What expense do you think you need to cover (post taxes & OASI) for a meaningful life in Switzerland? What do you consider a sensible cost of living, be it today or for your future FIRE scenario? Always in today‘s CHF… what do you aim for as target expense, that you then X25-35?
Please state if this excludes housing / includes reduced housing (e.g. own off flat) and if you can the Delta you think you would need to pay more if you rented at market.
What a meaningful life is will vary from person to person, and the monetary cost of the time spent in it will vary greatly too (or so I expect).
My target expenses are roughly 42k per year after tax (or 3’500.-/month). It pays for the life of a single man with no special needs with moderate rent or mortgage payments, who cooks for themselves and enjoys having the time to be handy, as well as a few splurges without a feeling of restriction.
I was raising this point before and I will do it again: are you going to forever remain
?
Don’t answer me, answer it for yourself.
I’ll answer it because sharing about it helps our thought process:
For the “no special needs” part, insurance is there to cover for it. There are fringe cases that would not be sufficiently covered but some exist while being employed with a higher salary too so I am willing to take that risk.
For the “enjoying cooking, being handy and not chasing splurges” part, that is my current situation and what gives me a feeling of fulfillment for the moment. If future me wants to splurge more, the onus will be on him to give himself the means to do so. I am confident the way I want to live my life will maintain some desirable skills sharp and would allow for me to get monetary compensation for them if I wanted to trade them. Maybe not in an optimal way but I’m trusting myself to balance my options properly if the need arises.
For the “single with no dependents” part, if my situation changes while still employed, I can reduce my savings rate and dedicate more to expenses if that is warranted. After FIRE, I am confident that free time can be used to lower costs in a significant way, especially when it comes to children, so that I’ll manage to maintain a decent enough standard of living to keep me, the person who has chosen to share my life knowing what my life expectations were and the eventual children we’d have had in it fulfilled enough.
But you are right, we do change and so do our desires and aspirations. Keeping doors and options open is an important thing.
Pretty much 1:1 me as well.
I would just add 500 for traveling and other stuff I would have time to do in retirement, that I dont have now.
The reason why I raise this is as I feel my expense expectations keep raising. At the Moment, I am at about 5k per month (including 2k rent) and I wonder if I am still in check or starting to develop a spendy pants habbit 
In think you were as well part of the older (40+) cohort and have a few years already to finding the balance among saving and living. Clearly, not worried with a 30 years old that tells me 3k was enough but if more experienced people still stick below 5k; I Indeed think I need to monitor that trend a bit more careful….
I currently set my regular budget at CHF 4’900 per month (double max AHV) and for me that’s the minimum for (voluntary) early retirement. My “optimal” goal is to have CHF 7’350 available (triple max AHV), which should provide a sizeable reserve on top of a comfortable life.
This is at a paid off house, right? Should we add 1.3k to offset reduction in rent cost?
For me it’s about 5000/m, but I share some costs with my partner (we split those 60:40 as I earn more than her).
That’s at roughly 1k/month rent+utilities or mortgage interest+utilities.
I have not yet computed how to integrate mortgage amortization into the picture as that is only the second time I’ll pay one by the end of the month.
Current expenses are ~4k excl. taxes. But that‘s with apartment/food shared. I guess I would need 5k if I lived alone. Assuming no kids of course.
Lets add taxes/oasi and a significantly higher travel budget, then I‘ll probably be at 80k. 2.4 million just to be safe.
10k per month. For 3 kids.
Standard living costs are around 6.6k excl. taxes, AHV and mortgage payments. 10k when you add those in.
To answer the question in the title, 4-4.5k per month.
Includes rent.
That’s half the amount for the 3 person household (1 young child).
The difference lower value to higher value is mainly holiday costs, mainly depending on how much and how exotic.
My medical aid and rent is high where I am, I believe 0.5k could be subtracted easily and life would remain meaningful 
CHF 3000 / month allows for a comfortable live as a single individual in a medium cost-of-living, medium-size city in Switzerland. And that’s being somewhat generous on some items.
Monthly budget (CHF / month):
1’000 rent
500 food and eating out
400 health insurance
250 commute / public transport
100 clothing
100 household and consumables (electricity / television license / garbage disposal fees, household & personal hygiene consumables)
65 fitness / gym membership
60 internet & phone (residential & mobile)
25 various small subscriptions (bank, webhosting, public library or streaming sub)
= 2500 as cost of living
+ 500 month for discretionary spending, holidays, gifts etc.
= 3000 total budget per month
Currently recurring spending is 115k/year. That includes 50k in rent (Zürich city) and 30k in day care (1 kid), but excludes discretionary items - travel, eating out and other pay-for-play activities.
While day care will eventually disappear, extra “kid” costs will never go to zero I suppose. We’re probably looking at 9-10k per month after tax if we stay where we are.
I’m always puzzled when I see 100chf/m for clothing. Are you all buying underwear from calida?
…or as it is called:
Putting your money where your stock is.
Wow… looks like we have a fairly wide range of cost. Like 500 for food and eating out or 1’000 for renting; that won’t work for me at all. How do you live with 500 for food? Thats 15 francs a day? I hardly get a canteen lunch plus one coffee for 15 francs a day.
Obviously they’re not eating at the canteen nor do take out coffee then… 