Cheers to that. I’ve suffered from anxiety exactly for this reason. Hang in there 
1 Like
Dumb question: are you eating healthy or enough differentiating?
Have you ever tried to get some magnesium as supplement? (cheap tablets at aldi/lidl/denner)
2 Likes
It’s not a dumb question. It’s really wise question, as sleep, diet and exercise are the biggest regulators of mood, health, energy levels and well-being.
Short answer is: no. I fall back to my old bad habits when I’ve become overwhelmed with the challenges.
It’s exactly that. Since I started reading self-help, I’m feeding my anxiety even more, as I mostly fail on my overblown expectations.
Time for a small update.
Net worth: 210k (including 2nd pillar).
Portfolio:
- VT: 100k
- KBA: 15k
- VIAC (Global 100): 30k
- Gold (physical): 5k
- Cash: 30k
- 2nd Pillar: 30k
Savings rate: 45% (would be even bigger drop, but my wife started earning a bit more, so it balances out increased spending)
Family:
- Still my objective number 1. We try to have some fun time (preferably with other friends with kids) every weekend.
- One day a week I look after my son and teach him English (we play and talk all day English). In the future I’m planning to extend activities on that day to historical sight seeing, museums, in general some fun ways to learn. Similarly, my wife looks after my son twice a week, and twice a week my son attends bilingual krippe.
- Early education is the main area of my research and learning these days. I try to focus on teaching my son as much as I can through play. For that reason, for example, we don’t have a TV and computer is restricted to special occasions. Instead we have gigantic library with kids books. We read in Polish, English and sometimes German and French to my son probably 2-3 hours a day. We also spend as much time outside with other kids as possible - although that depends heavily on the weather. I generally would like to be as competent parent in upbringing and education as I can.
Work:
- I’ve changed my specialization from Ansible to Kubernetes and I’m really happy about this. Last couple of months I totally owned the project of building the K8s cluster in my company and I’m preparing our infrastructure to and coaching our developers for smooth migration. This really improved my general well-being because last 2-3 years I was bored and burntout with my job.
- I actually realised that it’s better to delay the FI by not focusing only on salary and find more fun work instead.
- I’ll continue this as long as it makes me happy. Later on, I’m gonna switch to Python or Golang programming and perhaps apply to Google.
- Freedom.to app has changed my life. It really helped me so much in rebuilding my attention span and ability to focus, it’s incredible. I think part of my work improvements are result of limiting screen time.
Hobbies:
- FIRE & Finance currently are on hold due to lack of time and shift in priorities.
- Recently, in my free time I have worked on translation of a political philiosphy book into Polish. I’ve translated first chapter and sent it to the publisher. I’m now waiting for response. I used to translate these texts for Polish free market think tanks for free, now it will bring me some money. Not much, but still, it’s nice to get paid for a hobby.
- Another important improvement in my happiness was that I stopped reading personal development books and obsess about self-improvement. It only made me more miserable as I focused constantly on how not perfect I am and how hard it is to change that. Instead I started reading (and listening) more belles-lettres and I general feel much better with it.
To sum up: still many of my habits are in disarray and I need to improve (sport & diet!), but my happiness has improved significantly due to job improvement. I have to learn a ton and it is exhausting, but also very interesting and fulfilling. The important lesson for me is that we need to get rid of things in our lives that are exhausting but not fulfilling. More free time by itself won’t fix the happiness equation, it’s the fulfillment that is important.
Finance-wise it could have been better and I’ll work on improving my saving and investing discipline, but on the other hand - money, investments and FIRE is not everything.
21 Likes
How much do you invest in VT? over 60k?
Thank you in advance
Simi
Yes, I have 100k in VT.
PS. I’ve updated my post to include my assets allocation.
1 Like
I hadn’t need to do tax declaration yet. My dividends, total investments, and income were too small. So I’ve got taxed at source - in Zug I think I’ve paid 2% of income tax when my wife was not working, and 4% when she stated working. This year will be my first tax declaration.
In Zurich it’s a few months for me usually.
1 Like
BTW. Did you get already tax declaration forms? I still haven’t received anything. :-/
In Zurich I did (as well as the federal tax and cantonal tax payslips). For non citizen or C permit holders might be different though.
1 Like
Interresting, in Solothurn the witholdings and DA1 both just get deducted from the tax bill.
1 Like
What do you mean? You can declare DA1 with tax at source, without full tax declaration?
I have only ever done the full declaration. Guess it makes sense to just get reimbursed with taxed at source, seems I have missed that part.
1 Like
Mr @_MP just made me famous:
https://www.mustachianpost.com/blog/from-poverty-to-more-than-50-percent-savings-rate-with-long-time-reader-1000000chf-your-story-1/
15 Likes
Success story nicely worded. I enjoyed the read.
Thank you and keep going !
2 Likes
Thanks for sharing. Your post brought back the memories of my own childhood. I guess our stories only differ in some details.
I guess what is still a bit unclear in that story, is how you wounded up where you are, so much better off financially than many of your peers in Poland. Was it luck, was it how you were raised, a bit of both? I guess for the majority of people with good education, the story goes like: i got a decent paying job in a big town in Poland and now I’m paying off my 30-year mortgage.
1 Like
Hi @1000000CHF really enjoyed the read, I’m glad you decided to go for 80% work week, makes a lot of sense in your case and it made me consider that a well.
Quick question, when you mention a tax like 2 or 2,5%, that’s separate from social deductions, right ?
1 Like
taxes are very low in the canton of Zug…rents on the other hand are another beast
1 Like
That would have been my case if I didn’t visit my friend at CERN. In Warsaw I got a good paying job (my second job) and I was planning to take a mortgage for 30 years. It all changed when I realised I can get a better paid job at CERN and at least save money for down payment and/or smaller mortgage. I was quite lucky. I believe all sucess in life is a weird combination of luck and individual choices.
Since I was 12 I was quite obsessed with Linux, the teenage hobby turned eventually into profession. If I weren’t working hard on learning how to configure servers I wouldn’t get the job at CERN, then in Zug and finally in Zurich. If I haven’t had the physicist friend - I’d never imagine applying to CERN and pursuing career in Switzerland is possible. A little bit of hard work, quite a bit of passion and a great deal of luck.
Upbringing played a role too. My parents were pushing me to go to university and study. That was unusual in my extended family. All other cousins were expected to find a physical job. I owe a lot to my parents, who both didn’t had uni education (my father didn’t have even high school education) and both of them had the imagination, courage and persistence to push me into different life trajectory than them, all my family and all their peers.
And my FIRE transformation was combination of double luck - my wife is natural born frugal so she always was able to save money and she always pushed me to save some (I used to spend everything I earned), then we’ve got motivated to save for the downpayment, and then while abroad I stumbled upon this website while researching what’s the fuss about 3rd pillar retirement investing.
6 Likes