Checkboxes for extremely lazy people (who still want to reach FIRE)

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Hello everyone,

I’ve just started my way to FIRE.
As a beginner, it was difficult to find the information so I compiled this list of monthly-to-dos.

The mindset of this list is for lazy people who are okay to stick with the basics ETF, at the expense of (maybe) missing a bit of optimization.

Can you have a peek and tell me if I miss anything please? I’ll edit this post so it can serve as a reference for other folks.

One time only

Monthly to-do-list:

During the tax season

Thank you very much for your time :slight_smile:

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Lazy people would setup an automatic monthly transfer and adjust it once a year :slight_smile:

Same for the monthly transfer to IB, personally I recommend fixing an amount and transfer the same amount every month automatically when the salary arrives. This way the investment is like a part of your budget and you need to learn to live with the remaining money. Psychologically way better than transferring the amount left on your account at the end of the month, as you will be less tempted to spend money on “useless” things if there is only enough there to cover your basic needs.

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Lazy people would probably get away with buying only VT and not caring about SMMCHA at all. When bonds will start to have positive returns again (for swiss people and low risk bonds), they may want to add a bond fund, though.

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Or as I do and probably lots of others here as well, consider your pension fund money as swiss bonds and therefore often have a pretty high swiss exposure up until a certain age already, which doesn’t need additional swiss exposure through SMIM or similar funds. Unless you have a home bias.

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Awesome thanks! The steps are getting even easier :stuck_out_tongue:

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If you’re lazy, instead of 12 times a year, do your investment 2x or 4x a year, 1x per month is too much time :slight_smile:

(maybe put it aside in a different account with an automated transfer if you prefer having your savings be segregated)

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Since investing is only part of the FIRE equation, you might want to add a checkbox for keeping spending under control and continue to look for ways to improve. Calculation of a savings rate might be too much for ‘extremely lazy people’, but some sort of monthly plan-do-check cycle on money going out can be helpful.

Compound interest is great and all, but it sure helps to earn more than you spend!

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Also, I wouldn’t worry too much about adding the tax form to the to-do list: The canton will certainly send you a reminder if it slips your mind! :wink: This list is for lazy people, right?

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Consider opening five accounts for tax optimising and send them equally. I usually send the full amount early in the year to get the dividends from swiss stocks in March. Small difference I know :rofl:

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No difference, when dividends are distributed, the share price decreases by the same amount.

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More Time in the market == better. What if you have a rally in February but DCA with the monthly contribution? I also send the full amount in January.

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Don’t open up an account with IBKR.

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This is true, I was only talking about the dividend aspect.

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"Pay yourself first”, as Kiyosaki wrote.

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Not doubting Kiyosaki wrote that but for the sake of not giving the man more credence than he’s worth, it’s appeared before in 1926 in George S. Clason’s “The Richest Man in Babylon”.

Not that I would recommend reading “The Richest Man in Babylon” either (I haven’t).

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This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot. Yes, I get the point about home-bias and treating P2 as your bonds, but the problem with P2 is that you can’t rebalance. In theory, you could put all your savings in the stock market, if you have a long enough time horizon (yes - having an emergency fund is still a good idea). So to be invested 100% in stocks in the long run (with your freely available savings).

But what if there is a buying opportunity like in March 2020 due to the Corona dip? You have to wait until your next paycheck arrives. I know, it’s sort of market timing, but the 100% equities is something which causes a lot of questions for me.

The general idea behind having both stocks and bonds was to be able to rebalance if the distribution has shifted (once per year, maybe earlier if a certain allocation threshold was reached). Which is not possible with P2.

Sorry for going a bit off-topic here.

It’s an easy book to read, and it’s pretty short. Read it like 10 years ago. I think “pay yourself first” is a pretty good one sentence summary.

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The problem is that bonds and cash have extremly low or even negative returns currently, so by holding bonds/cash you’d be missing out on a lot of gains until the next buying opportunity arrives. Time in the market > timing the market. Most people only see this buying opportunities in hindsight, if they have some money that they want to invest, they’ll wait forever to find the right time and if they’d just invested it once it was available, they’d be better off in most of the cases.

I disagree, the general idea behind having bonds is as a safe haven when the stock markets crashes, because bonds are not that highly correlated with the stock market. Also they deliver a steady return with their coupons, which is helpful after FIRE to replace part of your then missing salary. However in current times, high quality bonds have really crappy performance.

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I don’t think that’s correct, aren’t real return similar to historial values (with some variance of course).

If it was ok investing in bonds when it yields 4% (before inflation) it should still be fine now, there’s still expectation that over medium term bonds will beat inflation (there might be some short term fluctuation while things adjust though).

(That said banks are being generous by making some limited amount of cash yield more than the risk free rate, so might as well take advantage :slight_smile: )

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The question is how.

At the moment, bond yields are around zero. And inflation is higher.

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you can buy on margin