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You have probably heard a lot about Financial Independence. A lot of things on this blog are about my path to Financial Independence (FI). But why would you want to be financially independent? There are many reasons for wanting to reach financial independence. And as you will see, retiring may not be the most significant reason.
In this article, I list the main reasons people want to be Financially Independent. Of course, the reasons may not be the same for everybody, and some will appeal to you more than others. It is fine. Not everybody has the same motivations in trying to reach FI. And not even everybody wants to reach FI!
You may have some reasons to reach financial independence that I did not even think about! Please let

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Using the third pillar in Switzerland is a great way to save money on your taxes. However, it is not always easy to choose a third pillar provider since there are many of them, and new ones are regularly coming.
Freya 3a is a new third pillar available in Switzerland. They aim to provide sustainable investments for the third pillar, and they claim that they are doing differently than the existing third pillars and at a reasonable price.
This Freya 3a Review will show what Freya 3a is, its fees and strategies, and how it compares with other third pillars. At the end of the article, you will know whether you should use Freya 3a for your retirement money.

It is important to note that Freya 3a is only available in German. The app

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It seems that there will not be a shortage of Robo-Advisors in Switzerland anytime soon. These last few years, there has been more and more new Robo-Advisor available for Swiss investors.
Findependent is a recent Robo-Advisor. They only started in 2021. But they have some interesting characteristics already. This review will cover all there is to know about Findependent and its pros and cons.

It is important to mention that Findependent is only available in German.
Findependent
Findependent LogoFindependent started offering its services in 2021. So, they are a very recent addition to the Robo-advisors. They are a Swiss Robo-advisor, founded by a previous employee of Neon, Matthias Bryner.
The goal of Findependent is to

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September 2021 was very eventful for my family and me. Usually, there is not much new in my updates, but this update is packed with two big news! Keep reading if you want to know!
Financially, this was a good month, without anything out of the ordinary. We had a good income and also low expenses, despite some unexpected expenses. So, we managed to save a sizeable portion of our income.
In this article, we will see everything that happened to us and our finances in September 2021.

September 2021 – They were three!
Let’s start with the biggest news (the only one that truly matters!). We are very happy to welcome our son, Baby Poor Swiss, into our family! He was born healthy in the middle of September, and he decided to make us

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I have talked in detail about the retirement system in Switzerland, the so-called three pillars. However, I have not yet talked about a not well-known part of this system: 1e pension plans.
In this article, I want to cover in detail 1e pension plans. These pension plans are sometimes called pillar 1e. We will see what it is all about, who can profit from it, and more!

1e Pension Plans
In Switzerland, most people are aware of the existence of the three pillars, even if many people are not entirely knowledgeable about them. However, most people do not know about the 1e pension plans, or pillar 1e. The reason is simple: it is reserved for people with a very high salary. Let’s see how.
While the name is 1e, it is actually closer

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I have talked in detail about the retirement system in Switzerland, the so-called three pillars. However, I have not yet talked about a not well-known part of this system: pillar 1e.
In this article, I want to cover in detail pillar 1e. We will see what it is all about, who can profit from it, and more!

Pillar 1e
In Switzerland, most people are aware of the existence of the three pillars, even if many people are not entirely knowledgeable about them. However, most people do not know about the 1e pillar. The reason is simple: it is reserved for people with a very high salary. Let’s see how.
While the name is Pillar 1e, it is actually closer to the second pillar than to the first pillar. In fact, the pillar 1e covers the salary

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Continuing in my series of articles about making some side money, I want to talk about the ways to make some money online.
I have hesitated a while about doing this article since there are so many articles online, and most of these are really bad. So, I will start with a disclaimer: you will not get rich by doing any of these things. These techniques are intended to do on the side and will require some investment of your time, sometimes significant.
However, if you have time, doing something like that could be interesting to supplement your main income. In that case, keep reading to find the main ways to make money online.

Teach languages online

italki

italki is a great place to teach foreign languages to other

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August 2021 was a good and simple month for us. We had many events during the weekend with our friends and families. This month was the perfect mix of events and time at home.
Financially, it was also a great month with good income and record low expenses (not counting taxes). So, we managed to save more than half of our income. This puts us back on track to save more than half of our income during the entire year.

August 2021
As I said in the introduction, August 2021 was a good month for us. It was simple and quiet, but this is not a bad thing. Overall, the weather was acceptable so that we could be outside regularly, and we were lucky with our family and friend events since the weather was clement on these days.

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A stock option is an advanced financial instrument. In essence, it is a contract that conveys a right to buy or sell at a specified price up to a specified date.
In my advanced investing series, I want to cover options as I think they are interesting. Now, I do not recommend investing in options, and I have never done it myself either. They are an advanced financial instrument that most people will never need.
Regardless, I believe it is interesting to learn about these advanced instruments. So, let’s delve into the world of options.

Stock Options
There are several kinds of options, but I will only talk about stock options. These are options related to the stock market, specifically related to stocks.
Let’s start with the

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Interactive Brokers is an excellent broker from the United States. It is known for its cheap fees and its unique range of offered investment products. It is being used by many personal finance bloggers, for instance.
It is currently the best broker that allows access to U.S. ETFs. And U.S. ETFs are the most efficient ETFs for Swiss investors.
In this guide, I go over the details of how to open an Interactive Brokers account. It is not very difficult, but there are a few things you need to know before you start your application.

Interactive Brokers

Best Broker for Swiss Investors

Interactive Brokers

Interactive Brokers is an outstanding broker, with extremely affordable fees! Trade U.S. security for as little as

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clevercircles is a new Robo-advisor in Switzerland that has been brought to my attention. They are adding a community feature to the Robo-advisory world. Some people have asked me whether they should use this Robo-advisor or not.
So, in this review, I will analyze clevercircles in detail to see how good they are really, how much fees we need to pay, and how they invest their money.
By the end of the review, you will know exactly whether you should invest with clevercircles or not.

clevercircles
clevercircles is a relatively new Robo-advisor, started in 2018. The CIC Bank Switzerland developed it. The CIC Bank Switzerland is a licensed bank in Switzerland since 1909. The CIC Bank Switzerland is a subsidiary of the larger Bank

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When you retire based on a safe withdrawal rate, you withdraw from your principal month after month. The main risk is that you run out of money before the end of your retirement.
The main case when that would happen is if you retire just before a major stock market crash. A bad sequence of returns is a big risk for your retirement. One way to reduce the risk is to reduce the safe withdrawal rate you are using. But that means you will need to accumulate significantly more money. And you may also end up with a lot of money left at the end of your retirement.
Another solution that many people wonder about is whether they should hold more cash to protect themselves against that risk. This is exactly what we are going to find out

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Overall, July 2021 was a good month for us. We could see many friends and family members that we had not seen in a long time. The weather was not great, with many floods in Switzerland, but the weather did not impact us too much.
Financially, it was an awful month because of the taxes due from next year. Because of that, we were not able to save any money during the month. But we already knew it was going to happen. So, this is not too bad in the end.

July 2021
During this month, we had several parties with friends and family members. It was great to see many of these people that we had not seen in a long time. We had a great time. We also ate too much, but that generally goes hand in hand with a good time.
Aside from this,

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Many people would like to get some extra income with a side hustle. One way to do this is to drive with your vehicle and deliver people or things to some destinations.
Many people have their own vehicle and do not mind driving it around. So a good way to make some extra money is to use your own vehicle to deliver people and things. And there are even ways to make money with your vehicle without driving it!
So, in this article, we will see a few ways to make money by driving your vehicle.

1. Drive people around with a car
The most well-known way to use your vehicle to make some extra money by driving people around, like a cab. For this side hustle, you will need a car.
These days, with Uber and Lyft (and other competitors), it

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Wise (formerly TransferWise) is a British financial technology company. They provide many financial services, but they are especially known for their very affordable currency exchange services.
You can use Wise to send money to other people in many different currencies, with excellent prices. You can also use your Wise card to pay abroad at a low cost. But you can also use it as a bank account and hold many currencies in your account.
But how good is it really? Should you use Wise? Let’s find out the advantages and disadvantages of Wise.

Wise

TransferWise

TransferWise offers a credit card with very low fees for currency exchange.

Buy Now

Wise is a private company based in London, in the

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If you have decided to invest in a precise stock market index, you must first choose the stock market index. And once you have selected an index to invest in, you will have to decide through which index fund you will invest in this index. For this, you can choose either a mutual fund or an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). For popular indexes, there will be a wide choice of index funds replicating the performance of this index.
Even if you only choose popular funds for a precise index, it will still be challenging to decide. As you will see in this article, there are many things you can take into account when you compare two index funds. The most important remains the price, as most people know. But there are other points you can

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Robo-Advisors are a great tool to invest their money without unreasonable fees for people who are not willing to invest time in learning to invest themselves. But what Robo-Advisor should you choose?
Selma and True Wealth are two great Robo-Advisors, my two favorites. In this article, I will compare these two Robo-advisors in detail.

I compare Selma vs True Wealth on different factors. We will check their fees, their investment minimums, and their investing strategies.
Selma Finance

Selma

Selma is a great Swiss Robo-Advisor that will let you invest simply. It is a great way to invest in the stock market without the hassle of DIY Investing.

Get 5000 CHF managed for free!

Selma Finance started

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Raiffeisen is the third largest bank in Switzerland. Many people are using it, and many customers are even shareholders of the banks.
This bank has some unique characteristics that could make it interesting. For instance, you can become a shareholder of the bank! So, should you use Raiffeisen as your bank?
This is what this article is all about. I will do a deep review of the Raiffeisen bank, its banking features, its fees, and its pros and cons. By the end of the article, you will know whether you should use Raiffeisen or not.

Raiffeisen
Raiffeisen LogoRaiffeisen is a large Swiss bank that has been created in 1899 already. It is currently the third-largest Swiss bank (in terms of assets under management), behind the two

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I already have covered stocks in much detail on this blog. But I did not spend enough time on bonds. While bonds are currently not very interesting in Europe because of negative interest rates, they remain an important part of asset allocation. But bonds are very different from stocks. And they have some strange characteristics.
So, I believe it is important to know how do they work. And it is essential to know how bond funds are working because they are not as simple as stock funds.

The basics of bonds
In essence, a bond is fairly simple: it is a loan of money from one entity (the lender) to another entity (the borrower). In exchange for this money, the borrower will pay some interest to the lender. The interest rate is

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Many of you have asked me to delve into what happened to GameStop stock. While it may be late, this will still help you understand this strange event.
In 2021, the stock of GameStop, a company on the decline, increased more than tenfold and many hedge funds lost a lot of money, driven by some individual investors.
It may have been the first time some well-organized retail investors have fought against big hedge funds and have caused big damages to them.
So, keep reading to find out what happened.

GameStop
For context, let’s talk a little about what GameStop is first.
GameStop is an American retail company that sells video games and gaming merchandise. They have thousands of shops in the entire world. They are the largest

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Many people want to know whether they should rebalance their portfolios. This is an excellent question, and it becomes essential once in retirement.
Rebalancing is the fact of selling the shares that have overperformed and then buy the stocks that underperformed. The idea is to keep your portfolio allocation to the same level.
People disagree on whether you should rebalance in retirement or not. People do not even agree on that during the accumulation phase. So we will cover this subject as well.
And since I now have a lot of data about the stock market, I figured it would be great to use. So, I am also going to simulate whether it has historically been better to rebalance or not.
The data on this article is based on more than

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June 2021 is already over. It went very fast! After the crappy weather of May, we finally got some better weather, although it was crazy hot. And then we went back to the crappy weather. But overall, it was a good month. We even had a nice short vacation in Thun.
Financially, it was an okay month, despite large expenses due to the vacations, the blog, and some shopping for the house. Overall, we still managed to save 53% of our income this month.

June 2021
The Schadau castle in ThunJune 2021 was a good month for us overall. The beginning of the month had some nice weather again. Unfortunately, the end of the month was back to bad weather with thunderstorms almost every day. Our vegetable garden was almost destroyed by hail!

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If you plan to retire early based on a withdrawal rate strategy, you base your FIRE plan on historical data. So, what would happen if the future is very different from the past?
We obviously cannot predict the future. So, what can we do? We can improve our FIRE plan with some margin of safety!
In this article, we will see several ways of adding some margin of safety into your FIRE planning.

The need for some margin of safety
If you plan your FIRE plan precisely for the parameters you know, you risk running out of money during your retirement. Here are three examples of things that could go wrong with your FIRE planning.
First, If you think you need your money to last 50 years of retirement, you could plan everything exactly

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Inyova is a Swiss Robo-Advisor that focuses on impact investing. You may know it under the name Yova that was its previous name until June 2021.
The main idea is to invest to make the world better. So not only will you get good returns for your investment, but your money will work to improve the world.
But how does Inyova compare with other Robo-Advisor, and how much does it cost? That is what we are going to find out in this complete Yova review.

By the end of this Inyova Review, you will know all the advantages and disadvantages of investing with Inyova. You will also know if this service fits your personal investing needs.
Keep in mind that I am not investing with Robo-Advisors. DIY Investing is better for people willing

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PostFinance is the bank of the Swiss Post. It is one of the largest banks in Switzerland. But is it any good?
I am going to answer this question in this article. I will look into the bank services of PostFinance in detail and see the advantages and disadvantages of this bank. They have changed many things recently with their banking packages and how they handle negative interest rates. All these changes will be included in my review.
By the end of the article, you will know whether you should use PostFinance or not.

PostFinance
PostFinance logoPostFinance is the financial entity of the Swiss Post. It was already founded in 1906, so it is a very mature bank. As of 2021, it is the fifth-largest retail bank in the country. In

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Your Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR) is an essential component of your retirement planning if you plan to retire based on your investment portfolio. We have already talked at length about this method of retirement, the essence of the Financial Independence and Retire Early (FIRE) movement.
But we have not talked in-depth about how to choose a Safe Withdrawal Rate for your situation. No SWR would fit every situation. And while there are some rules of thumbs, it is still something you have to decide for yourself.
So, by the end of this step-by-step guide, you should know how to choose your Safe Withdrawal Rate.

Safe Withdrawal Rate
A Safe Withdrawal Rate is a withdrawal that is safe enough for you to have a successful retirement.

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I have already mentioned financial advisors on this blog and my dislike of them. But I have not yet delved into the subject. It is essential to realize the dangers of financial advisors.
Most financial advisors do not have your interest at heart, but theirs! This is the main issue with financial advisors. Most are biased. And this bias can cost you a lot of money in the long term.
And there are other issues with financial advisors as well. So, in this article, we are going to delve into the problems with financial advisors.

What does a financial advisor do?
There are different levels of involvement for financial advisors. But the idea remains the same: help you with your money. But they will generally focus on the investing

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In 2020, inflation in Switzerland was negative, at -0.7%. It means that, on average, consumer prices have decreased in the year 2020. So, life has become cheaper in Switzerland.
But is life in Switzerland really cheaper? And if so, is it cheaper for everybody? Today, I want to delve into inflation numbers for Switzerland and what they exactly mean. As we will see, inflation is not a perfect indicator of the cost of living in Switzerland.
So, this article will talk in detail about inflation in Switzerland.

Inflation in Switzerland
Inflation in Switzerland is calculated by the Federal Statistical Office (FSO). Every month, they compute the Swiss Consumer Price Index (CPI). This index is a representation of the price of goods

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You have probably heard of the 4% rule if you are interested in early retirement. This rule states that if you withdraw 4% of your portfolio every year, you can sustain your withdrawals for 30 years. But do you know where it comes from? If you have read a lot about it, you probably heard about the Trinity Study. This study is where it all started.
But do you know what the Trinity Study is? Probably not. A lot of things people are saying about the Trinity Study are not correct. A lot of people talking about this study have not even read the original paper.
There is nothing mystical about this study. It is merely a research paper by three professors of The Trinity University. Hence the name.
And do you know that it has nothing

You have probably heard of the 4% rule if you are interested in early retirement. This rule states that if you withdraw 4% of your portfolio every year, you can sustain your withdrawals for 30 years. But do you know where it comes from? If you have read a lot about it, you probably heard about the Trinity Study. This study is where it all started.
But do you know what the Trinity Study is? Probably not. A lot of things people are saying about the Trinity Study are not correct. A lot of people talking about this study have not even read the original paper.
There is nothing mystical about this study. It is merely a research paper by three professors of The Trinity University. Hence the name.
And do you know that it has nothing to do with early retirement? So, why is