Hello everyone,
I’ve been reading this forum recently and thought I could introduce myself as well as ask a couple of questions.
I am 23yo, from the EU, fresh graduate in the applied mathematics field. I will come to Zurich by the end of the summer to start a job there. Compared to most people on this forum, I am for from being frugal, and do not intend to become very frugal, as most of my expenses bring me happiness. However, I do enjoy optimizing things as much as possible, and with swiss salaries, it seems possible to save a lot while spending a lot. That brings me to my questions:
Where to live ? This question is mainly motivated by tax simulations I ran on comparis.ch. For context, my salary will be ~CHF160.000 (incl. Bonus) + ~USD30.000 RSU (I don’t know how these are taxed). Comparis says that I would save 16K by living in Freienbach, and 12K by living in Zug (I included RSUs as income). These numbers are huge enough to think about it.
The office of my company is in the center of Zurich (near a train station), and I’ll have to work from there 2/3 days a week. I am more of an outdoor person than a city person, and Zug even has a rugby club that I could join. However, there is a cost associated with the commute (3K a year for unlimited transports?), and inconvenience as well (for example, are trains working at night during week-ends ?). The time of the commute seems okay for me (I had a similar one daily in London and it did not bother me), and I am not a freelancer so the additional money I could earn if I wasn’t commuting is 0
Zurich:
- bike/walk to commute.
- near most activities for the evening / WEs.
- rent are not cheaper.
- taxes are a lot higher.
Zug:
- bike commute possible 1/2 a week for exercise (I love road cycling).
- taxes are cheaper.
- still a decent size, so I expect to find things to do outside of work there.
- train to go to Zurich during the WE / when the weather is bad.
- far from most people; obstacle for socializing in the evening / WE…?
Freienbach:
- Even more tax savings.
- route to the office is completely flat, so I could bike there at least twice a week assuming a decent weather.
- Very small, not much to do?
- Same commuting problems as Zug.
I would appreciate any thoughts on the subject, as I am probably missing a lot of things!
I am not really considering Thalwil / Kilchberg as the tax savings are a lot smaller, but a commute is still necessary to go to the center.
Investments: I have no financial education whatsoever and I am a bit lost when it comes to investing. Right now I have approximately EUR100K from various internships, divided as follow:
- 50K cash
- 30K VT
- 15K QQQ
- 5K european ETFs
And I don’t really know how to allocate it properly. Any good up-to-date resource on the subject?
To give you an idea on my level of knowledge: I am clueless regarding what to do to hedge myself against inflation (are stocks enough?)…
2nd Pillar: Should I maximise or minimize my pillar2 contributions, given that I will most likely leave switzerland in the next 10 years and won’t buy a house here.
Learning german: I have some basis but would like to pick it up again, quite intensively. I think that it would be a good opportunity to meet people as well. Any recommendation regarding a school for german with in-person classes ? University maybe ? A huge plus if there are other young-ish people
Thanks for reading!! Looking forward to coming to Zurich