Agree with you. My 2 kids kill our FIRE goal.
But I have them in the public system as if you go to private, the cost are for the next 1X years. while in public can be 5-7 years. and quality is more and less the same
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I was lucky to have already some colleagues that move short before I was and a boss that took time to explain me things.
top 1: accommodation, at that time it was a hell complicated to find a place
top 2: (if you have kids): childcare options and cost
top 3 : cultural differences
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I discovered that some doctors they still don’t want to accept people from some insurances company (I’m not gonna tell names but let’s say: doctor x doesn’t accept patients from insurance y). Regarding that it was a bit hard to find a doctor that was speaking Italian as well…
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This one. Seems to me that drivers consider themselves the police. I often get honked when I break even the smallest/irrelevant rule (and I bike 99,9% of the time), but not because the driver thinks I or them are in danger, no, just to remind me that I broke a rule.
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Actually most doctors I met spoke a bit of Italian and were eager to practice that with me, but given them I paid them by the 5-minutes slot, I asked them to switch to English.
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95% will be good experiences, and from the other 5% you can learn.
Finding the first apartment is hard. The landlords or real estate companies want to see your Ausländerausweis and Arbeitsvertrag but to get a Ausländerausweis you first should have a rental contract. Some companies will hire you easier when you organized your paperwork yourself, but then will not pay for relocation “because you are already here”. A vicious circle. Many people will take room-sharing, WG, serviced apartments, student accomodation as a first. Just afterwards it will get better.
Office Workers (as in most of the world) are shit if you have contact with them by phone, mail, e-mail. In persona it is a bit better. Was a bit disappointed, that “the Swiss office workers” (especially real estate, state, mobilcom, HR, bookers) are not that meticulous when it comes to just doing the job. A office worker in Prague earns gross a fifth of your salary (purchasing power adjusted maybe a third), so just do it and be happy.
Not astounding for me, but maybe for others: Outside of the village or city people will great you everywhere, so best to greet back. I love this in Switzerland.
It is THE country for FIRE in europe, hands down. If you are mustachian and care about taxes, everything will be good after the first adjustments.
The prices here are higher because of cronyism and monopolies, not because it is written in stone that everything needs to be more expensive in CH. In many cases swiss prices are good, electronics for example.
Swiss people also don’t know about money. It is not learned in school and saving money is also not a cool hobby here. Sometimes “Wohlstandsverwahrlosung” comes into play. I have colleagues that could save 400CHF per month with just 30 minutes of work once. And still they dont do it.
Swiss people are not huge advocats of direct democracy and liberty.
Personal privacy is better respected than elsewhere, but it is a Überwachungsstaat with growing tendencies. Using AHV-Nummer as a central tracking number for everything, Fichenskandal, no more banking privacy, have to show passport for everything, cameras everywhere, etc.
Their institution are just better and could reach maturity because WW1 and WW2 didnt happen here. My guess is that this beautiful country will be nudged to adopting most of the laws of the EU (while never joining), which would make Switzerland more of a second Luxembourg. Still nice, still better opportunities than most countries, but the “10 years hardcore FIRE plan” will not be reachable in let’s say 30-40 years.
Finding local friends or work friends is hard. Even in my cosmopolitan workplace there is not that much weekend playtime. Doing a motorcycle tour 2-3 times a year (and always as a group of people) is the biggest event. The locals “already have” friends, so why would they need you is the unspoken question.
I dont know about dating here, but I guess Switzerland will be one of the toughest countries worldwide. The amount of males bringing their girlfriends from the home country or finding own nationals for marriage is mind-boggling sometimes. Probably a few swiss girls will die alone in the future.
Just as most germanic countries; there is a bit of a hater culture here. “This guy didnt earn it; that business model will never work; this business cannot be allowed…”. Of course many things in life are not as great when you look at it up close. But disregarding everything will not bring innovation or progress to the country.
Oh, and parking is shit, but everybody knows that about Switzerland.
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in Bern? actually I hopefully found one this afternoon, german and Italian. Perfect to practise as well
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Great points!
I agree that oligopolies explain some higher prices (e.g. telecommunication) and others are mostly explained by higher cost (e.g. restaurants or health care).
But where do you see cronyism come in?
Also about friends, from someone who grew up here:
I believe that most of everyones experience here can be better explained by swiss people being a bit anxious rather than being uninterested/arrogant.
Obviously there is a lot of variance but imo swiss people tend to be shy. It’s not just that we struggle to make immigrants our friends, we struggle to make new friends at all. It’s a complain I hear all the time.
A bulk of the difficulty of making friends with the Swissis may also be explained by them
a. seeking long term friends
and
b. working under the assumption that friendships with newly arrived are less likely to last.
Where b. may be explained by an uncertainty about cultural differences (difficulty to read friendship signals, “are they just acting like we’re friends or will they actually stick around?”) but also by the heightened possibility of expats leaving the country again. (You won’t find many swiss natives wishing to FIRE in Portugal… 
) It just sucks to lose a friend, so better be careful not to make any you might lose.
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Thanks for all the contributions. I’m trying to keep this thread as much of a list of things as possible. Maybe we can fork out discussions about specific topics to other threads.
Do we have more and/or other things that people wished to know before coming to Switzerland?
I stopped reading there.
Banking privacy still exists. It doesn’t for foreigners. That’s it.
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My PhD supervisor only went to Globus for groceries when he had moved to Zurich. He was told that Switzerland is expensive and thus was not surprised by the prices. Then, somebody told him that common mortals go to Coop and Migros and that there are discount stores.
But I guess that’s only him. 
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Basically just one thing:
What salary to ask for in the job interview.
Salaries aren’t that transparent, especially to foreigners.
I haven’t really had any negative surprise coming to Switzerland.
I didn’t really plan to come or stay in Switzerland - it just so happened that I got offered a job here.
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Not an expat but discovered that some expats are using dating apps to make connections with locals. On most dating apps you can state that you are just looking for friends. Don’t know if it works out but if you struggle to make concact with locals it could be worth a shot.
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Indeed, I thought I was rich with a PhD student salary at ~60K CHF, little did I know how much more I could earn in the industry…
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A new post appears:
I wish I knew about the UPC trap. I had no idea about UPC until my landlord send me a very expensive bill of things I had to pay in addtiion to rent an nebenkosten and the most expensive item was UPC. To make things worst they took a very long time to send the bill so they sent this to me in the middle of the yar for the whole previous year.
I was like, uuuh what UPC is this?
I ask the landlord to cancel this UPC connection and she replies with some cryptic message saying that they already canceled the contract with UPC already and that if I want I could contact UPC directly ask to close the close the plug on the wall. I had two Swiss friends read her message and they were not sure what did she mean, imagine me as a non German speaker but to them it sounded like no action was needed. To be sure I filled in an online form with UPC but got no reply.
A few weaks later I receive a bill directly from UPC which I paid because for me was like OK, the landlord did not cancel it and now I will pay and cancel for the next months.
Since then I’ve called UPC multiple times, including my boyfriend called pretending to be me to be able to speak German and they keep sending me bills and saying that because I paid the first invoice they sent that I was basically locked down now with a one yar contract with them.
What is this for bulshit this UPC? I never asked for this, I never signed any document from them, the first time I called them they acted like I was not a cutsomer because I don’t even even have a Kundernummer but they do have my address and keep sending me bills.
Anyway, trying to resolve everything by letter now, still not over and they want me to pay until July 2021. I am not even trying to get the money back, I just want stop paying for a service I never ordered, this is IMHO a complete abuse.
Sorry for lashing out my frustration, the whole point of this post is to warn anyone before they get into the UPC trap: if you just moved into Switzerland and is renting a place, MAKE SURE THERE IS NO UPC CONNECTION IN THE PLACE!
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I just read it and one thing really caught my eye: the 100k tuition for ISZL. The actual price depends on the age but it’s around 35k per child. Lunch and transportation cost extra but not that much. I’m assuming you meant ISZL, there are other international schools in the area and they all cost about the same.
A couple of other minor feedbacks:
- I don’t know where English lessons start in the second grade. In ZG they start on the 3rd. Perhaps it’s worthwhile to mention the cantonal differences again.
- ”Either they already bring a girl friend or wife with them” - in 2020 ”partner” would be the better term because women also work and sometimes it’s the woman’s job that brings them here.
In general I found it a comprehensive list of things to think about. You even mentioned that there maybe complications when getting an au pair which is absolutely true.
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This applies for any cable TV provider or whoever operates the local network. The fairly high monthly service fee was also a surprise to me. Altogether it makes the internet cost 30-40% higher. No wonder many of my neighbours had the interface blocked.
I found the whole hassle about internet connections quite archaic. I’m used to things just working without a visit from an electrician. If I didn’t want to pay for cable TV that was the end of story, no extra fees or other weird stuff with the sockets.
Thanks for the feedback.
Fair point, looks like I shouldn’t have blindly quoted my friends claim that the school of his son was that expensive. Iirc it was indeed ISZL or SIS. Will update the post.
Thanks for the info, might be an off-by one error from my side.
Hehe, I thought that stereotyping might not be well received, will update it too.
That’s weird bc since 2 years the cable connection cost is integrated into the price with UPC