Welcome Lynny !
+1 from TI 
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Ciao! 
and thank you!
Hi fellow mustachians,
Greeting from Geneva! I’m a 30 yr old Swiss citizen working in the International Development sphere. I discovered the concept of FIRE with MMM about a year ago and really started documenting and educating myself on the topic since a few months. This Swiss community has actually helped a lot to inform me on plenty of topics related to FIRE and I thank all the community for that: 3a pillar, investing, ETFs, tax optimization, spending less, etc.
My goal is to eventually FIRE in 15 years but would also like to become independent before. A perfect scenario would be to become independent in the next 5 years first. We’ll see, I still haven’t this figured out.
I’m actually also planning on doing a 1 year world tour in a few years.
I’m passionate about the linkages between business and society: I believe in the role the private sector can play in having a social and environmental impact and solving the world’s most challenging social, health and environmental issues. I read a lot and am pretty knowledgeable about corporate social responsibility (not greenwashing of course), microfinance and impact investing. I’m a realistic optimist and that mindset drives a lot of what I do.
Looking forward to discuss!
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Hello Mustachians,
I am a 23 year old PhD candidate living in Lausanne (originally from France). I have started learning about saving and investing about six months ago during a stay in the US, and I was so happy to find the MP blog and this community! Finally, some informations relevant to my exact life in Switzerland 
I am saving about 50% of my income with enough already stashed to build an emergency fund and initial ETF investments.
I don’t have a plan for early FI currently, but buying an apartment or house would be a good first goal.
Many thanks to @_MP, @nugget, @hedgehog and other forum members for all the great things I was already able to learn here!
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Greetings Mustachians!
I’m a 30 yo italian doctor, I moved to Switzerland in Nov 2013 for my residency, and I’ve been living in Lausanne since May 17.
I’ve started digging myself out of financial illiteracy last Summer, with some reading (classical books like Graham’s the intelligent investor, Kiyosaki’s rich dad poor dad) and of course by browsing some good blogs
I began monitoring my budget with the “Wally” app and with a handmade spreadsheet, and stashing some funds.
I recently discovered and binge-eaten the @_MP blog and that’s how I landed here 
I’m now looking at online brokers to start investing (just read the YNAB 10 lessons crash course), but still struggling with the options (and all the acronyms you guys use in this blog 
)
Working around 50-60 hours per week at the hospital, I’ll need the most auto-pilot system possible!
Thanks for the great blog and forum, I’m looking forward to discovering even more about FI with you guys!
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hey @Lex_npmr,
welcome to the forum!
great that you found it and i am sure you will put you new findings to good use!
don’t miss out our Guidepost to the investment forum!
If you mean with auto pilot something like *set up account, set up monthly wire transfer, and forget for the next xx years" check out the robo advisors such as Truewealth or VIAC. If you are willing to spend an hour on it every month, you can save that ~0.5% annual fee: get an account with one of the brokers, make yourself a copy of my robo-sheet and be donewith it!
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Thanks @nugget, that’s exactly what I meant!
I suspected that automatic rebalance didn’t exist, so I’ll try and use your robo-sheet
And someone with a Red XIII avatar is always welcomed 
Hi all
Thanks _MP for getting this forum started! I’ve been reading along with interest for a few weeks now. I have been wanting to learn more about investing for over a year already but had no idea really where to start. Your blog and this forum have proven invaluable.
I’m approaching my late 30’s and moved to Switzerland about 12 years ago. Spent a few years finding my feet, then studying IT and started working full time as a software developer after completing my bachelors. My wife and I have no kids and decent incomes. I own part of a property in the UK. I don’t really see it as an investment. I bought it in order to help my family out.
As far as FI goes, well all I can say is we will see what happens. I would be happy to continue working for at least another 10 - 15 years and with my new found knowledge I believe that after that many years my wife and I could get there. I have always been a bit of a spendthrift, and it’s a shame I did not get started earlier, but life happens as it happens.
Next on my agenda is opening a IB account and getting the ball rolling. I look forward to getting some input from you knowledgeable mustachians!
<-- May the compounding force be with you!
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Hello all, happy I found this forum as I’ve been reading a lot online for years on investing.
However after moving to Switzerland I quickly learned many things are different, and it is hard to find specific information on DIY investing here.
At least now I know I;m not alone!
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Hello Mustaschian,
I am in my fifties and must admit that I am an avid investor since quite early in my life and there are positions in my portofolio that are long since more than 20 years. I began to optimise the cost of my investments since the death of a parent where I had to manage the succession and realised the cost of the bank in the process. After optimising the cost I am now trying to optimise the cross border withholding tax and the currency exchange that remain sub optimal in my case. I like non-correlated assets and find real-estate and its continuous flow of cash a good balance to stock. I am a proud survivor of the dot-com crash and the subprime collapse. My favourite readings are Benjamin Graham, Joseph Stiglitz, Harry Markovitz and Eugene Fama.
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Hello there fellow Mustachians,
I’m a 36y old German Software Engineer living in Zürich, studied math and hold a PhD in theoretical computer science. I came here end of 2016 and while I am thinking about investment since 2009 (back then vanguard was not available in Germany without investing a minimum of 100.000 EUR), I never had a very stable life (w.r.t. living location) and thus I didn’t want to invest, not knowing how moving to a different country might affect the interest rates and stuff. I know, not very smart, as one should always invest…
Hence I wasted valuable years of investment due to laziness and fear of an uncertain future. I am sure it’s not to late yet, though.
Anyway, my situation is now still a bit in turmoil, because I am married to a wonderful Latin woman, who had no luck yet finding a job in Switzerland and thus I have to support us both - saving money is not easy and I rarely have time to take care of investment related stuff. We now opened an account with TrueWealth, which we’ll use for the time being, while IB will be also our choice for the long run.
The good news is that I inherited a house in Germany, generating a little bit (really little) of extra cash each month, and it has value by itself
Just like sparrow I’d like to express my sincere thanks to MP for having created this blog and the forum, and thanks to everyone contributing. I try to do so as well.
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Welcome on board @dps_kane ! I also have been thinking about investing for 5 years before I really started last year and I think it eventually turned good, because most of my friends were investing either in (1) insurance connected to investing or (2) forex or (3) stocks with technical analysis. I’d probably follow them in that insanity and lose a lot of money. Instead, I took my time to read as much as I can (especially my beloved “Random Walk Down Wall Street”) and learned that all these three options are nonsensical. I’ve lost some time and some profits, but at least I didn’t loose money like most of my friends.
In my opinion, it comes in two steps: first, you need a system (mental model of your finances + budgeting Excel sheet to track spending), second, you need the discipline to stick to it (that’s the hard part). I’m personally in a similar situation to yours - I have an unemployed wife and 9-month-old baby, and we’re still able to save 50-60% of the salary (without PhD-Google-like salary :-p ) and invest in Vanguard’s ETFs via IB. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. 
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Hey
I am a millenial swiss girl from the Lausanne area. I live with my boyfriend and cat. I was always pretty frugal, but not very interested in money, that is until I bought a 2-bedroom flat in the Lausanne area earlier this year. I intend to share more details about this in the ‘share your story’ thread, but for now let me just say I am very happy with the move. I discovered MMM via the Tim Ferriss podcast. I used to stupidly follow UBS’s advice, but am changing this since reading through the Swiss thread on the MMM forum and then finding this forum (these astronomic TERs!! 
). So thanks @_MP for setting up this forum ! I am definitely more interested in the frugal / minimalist lifestyle of MMM than the investing details. I work in the biotech field and love to find ways to reduce waste, in the kitchen, my wallet and my bin. I look forward to exchanging with all of you.
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Welcome @sparrow, Collins’ book is gold! Wish you a wonderful start into the investing world!!!
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Hi @Scolere, welcome! The waste in today’s world is truly mind-boggling. One of my pet-hates (and makes me sad to see) is food-waste, often by people fixated on the “best before” date on the packaging instead of using common sense and their noses. Of course the corporations don’t help by putting random expiry dates on many things and ridiculous expiry dates on others, such as on chemically inert thing like a pack of sugar or salt, which frankly don’t really expire in a human’s lifetime. I was also following my CS advisor (aka egoistic salesman of expensive financial products) for much too long (years), and longer than you for sure, so no worries. I am very interested in the investment part of this forum, but will be equally interested in more waste reduction discussions on here.
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Thank you @rolandinho for your warm welcome. Indeed food waste is a heresy, considering how many people suffer from hunger and poverty ! I have developped a lot of strategies to keep and eat things many people would not consider edible It would be interesting to start a thread on this topic
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Indeed it would be interesting. I have heard that most food conservation tricks can be learned in books for preparing a cruise (in the sea you have to keep your food edible as long as possible), but I’d be interested to see how forum members do it in practice.
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I always found this really hilarious. I have a box of salt that proudly proclaims it comes from a Himalayan lake that dried out 250 million years ago, but sadly it expired a few years ago. 
Really unlucky, I guess… 
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On a side note, I believe Coop stopped to add the 50% stickers to stuff that expire the next day.
It has always been a great thing for me, especially when I don’t know what to eat (I suffer of the “too-much-choice-I-don’t-know-what-to-pick” syndrome… )
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