Early 30s couple: our accidental FIRE journey

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Hi all, we are an early 30s couple, EU citizens on Permit B, who moved to Switzerland 5+ years ago for our PhD studies. Since finishing our studies, we have now moved away from academia and have found our first jobs in industry.

I discovered Mustachian post while googling for advice on the 3rd pillar and tax returns during our studies, and while I got fascinated with the idea of FIRE, my at the time girlfriend was not too sure about it. Nevertheless, all these years in Switzerland, we had lived quite frugally and managed to have a decent saving rate of around ~35-40% depending on the year. We have also made some investments based on advice here and from boggleheads. However, now we would like to take this a bit more seriously to set us up for the future and possibly an early retirement. Below, I share some of the important numbers.

We went from having an income of around ~100k (2x56k during PhD) per year to ~200k (2x100k) this last year. This translates to a net income (taxed at source) of about 11.3k per month, from which we spend on average about 5.5k. This year we also got married and will go on a more expensive honeymoon trip, so the actual spend should probably be closer to 7k per month if we split the marriage costs over a year.

Main expenses:

Column 1 Column 2
Rent + associated housing fees 1700
Food 800
Eating out/take-aways 400
Clothing 100
Public transport (half-fare, small trips, and yearly point-to-point) 250
Health insurance 525
Gifts 50
Internet and phone 83
Sports (gym, equipment, supplements etc.) 250
House expenses (appliances, cleaning products etc.) 100
Subscriptions 50
Hobbies, electronics, photo equipment, gadgets 100
Heating and Electricity 120
Hygiene, cosmetics, hairdresser etc. 200
Services and charges 15
Other 50
Travel 400
Entertainment 75
Education 50
TOTAL ~5.5k

Savings and investments:

Column 1 Column 2
Vanguard FTSE All-World UCITS 112k
Savings account (UBS) 78k
Cash 95k
3rd pillars 87k
Private loan 9k
TOTAL 381k

We have quite high cash savings due to the fact that we wanted to buy RE, but at the moment, this plan has changed. So I would be willing to put most of the cash into the market. Should I think of any diversification? Some allocation to gold/silver and maybe 5% to bitcoin (I know, I know it is a gamble, but I’m ok if I lose 5%). Any advice here would be welcome.

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None really, I’d only say that you have quite a huge pile of cash sitting unused. It’s not a bad thing, but I wouldn’t ever add to it. You’re diversified in stocks with VWRL/VWCE, you save on taxes with the 3A.

People will come with ideas for optimization like switching to US-domicile funds to reclaim dividend withholding taxes, and to say to reduce the cash but hey, if you just continue like that you’ll be super fine!

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You really are doing fine and you should keep trusting yourselves with your decision making as you seem to have a pretty good compass. Congrats and enjoy the journey!

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I hope she’s sure about it now. :sweat_smile:

Your strategy sounds good and adding a bit of gold/silver also makes sense IMHO. :+1:

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no, it’s not :smiley:

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Ah, so it is a surefire way to lose money? :smiley:

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Let’s test it: Send me 1, I’ll send you 2 :joy::joy:

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Wow, very impressive. You could add the amount of your 2nd pillars in your savings section. That‘s what I do as I easily forget about it.

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Thanks a lot to everyone for the encouraging words. I will be slowly moving part of the cash to my brokerage amount every month and DCA into the VWRL and a minor (<5%) allocation to WGLD and WBIT. Honestly it’s more for curiosity than a belief that these assets will outperform VWRL.

But for the rest of the cash position, what is the view on fixed term deposits? Is it “worth” allocating some of it to short term deposits? What are the typical returns now on say 6 month deposits in CHF?

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