New member's story

Hello Mustachians!

Happy that I found this blog that is targeted to the Swiss community. I have been aware of FIRE for almost 3 years and trying to live a frugal lifestyle to achieve early retirement.

So a little bit about myself - Mid 30s, Non Eu married to a Swiss (with no kids) and living in the lake geneva region. We had been saving to buy a property-to-live. But over the last couple of years realized that we wouldn’t want to necessarily live here for the rest of our lives (I do miss the sun :sunny:)
Also, my wife’s family has a small house in the countryside so I believe that is enough exposure to the Swiss real estate market.

Since we have been saving for the past 3 years, we have 100K sitting in our bank account and doing nothing at the moment. Following the advice from the community, I have just opened an account with IB. We want to invest in low-cost ETFs spreading the risk and not paying exorbitant management fees to Swiss banks (my wife has been caught in this trap and has lost more than 10k CHF once)

To Sum Up
Current savings - 100K
Pot’l monthly savings to invest - 3K
Time horizon - min 10 yrs and max 15 yrs (I’d really want to stop before turning 50)
Looking to invest in VT and maybe a Swiss focussed ETF such as CHDVD

So my questions:

  1. Should I invest this 100K in 1 go or do a DCA over the next 12 months?
  2. Is VT enough or should we look at other ETFs to not put all the eggs in the same basket?
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It’s a period of uncertainty right now. If you were to invest the whole stack on monday, I believe there’s a higher chances of losses than gains over the short term (i.e. you’d rather lose 20%+ than gain them over the next couple of months).

I would gradually increase my exposure, though there will always be people saying it doesn’t over the long term.

You’d already be putting every second egg into one country, the U.S. (bit more than 50%, actually) with VT. If you’re comfortable with that, why not?

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thanks @yakari and @San_Francisco

I also feel about the period of uncertainty at the moment. I am thinking of more like 10k per month for 1 year. This will bring me close to my total portfolio at the end of 12 months (120 vs 136k) and also help in dca

For VT, I am quite comfortable to invest in the US market so happy to make it the biggest chunk of my portfolio but I would like to diversify a little bit let’s say 20% either with Swiss based ETFs (currency hedging) or with an emerging market ETF (possibly higher risk reward ratio)
Any suggestions for low cost ETFs in those categories?

How about Fundsmith? any opinion on that. I know the TER is about 1% but have heard good reviews from members on other forums?

Infact at the moment nothing invested in pillar 2 and 3.
I had them till early 2017 and then I left CH to go back home. At the time, I could cash in on my deposits and I did. Not sure if it was the best decision but I got my 2nd pillar minus a small tax.

I am now setting up to be independent so it will only be 3rd pillar investments and 2nd pillar is not available for independent workers.