
As for taxes, as I expected, we did not pay enough last year. Our income increased significantly but not the prepayment. So, we are left with more than 10K taxes from last year. I was a bit surprised by the amount. I was expecting less than that.
Aside from these two points, I would say it has been a routine month. So, let’s see in detail what happened.

June 2022
During the month, we had a big heat wave. I dislike heat, so it was not the best part of the month. I am thrilled to work at home since my home office is much colder than the

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Most of the time, when we hear stories of early retirees, they are all living in countries where the cost of living is much lower than in Switzerland. But recently, I have had the chance to interview an early retiree in Switzerland!
Dror has retired in Switzerland in 2021 at the age of 46. His story is very interesting, in that he is one of the first early retirees I have had the chance to talk with.
Without further ado, here is the story of Dror Allouche, an early retiree in Switzerland!

Tell us a little about yourself
My name is Dror. I am 46 years old. I was born in Switzerland, but I grew up in France.
I have two young children and a wonderful wife. We live in the heights, 20 minutes from Zurich.
Since when are you early

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Charles Schwab is a giant financial firm in the United States. Among other services, they offer stock broker services. And through Charles Schwab International, they are open to non-US residents.
Many of my readers have requested that I write about it. Therefore, I will review Charles Schwab International from the point of view of a Swiss investor. We will how much it costs to invest with Charles Schwab International and the advantages and disadvantages.
I am only going to focus on their offer for non-US residents. They also offer their platform for US investors under slightly different conditions.

Charles Schwab International
Charles Schwab is both a bank and a stock broker. The company was founded in 1971 and had a rich

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I have not done a book review in a long time on this blog. I felt like most books did not deserve to be talked about. However, I felt like Just Keep Buying, from Nick Maggiulli, deserved to be talked about.
In this article, I will review this book, what I liked and what I did not like. By the end of the book review, you should know whether you want to read that book or not.

Just Keep Buying
The book’s title already tells the main investing principle that this book is about. If you want to build wealth, you should always keep buying, regardless of the state of the stock market. But we will come back to that.
Nick Maggiuli is the author being the Of Dollars And Data blog, an excellent blog about investing and personal finance

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May 2022 was a good month. We had a nice time in the lovely weather. The first half of the month almost felt like summer. I even started wishing for colder temperatures (which I got in the second half of the month).
Financially, it was a good month for our savings rate. However, it was a bad month for our net worth because of the wild stock market. Even though we saved a considerable amount of money, our net worth decreased compared to last month.

May 2022
Overall, May 2022 was a good month, a little more active than the previous ones. We had several dinners and lunches with families and friends. And we also did a few things, the three of us.
It is great to see our son growing and learning things. He is a little different every

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I have talked about car costs a few times already on this blog. However, I have never written about Mobility.
Mobility is a Swiss car-sharing cooperative. Mobility has a large fleet of cars in Switzerland. Mobility users can then use these cars when they need them and do not need to own a car.
Is Mobility actually cheaper than owning your car? Let’s find out!

Mobility carsharing
Mobility carsharing is a cooperative with more than 3000 cars in Switzerland. The principle is straightforward:
you reserve a car
you get a vehicle at one of their dedicated parking spots
you drive wherever you want
you fill the fuel tank (using the Mobility card)
you deposit the vehicle in one of their dedicated parking spots (not necessarily the one

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Recently, I realized that too much optimization of our finances was creating complexity that I did not want anymore. Optimization of finances is about balance.
Until recently, we were optimizing for the best price. Now, we are trying to make our finances simpler in a few ways. In this article, I will discuss what we are planning to do.

Optimization is all about balance
Sometimes, it is essential to realize that optimization for the best price often has a downside. Basic optimization is generally good. But when you overoptimize for prices, you give up something else.
For instance, if you have three different payment cards, you introduce complexity to each of your payments. You have to think about which card you want to use for

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It is time for yet another Robo-advisor review. Simplewealth is a Swiss Robo-advisor that aims to be affordable, transparent, and easy to use.
This review will analyze Simplewealth in detail: its pros and cons, its fees and strategies. By the end of the article, you will know whether you should use Simplewealth for your investing.

Simplewealth
Simplewealth LogoSimplewealth was born in 2015 from the minds of Jeremy Cohen and Adrien Wegschiede. They then obtained authorization to manage client funds in 2017 under Swiss regulations. 
In 2020, the company was bought by private investors and taken private. These investors significantly boosted the service with new algorithms, new features, and better fees.
One interesting point is

April 2022 was a good month. We had a few pleasant events with our friends and family. It was not very eventful, but we had time to work on a few late things, which is excellent since we have very little free time these days. On the financial side, it was a great month with …

Daycare is a large portion of the budget for many people in Switzerland. Indeed, daycare can become quite expensive quickly, especially if you have several children. So far, we have not put our son in daycare, but we think we may do it next year. So, I wanted to delve into the costs of daycare …

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January 2022 did not start as well as we would have liked. We went back in quarantine after contact with somebody that turned out COVID positive, and Mrs. The Poor Swiss and Baby Poor Swiss had dome symptoms. But everybody is fine now!
We had to cancel plenty of things and refuse help when we would have needed it. This month was definitely not good for morale.
From a financial point of view, it was a great month with standard expenses and high income.

January 2022
Very early in the month, we got in contact with someone positive. We took precautions. The person did several auto-tests the days before and was three times vaccinated. But a few days later, we received a call telling us she was positive.
So, even though we were not

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At the end of each year, I review my goals and plan the following year. And to keep me accountable, I publish them on this blog and follow them month after month.
I will do a single article for the review and the new goals this year. I think it is more digestible that way.
So, in this article, I will review my 2021 goals and their progress, what went well, and what did not go well. And then, I am going to show and explain my 2022 goals.

2021 Goals Review
As a reminder, here is the state of our goals at the end of 2021:
Our Goals as of December 2021Overall, our progress towards these goals went well. We failed some goals, some because of me, and others were poor goals.
So, let’s go over the details of each goal and how it went,

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Recently, inflation has started to climb again, especially in the United States. And many investors are worried about what this will do to their investments.
So, I want to talk about what we should do to our investments when inflation rises and what assets classes perform best when prices increase.

The return of inflation
First, let’s not forget that inflation never went anywhere. In the united states, like in most countries, inflation has been positive every year in the last two decades.
The change right now is that the United States published a 6.8% in December 2021. You can read about this in the official news release. It means that the prices of a given basket of items increased by 6.8% over one year. 6.8% is a significant

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Many people are wondering how much is our house costing us. But, it was difficult to answer that question before we lived inside for a while.
After one year spent in our house, I want to summarize all the fees we have paid. I am only going to compare what changed. For instance, we still pay about the same electricity as before, so this does not change. But heating is different, and we have to pay for water, for instance.
Hopefully, this will be useful for people wondering how much it costs to live in an owned house.

One-Time Expenses
First, I want to cover one-time expenses. These are expenses related to the purchase of the house. We will not have to pay these expenses again unless we buy a new place.
Withdrawal taxes
The first

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2021 really flew by. I cannot believe it is already over! Overall, this was a weird year, with COVID and then the birth of my son. It did not look like any other year.
Nevertheless, December 2021 still felt a little like a usual end-of-year month. We had the (mostly) usual celebrations and the usual end-of-year bills.
Overall, it was a good month for us. So, let’s see the details of what happened in December 2021.

December 2021
For us, December has always been a month for the family, and this year was no exception. The parties were scaled-down but still great! One of the parties was canceled because two people had symptoms, but this will be done later in January instead. So, family time in December was quite good!
It was also

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In the personal finance community, many people use the concept of Time Value of Money (TVM) to think about money. This concept helps you think about the value of money if it were invested.
I think it is an interesting concept worth talking about. However, we should be careful about using this concept because it leads some people to think too much about their expenses and understanding.
So, let’s see what the time value of money is and what we can do with it.

Time Value of Money
Any sum of money has some earnings potential. Indeed, you could invest this money in the stock market (or in another investment instrument).
The concept of the time value of money means that money has more value now than it has in the future. This means

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We recently became the parents of a cute son. Before he was born and in the first few months of his life, we had to purchase and prepare many things. We tried to avoid spending too much while still buying everything we needed for him.
Overall, we did a good job at keeping these expenses reasonable. And we also learned some things later on.
Overall, there are many things you can do to spend less for your newborn while not changing anything to his quality of life. In this article, I share our tips on how to save money with your newborn.

 1. Do not buy (too many) tiny clothes
When a baby is born, he generally wears size 50 clothes. However, these clothes are pretty much useless. At most, they will last one month, usually much less

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I cannot believe it is already December. These last few months are flying by us very quickly. It is crazy how a child can change everything.
We are still slowly adapting to life with our son. He is growing nicely and changing very quickly. It was an interesting month to follow his growth.
Financially, we bought quite a few unusual things but did not go overboard either. So, we managed to save a sizeable portion of our income again.

November 2021
Overall, November 2021 was a good month. We had a few family events again with our close family. This made a big difference in our moods. We are still careful especially seeing the current number of cases in Switzerland, but being fully isolated would be worse.
We are still not sleeping

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Retire Early The Simple Guide is now available as an ebook and hardcover! I wrote this book with Thomas Walke, another blogger in Switzerland.
Our book is about guiding the reader to their financial independence and possibly to their early retirement. Retire Early The Simple Guide is a general book applicable to most countries, but we primarily think about European countries.
This article discusses Retire Early: The Simple Guide in detail and how we wrote that book.

Retire Early: The Simple Guide

My first book

Retire Early: The Simple Guide

A simple guide you through all the basics to your own Financial Independence and if you want it, your own early retirement. Start your journey to financial freedom now!