I think I mistated our expenses in 2019. They were CHF 180k already back then.[$]
The numbers should probably also be discussed in terms of currency, but the short’ish answer is that we consumed a significant portion of the cash flow produced by the portfolio and the composition of that portfolio also changed significantly over the corresponding time frame.
Longer answer:
yearly expenses are stable at around CHF 180k (since 2019)
at the end of 2019 marketable assets in taxed accounts were CHF 3162k and tax-sheltered assets were CHF 1598k
at the end of 2024 marketable assets in taxed accounts were CHF 3672k and tax-sheltered assets were CHF 2192k
at the end of 2019 I was invested with USD 63k in the dividend/dividend growth strategy (I guess about 2% of my marketable assets back then); at the end of 2024 I was invested in USD 2991k in the dividend/dividend growth strategy; I’m guessing that’s about 70-80% or so of my then marketable assets).
the FIREing process was going from 100% employment in 2019 to 50% employment in 2021 (with an about 10% salary of the previous 100% employment) to a now (2025) 10% employment with a very small percentage of the 100% Google salary.
Even more complicated in the employment situation of my spouse.
Anyway …
lots of variables changing, I guess …?
Hope this helps!
$ Although I said they include housing, they didn’t. Housing was an additional 48k back then (and still is today).
Out of curiosity, if you are willing to share, how do your expenses break down roughly? Our total expenses were about 60k per year before we had a child, after which they rose to around 100k per year. I am curious about your expenses because on the one hand I can’t imagine spending >200k but on the other, 100k per year would have seemed crazily high to me just a couple of years ago and yet here I am
~48k housing (includes Nebenkosten, we e.g. buy about 3500 liters of oil every 1.5 years or so)
probably around 10k-15k on vacations, including skiing[?]
next biggest block is probably Goofy’s cat as it only likes wagyu beef tenderloin … (jk)
I’m guessing food? Mostly organic, mostly prepared at home.
? This one spikes occasionally, e.g. when we went on safari in Tanzania with a subsequent week in a luxury resort on Pemba island with our then teenage son.
It'll probably spike more often going forward ... next luxury trips on the bucket list are the Maledives and an arctic cruise ... I might offset that with somewhat frugal bicycling down some river trips. ;-)
Thanks. I wondered whether expenses would go up that much, planned or unplanned, but seems they didn’t and include taxes.
By the way, since you mention a teenager, can you tell if the kid related costs got up over the years? Not inflation-wise, just generally compared to earlier years. I get there’s higher cost and demands, and many variables, but eventually child-care drops.
I’m not yet at my very comfortable number and it’d likely take me well into my 40s to get there, but I consider to advance the time-line or take a time-out, so I want to double-check my assumptions, not challenge your numbers.
Yes, only in the context that stocks in general went up some 60 or 70% in those 5 years and maybe they did add further to the portfolio.
But it makes sense if you include pillar 2 and haven’t been fully invested.
It even sounds a lot for most people working full-time, especially if you do pillar 2 buy-ins or other tax deductions, but then it’s a luxury problem to have, i.e. high enough income.
Well, if you have enough income to save up ~5/6M CHF between things, 61k isn’t that much. Like I’m pretty sure Your_Full_Name got more during his prime income years than I do and I pay like 110k in taxes per year (would still be like 70k in Zug), ignoring wealth tax and dividends.
edit: If possible I don’t like to count taxes on the cost side for FIRE though, as often a lot of taxes are dependent on performance. So taking a 3.5% withdrawal and then taking taxes as costs is more conservative than computing a new percentage on a post-tax withdrawal rate.
the childcare (aka Krippe) years were expensive as with a Hoolie salary you’ll pay the full rate[$]
the mandatory school years seemed uneventful (cost wise) as my wife reduced her pensum to part time – classical, I guess, but I swear this is what both of us wanted – and we organized with families with kids the same age looking after them for lunch (Mittagstisch) and after school hours for the days where both of us worked[$$]
the puberty years were again more expensive as brands start to matter to those kids and vacations need to be organized such that they satisfy everyone’s needs (can be done in non-expensive ways, too, of course, but money makes it way easier to buy the compromises that please everyone)
After the mandatory school years cost probably depends on whether your children pursue a vocational path or continue to go to school and/or eventually do studies (and whether they’ll pick up work in parallel to studying, etc).
In the (financially speaking for the parents) “best” case, they’ll pursue a vocational path and will even (symbolically) contribute to the household’s cash flow in. In the (financially speaking for the parents) “worst” case they’ll continue going to school and then after the Matura for ten years or so pursue a degree in liberal arts that will never land them a job[$$$] and you’ll continue supporting them for a little longer than you might have planned.
About 211/212k in taxable income gets you there most of the way of the 61k in taxes (in the municipality of redacted tax-friendly Zurich). I’ve said this elsewhere on this forum, I’m mostly happy paying those taxes.[$$$$]
Suppose so. In my “best” income tax years I probably paid about 3-4x that amount. Progression is a bitch (but good for society).
$ Of course, with a Hoolie salary you should pay the full rate. Although in my initial Hoolie years I made less money than in my previous (banking IT) job … yes, Hoolie was a cool company back then such that I would take a pay cut to work there!
Feels like a thousand years ago now …
$$ Of course it helped that around that time my Google salary (actually, the stock options at the time) started to become a small firehose of $ pumping income into our budget while the reduction of work by my wife in a non-profit only put a small dent into the pile of money available.
$$$ Bad dog, Goofy! Pfui!!
$$$$ There’s a few exceptions, like a school that cost 64M and was apparently not suitable for a school.
Made me question my decades long behavior of just saying yes when school projects came up in the city’s ballots.
So you got slides, ball pits and climbing stuff for adult IT office guys, but no company-sponsored child-care? Wtf?
I’ve got separate accounts for that, partly grand-parents sponsored. Will start worrying about that in 10-15 years.
Wondering more about the day to day expenses, which, besides child-care I don’t track, either. Maybe the best assumptions is current spending, assuming cloths, gadgets, activities etc. won’t exceed child-care cost.
Yeah. For those thinking 61k is a lot, take a look at the French-speaking cantons or the communist republic of basel-land and you’ll be happy to take ZH rates
Most unuseful insights, it seems, but happy to share anyway.
I hope you don’t build 64M schools, at least.
You may laugh. A Google (Switzerland) child care … thing/project … was discussed, but I believe “corporate” intervened before it became a thing, instead subsidizing entrance into existing Krippen for new employees. Smart move from corporate to control costs. This was (in my memory) around a similar time when some managers at Google Switzerland – I was possibly among them – proposed that SBB build an additional stop (and station) at *Herterbrücke" to accommodate the Googlers commuting to and from that potential stop.
IIRC CHF 50M was SBB’s quote at the time, for buliding that station, and the subsequent discussion around it then … chilled?
Well, I’ve seen worse. Didn‘t expect an exact figure, either. It’s still helpful, and based on real experience, not some projections.
Most people around me have either adult kids and we don’t talk about costs, or little ones, where I have my own numbers.
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That overpass was falling apart (if anything the blame should be on the initial construction, not sure 20y is standard for the lifetime… I guess you could have insurance but as a city might be cheaper to self insure for those things).
That would be a huge detour if you can’t cross the Sihl and tracks coming from Sihlhölzi (was likely a big requirement of the retrofit of the old Hurlimann brewery in the 00s to be able to access it from Werd/Wiedikon).
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Will start worrying about that in 10-15 years.
