She mentioned being vegan. No meat and cooking yourself is pretty reasonable even with buying fancier food. My average on groceries is 285 chf (and about 70% of what I buy is organic).
This would be for an energy intake of around 2k kcal. Come shopping with me for a demonstration 
380 * 3 = 1140 per month
That’s about what we spend for a family of 5 so hardly super frugal.
Thanks for your reaction and your feedback.
Regarding my bragging statement, it wasn’t intended as a call out (it was a post about assumptions about what could have been her motivations to appear on CNBC, left open ended). My bragging comment expresses what I personally felt reading the article under the lens of a message sent back home (which is also an assumption of mine with the qualifier that it’s just one hypothesis among many). I hadn’t watched the video at the time so it was purely based on the written article from CNBC.
I’m glad you posted your own reading expressing that you didn’t feel any bragging as that broadens the perspectives.
I don’t read her story as a story about FIRE. To me, it reads as a story about life choices (and congrats to her on those!), wanting to move out of a stressful job (I do understand and relate), taking that step when she could afford it, what she is doing/planning to do after it and her absence of regrets despite giving up on a very high salary.
If I had to identify the reasons behind our reactions (there again, personal assumptions), I would say the 35/65 split on shared expenses does some heavy lifting.
I find her budget, as displayed, very misleading so I don’t see the relevance of sharing it.
Adjusted for a 50/50 split, with some assumptions on my part as to what qualifies as shared expenses, we’re on a $6240 / CHF 5115 budget after taxes. That’s not a frugal budget and she couldn’t live on it with assets worth $1.5M (she’d need closer to $2M, which she would probably have reached in 2-3 years at her salary and expense levels with their split for shared expenses).
To me, this is a nice story (for them) and it might be useful to illustrate giving up on a high compensation despite the golden handcuffs but even there, the partner takes a key role in the riskiness of her situation and her assessment (we don’t know how many assets he holds). Take out the partner and the story becomes way more noteworthy on a FIRE level (but she wouldn’t have achieved FIRE yet either).
Edit: It feels odd writing all this knowing Florence may be reading it. To Florence, in case you do: none of this is against you and you have achieved some important milestones by making personal decisions and putting your weight behind them. Congrats and glad you’re finding your balance away from the rat race.
In market psychology, we focus on fear and greed. Here another human emotion is on display: envy. Even those striving for the same goals can be envious of those who achieve it or are further ahead. It’s a sad fact of life.
It’s a reason that I do not share my net wealth number with people - the only exception being one friend, but he has an order of magnitude more wealth than me and is pretty grounded so no problems of envy or resentment there.
Yes, that’s why people who earn millions a year would never publicly post this, especially not on this forum. There’s no reason to expose yourself.
Somehow, there’s a strange middle ground of 200–800k where people like to post online, but not so much outside this bracket.
For some, it is public information e.g. CEO of public companies.
Yes, but there are a lot of SMEs owner in Switzerland banking 500k-1M easily. Heck Finpension did 6M profit on 13M of revenue.
Just one question. how did CNBC find out about the couple in first place?
You are right.
In most cases there is no dramatic difference between people who work in one company versus another. It’s mostly about right place , right time
People like to attribute all this to talent but in my humble opinion talent is overused word when most of the time we are mainly talking about luck.
nevertheless my main curiosity is about how CNBC knew who retired early in Zurich. Doesn’t CNBC have better things to do
I agree. Also wonder no one mentioned it’s a strange article, as well. Or least not a consistent story.
Also keep in mind it’s an US news outlet. The concept to “have enough” seems even more rare over there and more money often equates to more quality of life, at least from a consumerist perspective.
In the article: So she thought about and planned for FIRE for some years, but the discussion came as a joke? Yet was decided by the end of the night? On Valentine’s day with a glass of champagne, no less.
And earlier in life she quit her job and moved to a new country after the weekend because a comment from a friend.
How is that “risk averse by nature”?
And while 50-ish k isn’t luxury for a single, 150k as DINK household allows for quite a different life-style (yes I know the USD is at 0.8). Well below their means, of course, but hardly a life of depreviation. It’s just written out of context.
The article highlights the nice and free mountains around the corner, as well as travel to Australia and South America. Nothing wrong to enjoy both, just seems out of place.
I did read rent is a big post, though. At least Thalwil has a low tax rate, that ought to compensate a bit while still working with high salaries.
And the partner will be so much older at retirement age? Guess what, so will she be. Retire 17 years early would be late 40’s, not mid 30’s. Why google for 17 years? Because that’s the age gap? Don’t get that logic.
Seems to be the whole series. Just below the article it linked me a video like “he sold his company for 12m and retired at 28.” Take that, Google plebs 
Of course, that’s the whole purpose of it. But most (at least me) would rather not add their name and picture to it or want to appear in the “news”.
Now I’m deliberately taking a quote out of context, but how can you spend years in high-paying jobs (obviously not starting with 350k), saving a lot and invest and “only” have 1.5m to your name?
Didn’t want to continue the Google posts, but one question out of curiosity: how do the stock options work at Google? Do you get a fixed amount of share or a fix stock value? Meaning, if you get 100k worth of shares and the stock rises 3x by the time they vest, do you get those 100k (but less shares), or the fixed amount of shares now being worth 300k?
There’s some artistic/journalistic license used in writing the CNBC article. 
Check her story on the MP blog for the story in her own unfliltered words (there’s 3 posts in total, 2023, 2024 and 2025). It’s a bit clearer and with a wee bit more background.
" Until changes in my team and my partner’s job at Google made us unhappy — nothing too dramatic, but enough that we continued complaining about it for several days…
Until Valentine’s Day when, while holding a glass of champagne, I said to my partner: “Why don’t we stop and take a break?”
And boom, the decision was half made!
After spending a few days playing around with the calculations, we made the decision."
Pay taxes and live in one of the world’s most expensive cities?
Mmh, maybe Florence would actually answer you that if asked in the comments section on the bottom of her MP blog article?
I’ve talked with the doctor from this article
and he just got cold-called, after this article he was even approached per email via his employer’s HR manager! (cos they didn’t have his personal one). Yep, frightening.
The journalists scan blogs, Reddit , everything, and cold simply contact you… CNBC seems far from Thalwil, but it made a nice “international” article with pretty photos, no?
Prior to 2021:
In the so called comp cycle in November[$] (typically after the promo round in September/October) managers would (up-)adjust their reports’ salaries within bands, base salary, bonus, stock options.
Stock options would be assigned in numbers of stocks.
The stocks would start vesting at the beginning of the new calendar year, typically over the next four years. Based on the number of stocks granted, they would vest yearly, quarterly or monthly (e.g. if you were granted 100/400/4800 stock units, they would vest yearly/quarterly/monthly).
The day they vest, the closing price of the stock is used to calculate the taxable income for your Lohnausweis in the subsequent year.
Around the quarterly earnings announcements the stock would be locked up in so-called blackout periods, i.e. a month before or so and I don’t know how many days/weeks after the earnings date you could not sell your stock grants (and were supposed to not trade GOOG in your private custody accounts).
In most jurisdictions you could sign-up for “auto-selling”, i.e. your stock would be sold for you on the day it vested and you could transfer the cash at any time, blackout period or not.
You would get the fixed amount of shares now being worth 300k.
Also keep in mind that you would get a stock grant when signing your contract with Google (also fixed amount of shares). And every year you would typically get a new grant.[$$]
With, say, four years under your belt at Google you would have five stock grants vesting in the same year (quarter, month).
That’s also how you arrive at those salaries approaching seven figures for L6+ employees.
Since you asked out of context I’ll answer out of context.
A significant portion of that money goes to the taxwoman.
When I was still ignorant of pillar 2 buy-ins but already made a significant amount of total compensation (base, bonus, and stock grants), my total tax bill was way above what most people here list as their salary.
$ In earlier years there were two comp cycles, one in Spring and one in Autumn. The one in Spring IIRC only applied to people who went for promotion (and actually got promoted).
Before or during the pandemic they switched to just one, the one in November, which applied to everyone, whether they went for promo or not.
$$ You wouldn’t get one or only a small one if you were “not meeting” expectations for your level.
And maybe prior to sometime in the 2010s or so you would also not get new grants even if you were just “meeting expectations” – new grants would only be issued to people “exceeding expectations” or above.
This changed sometime in the 2010s as the tech companies started competing for their employees, and if you were just “meeting expectations” and not getting a new grant, it would be best to just apply at the next tech company, get a new sign-on bonus/grant and the new company would additionally give you (in stock grants) the equivalent of your outstanding grants at your old company…
It then became cheaper for the companies to also give grants to people just “meeting expectations” for retention purposes.
When I was still ignorant of pillar 2 buy-ins but already made a significant amount of total compensation (base, bonus, and stock grants), my total tax bill was way above what most people here list as their salary.
I get the impression though that this is pretty limitind. There are only so many years you can yeet everything above ~270k (top tax rate in canton Zurich) into 2nd pillar before you don’t have room left anymore. (edit: also if you do it too much the progressive rate means you won’t be saving that much in tax as the tax in the way out gets closer to the tax you save on the way in)
Here’s the real crime:
Wait, what?
(And she’s from France – mon dieu!)
Looking at her retirement account
I don’t think she did any pillar 2 buy-ins so I’d say she indeed probably sent a lot of money to the taxman.
I think I am going to regret it, but I do wonder how much hurt masculine pride is responsible for this thread.
Couldn’t agree more. There’s way too much hate and conspiracy theories going on in this thread, when at the end of the day I’m just happy to be able to read 1st-hand accounts of what it’s like to FIRE (or Coast FIRE, or whatever FIRE). We spend a lot of time debating how to get to FIRE, but there are very few people transparent enough to describe what it’s really like once you are there.
You mean because she earns more money? Or because she is a woman, or all of the above?
Fair enough for dramatic effect. It just reads as if the author had 2 different spins to the story in mind, wasn’t sure which one is better and ended up mixing them up. Maybe I’m to narrowed down on the FIRE part, the series is called “millenial money”.
Got it, that sounds pretty standard to me. I was once told by an employee that they’d get some 30% in stocks, but then explained it in a way that I wasn’t sure we talked about the same thing.
This seems to imply that once those stocks, now worth 300k vest, and let’s assume a stable base comp of 200k in that time, people would say they earned 500k, rather than 300k + 200k in capital gains. Anyway, same gross amount, good for them and the tax office.
Depends on the rules, but let’s say max buy-in amount is 5x salary, and there might be some additional limit for early retirement, there would’ve been plenty of room. But that’s another topic, just saying.
My guess is all of the above, and then some
