Swiss life hacks list

Besides Mobility, have a look at Sharoo, too. I was thinking of joining Mobility again, but then I am finding myself super happy with Sharoo and I think it’s cheaper, too. Actually, given that I could park my car for free where I live, I started to think into buying a cheap second hand car and rent it out using Sharoo. But I still need to do my research and understand the details of having a car and renting it out via Sharoo.

Hi Grog

Re: Cablecom. They sent me the Verwaltung/Regie invoice out of the blue. After talking with them they did not only waive it but told me about the “connect 40” offer, that helped me save 5 Francs per months with more bandwidth than before! The good news doesn’t stop here. I then turned around and told my landlord that Cablecom stopped billing his share of the internet. He agreed to reduce the rent by 30 Francs per month. With a bit of hassle I ended up saving 12 x 35 Franc = 420 Francs a year.

2 Likes

You landlord is either a thief or stupid. My landlord informed me about changes already a couple of months ago. I think cablecom figured out it’s not worth anymore to compete with Swisscom and co with the hidden tax and decided to really lower their price by cancelling the cost of the connection for those who use it.

I wonder what happens if you stop paying/using cablecom. Do they stil come to close your plug?

Can you open a new thread and talk about Sharoo? I never heard about them.

2 Likes

they don’t come anymore, too expensive. They just tell you per email that you cannot legally use the cable

OK, will do (not now though).

Hi nugget,
have you thought to become a member of the mobility cooperative?
I did this 5 years ago and already saved 1000.- (because you do not pay the yearly fee when you are a member) which is the amount you have to give the cooperative when you enter (and which is paid back when you leave).

2 Likes

Hi there,
I can only underscore what @pwi writes: After I sold my car, I became a Mobility member and my partner a co-member. In my eyes, it pays if you drive only a few thousand kilometers per year and would otherwise have your own car that needs a bit of maintenance.

To become a Mobility member, you have to pay 250 CHF to inscribe (non-refundable) and 1.000 CHF (your membership share, refundable upon leaving Mobility).
To become a “follow-up” member (must live in the same household), you pay 125 CHF for inscription and only 100 CHF for your share.
Compared with the annual subscription of 129 CHF/year and person, this is quite an interesting option. Plus: As a Mobility member, you can participate in their meetings (I’m not so much interested in that, but others may be).

Of course, a car is always part of the bigger “mobility package”: I travel quite a bit for work and don’t need a car standing around most of the time (like my car did when I still had one). I have a GA travelcard, I cannot do much in terms of car maintenance/repair myself, there are no kids or sports equipment to haul around and we have 10-15 Mobility cars within 15 min walking distance. So while I’ve had savings of 1.000-2.000 CHF/year since I switched from car to Mobility, this may not apply to everyone.

Cheers,

J.

2 Likes

Household waste: One could probably write a whole book about waste separation and recycling. Of course I try to use the recycling collection points when convenient and have become quite proficient in compacting waste to fit into the municipal sacks.

I usually try to leave as much outer packaging (disposing of it in the bins) in the supermarket as possible. Be it cereals, chocolate or other sweets, they often come with a colourfol, shiny outer packaging that I don’t need.

1 Like

What recycling bins do you have at your supermarket? :thinking: I’m only aware of pet recycling at my supermarket.

PD: thanks for that link, just found out about a cardboard “Mobile Sammelstelle” close to my apartment :smile:

Aldi for instance is doing a very good job for that. They take back PET bottles, paper bottles (milk, juice, …), and plastic bottles (shampoo, …).

I’ve started doing that this year and I have a lot less waste going to the garbage bags now.

2 Likes

Small tricks I use to save on trash:

  1. “wash” all containers that go into the garbage to avoid smells.
  2. use tetrapacks from milck or juices as small containers for small garbage
  3. throw bio stuff in the bio container.

Trick 2 is especially important: When one milck box is almost full, I push the top part of it to close it. I try to fold it as much as possible (usually I don’t fill the whole box so that I can fold it better). I then throw the brick on the municipal bag. This way I can use a 35L bag for months if I don’t have much trash and it wont smell like a dead body :slight_smile: I can empty the trashbag by hand if I want to or even reorder it to make some space. Everything without an issue because the bag will always stay clean and with almost no smell (almost because if you put your nose at 1cm from a closed milk box you can smell it, especially if I put one of those small blobby sheet you have inside meat packages).
This way I don’t have to buy small trashbags just to avoid a smelly kitchen.

side note: Ads on the forum?

3 Likes

Like thepoorswiss, where I live the bigger markets have multiple recycling collections. Migros also has a “generic” bins, where I dispose of all packaging I don’t need. Like the cereal boxes - I only take home the plastic bags.

If I have them, I often use tube-style packaging (think Pringles crips/chips cans or mymuesli) to compact small garbage and avoid smell.

Where I live, we pay garbage in Kilo not per bag. So, we don’t optimize for size a lot.

However, optimizing for smell makes a lot of sense. We also use a bio container and make compost. And we try to wash some of the things we put inside the trash.

It seems so indeed.
@_MP changed his mind on ads?

finally it’s time for all of us to contribute to his FIRE-plans

1 Like

or we go elsewhere … eg reddit …

Mmh, personally I’m fine with a few ads, I don’t think it’ll change the value of the content, unless some of the top posters are so anti & leave.

1 Like

The Revolut ad is a bit suprising for me - it says “Visa”.
I have only an option of MasterCard with an account registered in CH.
Anybody has other options (these days)?

(I don’t mind the ads either)

1 Like

I only had the option for a visa card on revolut…

3 posts were split to a new topic: Affiliate links on the forum (for newcomers)