Welcome to the Swiss FIRE community!

We are thrilled to give you a warm welcome to this space.

Our mission is to support each Swiss in his or her FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) quest in Switzerland.

We envision a world where financial freedom knowledge in Switzerland is accessible and actionable to all.

To that end, we will be working hard to ensure that we align our actions with that purpose. These Community Guidelines should not only help you understand how to act within the community but also help you understand what to expect from others in this space.

Forum Guidelines

This is a Civilized Place for Public Discussion

Please treat this discussion forum with the same respect you would a public park. We, too, are a shared community resource — a place to share skills, knowledge and interests through ongoing conversation.

These are not hard and fast rules, merely aids to the human judgment of our community. Use these guidelines to keep this a clean, well-lighted place for civilized public discourse.

Improve the Discussion

Help us make this a great place for discussion by always working to improve the discussion in some way, however small. If you are not sure your post adds to the conversation, think over what you want to say and try again later.

The topics discussed here matter to us, and we want you to act as if they matter to you, too. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

One way to improve the discussion is by discovering ones that are already happening. Please spend some time browsing the topics here before replying or starting your own, and you’ll have a better chance of meeting others who share your interests.

Add Value

Your content should bring value to other users.

Hence we don’t accept advertising, self-promotion, solicitation, or spam.

This is not a place to exploit users for your financial gain. This includes, but is not limited to: linking to your own content (blog, podcast, youtube channel, social media, etc.), recommending any product or app you are involved with, use of referral codes or affiliate links, or mention of any other product or article, whether monetized or not, that you have interest in seeing succeed.

Note this rule is relaxed within the monthly “Wednesday Self Promotion” thread (every last Wednesday of the month). Abuse of this rule can result in an immediate ban.

Be Agreeable, Even When You Disagree

You may wish to respond to something by disagreeing with it. That’s fine. But, remember to criticize ideas, not people. Please avoid:

  • Name-calling.
  • Ad hominem attacks.
  • Responding to a post’s tone instead of its actual content.
  • Knee-jerk contradiction.

Instead, provide reasoned counter-arguments that improve the conversation.

Your Participation Counts

The conversations we have here set the tone for everyone. Help us influence the future of this community by choosing to engage in discussions that make this forum an interesting place to be — and avoiding those that do not.

This forum software, namely Discourse, provides tools that enable the community to collectively identify the best (and worst) contributions: favorites, bookmarks, likes, flags, replies, edits, and so forth. Use these tools to improve your own experience, and everyone else’s, too.

Let’s try to leave our park better than we found it.

If You See a Problem, Flag It

Moderators have special authority; they are responsible for this forum. But so are you. With your help, moderators can be community facilitators, not just janitors or police.

When you see bad behavior, don’t reply. It encourages the bad behavior by acknowledging it, consumes your energy, and wastes everyone’s time. Just flag it. If enough flags accrue, action will be taken, either automatically or by moderator intervention.

In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time. Moderators do not preview new posts in any way; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.

Also, you can always escalate a problem by reaching out directly to the forum admin, as a last resort.

Always Be Civil

Nothing sabotages a healthy conversation like rudeness:

  • Be civil. Don’t post anything that a reasonable person would consider offensive, abusive, or hate speech.
  • Keep it clean. Don’t post anything obscene or sexually explicit.
  • Respect each other. Don’t harass or grief anyone, impersonate people, or expose their private information.
  • Respect our forum. Don’t post spam or otherwise vandalize the forum.

These are not concrete terms with precise definitions — avoid even the appearance of any of these things. If you’re unsure, ask yourself how you would feel if your post was featured on the front page of the New York Times.

This is a public forum, and search engines index these discussions. Keep the language, links, and images safe for family and friends.

And so it’s clear: no gender, politics, religious or circle-jerking are allowed. This is not the place to discuss or debate these topics. If you need to bring gender into the discussion, then you have stopped focusing on the financial parts of the discussion. There is a distinction between politics and policy. Any discussion that is, turns, or becomes partisan or political will be removed. Discussion of serious legislation or proposals is allowed if the topic stays on policy, not politics. For example - “Ramifications of Trump’s tax plan and new brackets on FIRE” is ok. “Why my candidate is the best for the FIRE community” is not. Circle-jerks, including demeaning non-FIRE types, do not follow the call for civility or respect expected on this forum. These topics are all off limits due to the forum as a whole not being able to discuss them in a civil way. Repeated violations will result in a ban.

Keep It Tidy

Make the effort to put things in the right place, so that we can spend more time discussing and less cleaning up. So:

  • Don’t start a topic in the wrong category.
  • Don’t cross-post the same thing in multiple topics.
  • Don’t post no-content replies.
  • Don’t divert a topic by changing it midstream.
  • Don’t sign your posts — every post has your profile information attached to it.

Rather than posting “+1” or “Agreed”, use the Like button. Rather than taking an existing topic in a radically different direction, use Reply as a Linked Topic.

Post Only Your Own Stuff

You may not post anything digital that belongs to someone else without permission. You may not post descriptions of, links to, or methods for stealing someone’s intellectual property (software, video, audio, images), or for breaking any other law.

Powered by You

This site is operated by your friendly local staff and you, the community. If you have any further questions about how things should work here, open a new topic in the site feedback category and let’s discuss! If there’s a critical or urgent issue that can’t be handled by a meta topic or flag, contact us via the staff page.

Terms of Service

Yes, legalese is boring, but we must protect ourselves – and by extension, you and your data – against unfriendly folks. We have a Terms of Service describing your (and our) behavior and rights related to content, privacy, and laws. To use this service, you must agree to abide by our TOS.

Thanks to the mod team!

The mod team is all volunteer based. So huge thanks to them for their constant work to keep this place of high quality content and exchanges!