Hi there,
First of all thanks to Mr MP and all the good advice on this forum, great community, great find.
For what I read here, it seems that my history and my case is a bit different, so I’ll explain a bit more in detail, sorry if it’s too long. I hope it may help some people to give perspective on things, who knows!
So myself, 41yo, French citizen living in Switzerland since 2007, Project Manager in IT.
Very far from FI, and probably not able (as of today) to even have a decent retirement at 64 if I don’t plan for something better. Coming from a long, long way, and I hope being able to damage control some things before 50. Before talking about my current situation, here’s the three phases I had related to money and finance in my life :
Phase 1 : Childhood
I grew up in a poor ghetto suburbs area of Paris, and had almost no financial education. My mom worked all her life as a music teacher (and manage to have a sub-par retirement at 63, but own her small house) and shielded me and my brother for all the financial struggle and reality we had. And my dad way jumping from one small jobs to another, kind of an artist. Financially, you know the type : “Yeah, I have this great idea of business that a friend of a friend talked to me about, let’s invest everything and borrow even more, we’ll be rich before next month! It’s guaranteed!!” and obviously never work and always finishing broke.
So, great to start your adult life with this mindset about money!
Phase 2: young adult
From my first pay check at 17yo up to 26-27yo, my relationship with money was “Well, let’s live with what we have now, we never know what tomorrow brings”. I discovered at 18yo that you can write a check and you have the product you want, and worry about paying somehow later, and I kinda thought it was a magic money making machine and that trouble will never find my. Obviously I way blacklisted by banks at 21yo, even struggle to receive my pay checks sometimes because I didn’t had bank accounts, but “everything will be fine! We’ll see later!”
Phase 3: Adult
I moved to Switzerland in 2006, with the mindset of starting things clean. I still made some stupid mistakes and manage to have some debts and “poursuites”. However I finally started to turn things around (thanks to my girlfriend who is the exact opposite of me regarding finances) and slowly climb back the ladder.
So know I’m starting Phase 4 : 2 young kids, no debts, no credits, smalls 2nd and 3rd pillars (I got scammed by Axa life insurance 2 years ago and lost almost everything, another story…) and a small investment funds, but in the wrong places (I found myself listen too much to Swiss Life Select, another stupid idea…). I budget with YNAB seriously now, and try to become as educated as much as possible on finance and investment, but I’m still very novice in all of this. This blog/forum is a pearl.
Thanks for reading it, expect some really noob questions soon! And thanks everyone for all the information you put out there, really useful.