I live with my girlfriend and we share all costs which relate to both of us (apartment,car, billag etc.). For the rest we pay for each alone.
Thus, CHF 25k/year + 10k-15k for vacation = 35-40k per year for myself. Big expenses are our vacation trips, but thats the only thing for what we really spend “unnecessary” money.
You are all very near the calculation ETHZ does for students.
https://www.ethz.ch/en/the-eth-zurich/working-teaching-and-research/welcome-center/services-and-downloads/cost-of-living.html
Believe it or not, the tax authority didn’t believe me that I spend so little despite of my salary. Kind of funny when you have to justify your frugal lifestyle 
Just so that I motivate myself to reduce expenses: 49.8k for me ex taxes and ex AHV (AVS here in Suisse Romande) in 2018. I’m living with GF and cat, but that’s just my share.
Biggest culprits: 4.3k spent on useless electronic shit (including an iPad Pro), 4.3k spent on traveling and 17.5k annual rent. Also some medical expenses.
I’ll report back regarding 2019. Hope the figure is at least 10k lower. I’m on track for now but traveling to North America this summer. I guess I’m still young… 
Wow,most of you guys are spending significantly less than us 
In 2018, we spent 64K CHF, this is including taxes (57K without taxes). This is for 2 persons and includes our wedding. My projection is 60K for 2018, but I do not think we can go much lower.
I have published the details on my blog if this interests anyone.
Well, don’t be hard on yourself. I’m quite impressed by your numbers. If you divide that by two it makes 32k/person. I’m at almost 50k. That cannot be justified even if I live in Lausanne city center.
Btw I’m Ed, recently started commenting on your blog as well.
In 2018, I spent (single, no kids) CHF 40’756 including about 12k of taxes, which makes CHF 28k of spending for the whole year if you neglect income and wealth tax. I published a breakdown (in French) on my blog, should you wish to have more details.
I plan for sligthly lower expenses for 2019, let’s see if I can achieve this goal 
Hey Ed welcome to the forum!
If you wish to get a constructive feedback on your budget, feel free to create a new topic under this section of the forum and publish your numbers. I am sure that people will find room for optimization 
Let me chip in here!
Single with no kids living in Zurich City in his healy 30’s.
Spendings:
48’000, thereof
10’000 AHV/ALV/IV/ Taxes
10’000 Housing (shared flat room…)
6’000 Health insurance (I effectively paid double as I paid my 2019 bill in 2018 for a 2% discount)
4’800 supermarket/food/restaurants
4’000 Hobbies of all sorts
3’000 Vacations
2’500 Mobility (SBB, flights, motorbike, bicycle)
According to the government for 2016 you are almost poor (single = 2247*12 =26964)
Congratulations 
Hi Ed
It’s good to be hard on myself for this! 
You cannot really divide by two because several things to do not get multiplied by two when you live together. I still live in the same apartment with my wife than I was living in alone.
Our goal is to stay below 60K in 201, but we had some expenses I did not forecast, so I do not know if this will be possible.
Good luck to all to reduce your expenses!
So to recap 2020.
Gross salary: 101’800 CHF
Net salary: 92’400 CHF
Spent: 63’500 CHF
Saved: 28’900 CHF
I seem to have ended the year with about CHF 60k spent (Edit: That’s without tax). Quite stable over the last few years, but this year with less vacation and more other expenses.
@Cortana: How do you get nearly 91% of your salary net paid out? Are you under 25?
I have the option to choose the pension fund deduction. I chose the lowest option (2.5%). This doesn’t effect my employers contribution.
For 2020, 1 person, I have a total of 43k of spending without taxes. Reading all your previous anwsers on this post I am quite pleased with that number as I feel it is not to bad for having started this year. Let’s see if I can further optimize next year.
Not including taxes, for a single person, Basel:
I am quite content with that, but feel there’s plenty of room for improvement (seeing some numbers above).
Total spend (1 person, taxes excl.) ~35k split roughly into following categories
I was a bit surprised when I calculated my numbers for this year.
Left out taxes, living expenses where calculated but should be about right. Planned to go to Iceland in the early summer, but that fell into the water.
More than 10% of my living expenses in 2020 where coffee (equipment) related.
2020 numbers:
tax: ~8k
living: ~ 16K
invest (IB+3a): 57k
pillar 2 (me+employer): ~ 9.3k
next year I change my job (from academia to big pharma), so a big jump in salary. pillar 2 will go to ~29k, and invest (IB+3a) to 86k. I hope they start allowing to pay-in pillar 3a gaps from 2021. That will save me a bunch in taxes for atleast 2021 (I have 8 years gap to fill). I don’t want to fill gaps in pillar 2.
