4’000 chf/month rent is quite a lot for 4 people, does that include more than one apartment?
I would not include vacation together with savings.
No, it’s just an expensive area in an expensive canton (ZG=low tax, high rent). We have very limited possibilities to move (it’s too complicated and too private to share more about). The high cost was something we accepted (or had to accept) when we had to move. We are looking for cheaper alternatives but there aren’t many, if any.
I realize now it’s not ideal for reports like this. YNAB had a vacation category under the general savings goals category and that’s where I allocated the trip money. This particular one was something we saved a longer time for and it follows the YNAB philosophy: don’t spend it until you have saved for it. Under the general savings goals I also have all investment categories. Depending on what accounts are included in YNAB’s reports, the outflows from those categories might count as expenses when in reality they are transfers to brokers, VIAC etc (I do have all the brokers and 3a account represented in VIAC but they are not budget accounts).
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Frankly if you take the rent cost out of the picture I think your expenses are not particularly high…with a more average rent you’d probably end up below 25k/person which is not a bad result in my opinion
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I just checked my medical bills in the last couple of years, I always had a 300 CHF franchise.
2016: 5060 CHF (766 CHF paid by myself)
2017: 2420 CHF (512 CHF paid by myself)
2018: 3066 CHF (577 CHF paid by myself)
2019: 2694 CHF (539 CHF paid by myself)
2020: 2875 CHF (558 CHF paid by myself)
I’m gobsmacked after calculating our last 2 years’ budgets and spendings. And we are not living large…
Family of 3 in Zürich in a 4.5 flat. The categories are from PostFinance e-cockpit
37560 accommodation and furniture
12000 groceries
9500 kita
2400 baby stuff and services
6300 personal spending (meals out, sports, etc)
1400 communication and media
3270 Mobility
0 holidays 
10000 health insurance
3000 other insurance
2000 small stuff
What I’m puzzled on are Kita costs (20k per year currently @ 3 days a week). How on earth do you cope with this? Before having a kid our yearly budget was 75k, now it’s above 90k with no holidays and not much to save, with our second one it’s gonna be over 110k net… how on earth do families cope with that financial burden?
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Family of 3 in biggish Swiss city in a 100m2 flat.
Other than the expensive rent, we live frugally (in our opinion).
Total 66000
31640 accommodation
7000 groceries
9600 kita
1000 Furniture, clothes
600 Electricity
3100 services, eg cleaning, new passport, etc
350 communication
600 Mobility
500 holidays (ja well, 2020, hey)
11000 health insurance
1000 other insurance
500 small stuff
I’m seriously astonished by the number of 3 person families spending 10k+ on health insurance. Do you all have Privat level insurance with the lowest deductible? I pay 5.7k for 3 people…
In our case, it’s more the effects of a Krankenkasse-hell-Kanton 
IMO.
In our case it’s 11=4.5+4.5+2
I actually have mine on max. deductible and Telmed, but “splash” out on a bit of Zusatzversicherung, but the Zusatzversicherung is only about 20% of the total.
I.moved from a rural Kanton a while ago & the total amount basically doubled.
We are four people without privat but with zusatz. One adult has the 2500 deductible and the other 300. For us the extras make sense because they cover a lot of travel related things.
This year we will pay 11k just in insurance fees plus all the other co-payments on top. If I remember correctly those amounted to over 3k last year.
One of us is also on some very expensive medication which has to be re-approved every year. It sort of locks us with the current insurance company who have always been good and fast with reimbursements. Above all we don’t want to take a risk of that medication being rejected at another insurance company.
Here is our spending; family of two; dual income no kids. We bought an apartment in Zuircher Oberland, hence there many one-time big-ticket expenses
| Category | Spend | |
|---|---|---|
| Rent & Mortgage, Amortization | 23514 | |
| Car Leasing + Insurance | 6792 | |
| Public Transport (GA) | 3270 | |
| Kitchen Rennovation | 33000 | Hoping to get a tax deduction here |
| Moving Expense and related items | 5000 | |
| Health Insurance and Medical | 8400 | 300 deductibale for wife and 2500 for me Groupe Mutel and SWICA |
| Vacation & Travel | 3644 | |
| Telephone, Internet and TV | 1824 | |
| Food and beverage | 5600 | |
| Taxes | 30000 | Estimated taxes (paid half of it by 12/31) |
| Major Purchases (Electronics and others) | 5500 | (new iphone, scooter for the wife) |
| Total | CHF 126.544,00 |
Similar situation, but with 2 kids going to a Tageschule. We both work 100%.
Ca. 140k expenses including tax :
50k Tageschule. Education of our kids -> non-negociable for us at the moment. We could reduce costs by ca. (only) 30% with public school.
28k tax (varies a lot)
23k housing (owned)
15k credit card expenses. I do not sub-categorize these expenses because we are generally frugal and do not have any expensive hobby. We pay as much as we can by credit card to facilitate tracking. The amount is pretty consistent over the last years.
With these 4 expense types we already covered almost 85% of our expenses.
10k Lamal for all of us + Sanitas Family for 3
6 to 8k holidays
1.5 ÖV
2.4k our kids saving accounts (yes it is an expense as we will not see the money any more !)
Rest are insurances, electricity etc that we do not pay by credit card
No car.
On top of that I consider 3a (13k) as an expense, as at the moment we do not plan to leverage it.
Despite a shocking amount, I still consider us being mustachians. Best compliment I ever got ? The tax advisor clerk (we use a tax advisor every 5 years to make sure there is no mistake/it is optimized) who asked me to explain “how could we save so much, in case the Steueramt would ask questions?”.
Dear Mustachians, with ou way of thinking we have gold in our hands…
Success factors, besides obviously 2 incomes: “minimalism” (less is more is my favorite motto), Second-hand for everything we need, and we do a lot ourselves (renovations, moving out etc)
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Zürich city is 100 francs (per person) more expensive than anything else in the Canton. I pay 770 for a family of 3 with Sanitas with all 3 on Family supplementary insurance (and a 2500 deductible). No way to save more here.
If we moved out of town it would only be about 550 francs.
How do you do that?
Internet access (500ish) 2 mobile abos for 2 adults (500ish), no TV, no billag (365)? Must be at least 1000 more.
We don’t have a TV.
We pay Billag though, but I put that under services.
350 = 29x12 = I have an unlimited mobile abo (incl data) for 29 p.m. (Salt Swiss XXL, special offers come around regularly), which I tether/hotspot for internet at home.
Speeds of approx. 60Mbps down and 50Mbps is fine for our use case (general surfing, bit of video, bit of TV, now and then a torrent)
My partner has a work mobile phone, which she is allowed to use “reasonably” privately.
We are a maried couple in our mid 30s, no child. We put each month in a shared account a total of 2500-. for the household expenses. It pays all the usual expenses of a couple, including taxes. Then we each have to pay for our health insurance (2550 *2), travel (approx 1000.- in total), and personal expenses.
All in all, I would say that we spent a total of CHF 40 000.- for two, including taxes.
Location info would’ve been useful as well 
2500 is barely enough for monthly rent in ZH for instance
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You’re right, we live in canton Fribourg. We have a mortgage on a 2.5 room flat and pay approx. 950.- /month for the bank interests, amortization, and co-ownership expenses. The same kind of flat would cost us approx 1400/1500.- to rent.
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