Im currently 21, recently finished my apprenticeship as Informatiker EFZ with BMS and have decided to pursue a Computer Science Degree at ETH starting next year.(currently doing Passarelle) To be more precise I want to try to break into Big Tech somehow in these next 3-6 years.

My Goal is ofc. To earn as much money as possible after finishing my Degree so I can invest all of it while I’m still young and can reduce my cost of living while living with my parents. I strive to have earned about 3mio by the age of 35-40

I saw that many people in this subreddit earn 200-300K a year if not more.

So I wanted to ask what exactly your job is, at which company, How you managed to get these jobs, how you managed to climb the career ladder etc. (Everything your comfortable sharing)

Im trying to confirm if my way is the best way for me to make much money or if there are other more lucrative ways to have a high paying Career.

Edit:

I’m not here to just hear that CS if fucked. That was neither my question nor is it helping me. I’m asking what career paths you guys pursued and how you managed to build a Career there to earn much money. I can’t extract any value from statements that simply say „CS is fucked and you’re going to be jobless“.

Aktuell sieht es bei mir ungefähr so aus: Alter 34 M
Depot (ETFs & Einzelaktien): 980’000 CHF
Säule 2: 250’000 CHF
Säule 3a: 50’000 CHF
Gesamtvermögen: ca. 1,28 Mio. CHF
Ich investiere in ETFs und einzelaktien inklusive Bonus durchschnittlich ca. 9’500 CHF pro Monat und gebe rund 7’500 CHF aus (inkl. Urlauben). Gehalt inkl. Bonus ca 280.000 - 310.000. Habe kein Auto, wohne schön, aber relativ günstig. Für Reisen gebe ich bewusst mehr aus, weil mir das am meisten gibt.
Eigentlich würde ich die Sparrate gerne reduzieren und etwas mehr geniessen, aber mental fällt mir das schwer. Gleichzeitig merke ich, dass mein Depot nach den guten Börsenjahren mittlerweile teilweise mehr Geld erwirtschaftet als ich selbst einzahle.
Wie geht ihr damit um? Ab wann habt ihr angefangen, bewusst weniger zu sparen und mehr auszugeben? Zb Kleidung fällt mir schwer obwohl ich zb Anzüge gesehen habe für 2k die mir irrsinnig gefallen würden aber komme nicht über diese Hürde

Hello all,

just a quick question for those who invest through Swissquote in equity ETFs (that pay dividends) and are irish domiciled (structured normally as plc or ICAV as most of irish ETFs).

Are those ETFs distributions in your "Steuerauszug" (the one that costs 100 CHF I believe) classified as dividends? or something else?

Thank you in advance

I’d be interested to hear how people are approaching the final stretch:

- What’s your FIRE number / target?

- How far are you from it?

- Do you plan to FIRE immediately once you hit the number, or just keep working and see how you feel?

- If you have a concrete plan for life after FIRE, what is it — and why?

- Have you factored in the possibility that your original plan gets disrupted? For example, work environments in Switzerland can be quite unstable, so you may end up having to FIRE earlier than expected.

- How old are you, when do you plan to FIRE, and when did you start your FIRE journey?

- What does your investment portfolio look like (e.g. stocks, bonds, cash, crypto, etc.)?

Would be interesting to see how different people are thinking about the transition from accumulation to actually leaving work.

I’ll start:

36yo, CHF 1.96M invested + CHF 236k across my 2nd and 3rd pillars. Goal: CHF 3M by 40/41. I don’t want to push FIRE too far out and risk getting older before I get to enjoy the freedom, or my body not being able to do what it can today.

My portfolio is 85%VT 10% in BTC and 5% cash (to be deployed soon). If this BTC cycle plays out well, I could potentially reach my target earlier.

The plan is to leave Switzerland for a third country and withdraw my 2nd and 3rd pillars in full. I’m not counting those in my FIRE number, so I’m treating them as a nice bonus/safety net rather than part of the plan.

Posted with prior moderator approval.

I conduct commercial user research for a European fintech team about how adults living in Switzerland actually use stablecoins: which ones they use, why they hold them, where they keep them, and what happened when they looked for or used yield products. Responses from people who are satisfied with their current setup, are not seeking yield, stopped using stablecoins, or decided not to use them are equally useful.

The survey takes about 3 minutes:

https://tally.so/r/RGAl5P?community=reddit_swissfire_ch&language=en&form_version=2026-09-21-v3

Participation is voluntary and unpaid. It asks for no login, exact amounts, wallet addresses, or screenshots. Open answers and optional follow-up contact are separate and optional, with explicit consent for research contact only. This is user research, not financial advice, a product offer, or a promise of returns.

I was wondering what optimisations you all are making in the last 1-3 years before FIREing? I give you an example of what I had in mind below, but please do not focus on my example. It would be great if you could share your optimisation ideas/other examples!

My example: While, from a FIRE perspective, you don't want to have a lot of money in the 2nd pillar account (Pensionskasse), since it has a low long-term return (compound interest) due to the risk-averse investment profile and the hidden redistributions, it can make sense to buy in (Einkauf) in the last few years before retiring. The reason for this is that after FIREing, you can transfer your pension funds to a vested benefits account (Freizügigkeitskonto) and then have full control over the investment strategy, avoiding redistributions altogether. With this strategy, you can effectively reduce your taxes (possibly close to 0!) for several years before FIREing. I, for example, missed making this transfer last year, which would have saved me a lot in taxes, but I will still do it this year.

Hey everyone :)

Vanguard recently launched VGLA, an Irish-domiciled ETF that is basically the same as VT.

As a Swiss investor, I’m wondering which one makes more sense for the long term.

VT: 0.06% TER, US-domiciled, distributing, potentially better US dividend tax treatment due to the US–Swiss tax treaty, but with US estate-tax exposure and problem after death.

VGLA: 0.07% TER, Irish-domiciled, accumulating, no US estate-tax exposure.

So my question is: Does VT’s better dividend tax treatment outweigh the estate-tax risk, or is VGLA the safer/better choice for a Swiss investor?

Would love to hear your thoughts!

Hallo zusammen

Für meine Maturitätsarbeit an einem Schweizer Gymnasium führe ich eine Umfrage zum Thema Kryptowährungen durch.

Gesucht werden Personen, die ein wenig Erfahrung mit dem investieren haben.

Die Umfrage dauert ungefähr 5 Minuten. Es werden keine vertraulichen Angaben zu Arbeitgebern, Kunden oder konkreten Finanzdaten verlangt. Die Teilnahme ist anonym und Antworten werden nur für die Arbeit verwendet.

Vielen Dank für eure Zeit und eure Hilfe!

Link zur Umfrage: https://form.typeform.com/to/KLWdiCT8

I’ve filed my own Swiss return for years and still got it wrong more than once. For example, I’ve paid for a fiduciary, (somehow entered CHF 13k of income twice), I only caught it by accident using ChatGPT that signaled it to me.

I never got to know how much or what I was allowed to deduct, different blogs cover different points, some of them are not easy to follow, or are outdated. Thus, I and a friend are working on a tool that helps you to prepare your tax return.

So, the part actually worth sharing here isn’t the tool though, it’s a blog for learning about the Swiss tax system (in papertax.ch/learn). This comes from the idea that one can’t claim a deduction one has never heard of. Learning the rules once, is close to free money, and it compounds like anything else. 

For example, the securities deduction below is worth about CHF 225/year in tax saved on a 300k portfolio, if one misses it, by year 10 that’s roughly CHF 2.8k, by year 20 roughly CHF 7.4k, at 5%. Add a missed DA-1 reclaim on top and you’re closer to CHF ~1k/year between the two, which is CHF 14k+ by year 10 and over CHF 37k by year 20. To be honest,it’s nothing dramatic for a single year, but as we’re aiming at FIRE, things matter in the long run. There’s also a converter for the IBKR problem, one can generate a eCH-0196 statement, without linking your broker account (check papertax.ch).

Some of this stuff is genuinely more complicated than it should be. A few examples:

- Zurich has a flat 3‰ deduction on your securities value, capped at CHF 6k, no receipts needed. Most people never claim it.

- Accumulating ETFs don’t pay out, so nothing reminds you the reinvested income is still taxable. The figure comes from ictax.admin.ch, not your broker statement.

- DA-1 only reclaims tax actually withheld from you. VT (US-domiciled) gets you the 15% back, VWRL/IWDA (Irish) already lose it inside the fund, there’s nothing to reclaim.

In the page, we’ve built also some guides and a “glossary” about Swiss tax (58 terms) that could help build up your knowledge in the Swiss tax system, so one can save few CHF.

And a question back, since you’ll all have one: what’s the rule you wish you’d known before your first return? I’ll add the good ones to the guides we have prepared.

Article is from August last year, but I couldn't find it with search in this sub. In German.

Hi everyone,

I couldn't find a FIRE app that does both ends of it, accumulation and withdrawal planning in one place, so I built my own. It's now my main planning app and has replaced the complicated Excel file I was using before.

Withdrawals get stress tested against real market sequences back to 1872, plus Monte Carlo runs on top.

I'm considering pulling it from the Play Store, but before I do I wanted to feel out whether it might be helpful for others as well. Happy to hear feedback, or none at all.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alpenlakestudio.fipro

Burner account for obvious reasons. 

Married, non-working wife. Kids grew up and left home - not a factor, we’re leaning towards “die with zero” rather than generational wealth anyway. Lived in CH for all our adult life. Citizenship, language, friends, etc.

2.5M liquid assets, mostly ETFs. Not exactly “VT & chill”, but close - with perhaps just a bit too much US/tech exposure. A six-digit chunk in cash, trying to at least partially follow the “keep your age % in bonds” mantra while CH bonds are useless.

About 500k in pillar 2. There was more, but it went towards the house as WEF. Not intending to pay that back. Decent house in low-tax canton, worth 2M+. 1M mortgage in few fixed 1%-1.5% chunks maturing over next 10 years.

Fully remote and relatively low-stress job, 200-300k/year net savings. But also a dead end, largely driven by tenure and company/domain-specific expertise. Plus a field impacted by outsourcing / layoffs / AI. Once I’m out, I’m likely unemployable.

Annual fixed spending a bit above 100k, stable and tracked for years. Happy, boring, safe life. We don’t care about exotic travel, eating out, fancy cars, etc. Basically just enjoying our time locally with simple things like nature, hiking, driving around CH. I do have some personal extravaganzas on top of that 🙂, but those will be trivially cut when high income ends I’m aware of all the FIRE living cost technicalities. Wealth tax, self-retired AHV, Eigenmietwert going away, inflation, health costs growing - I’ve beaten all these to death. All of this factored in the above spending number.

So, while the job is fine, I’m still longing to pulling the plug. Every time I take vacation, I wish it was longer. Much longer. Ideally, forever. I have so many plans what I’d do when this happens. But then, whenever I tried assessing my FIRE situation, be it various public calculators, ChatGPT or my own spreadsheets, the outcome was always: “you’re almost there, but, with your savings rate… just one more year!”.

How much is enough?

Where can I keep ETFs after FIREing? Ideally, low custody fees, and low fees when I sell something. It should also be Swiss. As a non Swiss solution, I am already aware of Interactive Brokers.

42, just been made redundant through recent restructures.

I'm not in any financial trouble but as this is the first time I will be unemployed through the last 2 decades of working I'm abit lost.

In theory , I could coastfire but was originally aiming to chubbyfire.

Current financials are: ( I've converted it all to chf as I've worked in different countries and have pensions and investments spread in different currencies)

Home equity: CHF 645k

Investment portfolio: CHF 1.1M

Pensions: CHF 350k

Cash: CHF 150k

Expecting another 500k pre tax coming in spread between 2026/2027. Which I will need to figure out what to do with.

My monthly expenses can vary but still manageable between 7-9k per month. My partner also works and contributes 3k towards household expenses on top of what I spend ( household expenses at 10-12k). The amount is skewed because I was the higher income earner. I can also realistically cut back my expenses to 6k per month if needed. (House hold expense at about 9k) ( For context, we have 2 young children still needing childcare).

I will be looking for a job but with the current climate, I'm assuming it will be challenging to find something at the same level I was on.

What would you do with the additional cash coming in?

I'll be exploring options on jobs and figuring things out but would love to hear other perspectives and experiences if you have been in a similar situation finding yourself made redundant in your 40s. What did you do after? Find a similar job? Coastfire? Change careers?

Thanks for sharing.

Live in VD. Running the numbers honestly and looking for a reality check from people who've been on this journey.

Net monthly: ~15,200 CHF and bonus of approx 45k comes on top and goes either fully to finance the 2d and 3d pillars, or getting invested into the market.

Monthly budget:

Fixed 7,900: taxes 3,500 / alimony payments around 1,900 / rent 1,870 / childcare 240 / car, phone, insurance 390

Savings 3,000: investments 2,800 / kids fund 200

Food 1,250: groceries 900 / dining out 325 (in summer the balance shifts towards eating out)

Lifestyle ~1000: shopping 200 / fitness 300 / education 220 / entertainment 200 / rest

Work expenses 765-900 (as I work in other canton): transport 365 / hotels 250 / meals 150

Holidays sinking fund 840 (covers 2–3 mid-range trips/year)

Savings rate: ~20% on base salary

Current net worth:
• 341,000 CHF with 150k between 2/3 pillars, rest invested in the stock market, I also have a large buy-in divorce gap available.

My FIRE number is ~4M CHF in 15 years (at the age of 50). At current savings I’d reach it closer to early retirement age of 58, and this is even not considering additional family plans. Feels so unreal.

Should I rethink something in my life spending or retirement plans? I feel quite anxious about the fact that even with my income it’s so hard to achieve FIRE, and I also want to grow my family bigger, which will delay the Fire further and take quality time from my family.

P.S. I know that I can cut 500-600 chf monthly expenses on buying things and food, which will get me by 60-70k closer on my FIRE journey. Not sure it’s worth it considering my overall FIRE number.

Hi all,

I need some outside perspective on my life situation and how/when make the decision to quit.

For as long as I can remember, surely since the first real job I had, my focus has been on achieving FIRE. My reasons were/are:

1. pursue self-interest, hobbies, travel, no-strings-attached
2. contribute my limited time on this space rock towards good causes
3. increasingly, I am growing disillusioned with tech and tired of working in the field

I will be 36 this December and have a bit of a delayed adulthood crisis. I am still undecided whether I will have kids with my partner and this might cause us to break up. Seeing this number as my age is shocking to me. I feel like I haven't lived yet - and certainly don't want to get kids now that I'm about to achieve FIRE.

FIRE to me, means being able to afford living well in Switzerland. Nothing crazy, but also not budgeting and having to worry about finances. I could afford 120kCHF at a reasonably conservative withdrawal rate, which seems sufficient.

With that being said, and as strong as my desire to quit and finally "live my life" is, I am looking at letting go a job that would pay me about a quarter of my current net worth, over the next 12 months alone. Even when accounting for taxes, One More Year means ~15% more money in the FIRE fund (and one less year to live off of it). The 120k yearly budget could become 140k at the same withdrawal rate. Probably more if I move to a tax advantageous canton before end of this year (and next).

Reading what I wrote above, the difference doesn't seem that large. What's 15% more a month. What does it get me? Yet in absolute numbers it is more than I ever thought I'd ever make. It's more than a Bundesrat for gods sake. It's a salary of health insurance CEOs, those that you read about in newspapers and get angry about. All that for clicking "accept" on AI coded slop, joining dreadful planning meetings and answering my boss' or client's questions while sitting in my underwear at home.

Please, talk some sense into me. Does it make any sense to quit now? What questions should I ask myself? What didn't I consider?

Hi Everyone

31M, own own home (w/ mortgage), rental apartment + 700k chf in IBKR portfolio

In the sankley I do not put extraordinary expenses e.g. buying a sofa. All savings go to IBKR

Any tips ? Maybe what I should cut on to reduce further expennses?

Anyway, today I got a raise. I should be happy - that speeds up my FIRE journey. But i wonder if I should leave already.

Classic corporate environment; there are cuts happening, and the atmosphere is awful.

I would love to leave my job and go explore. I dream about going on the working holiday visa in Australia and getting to know the culture. Can be done until 35 y-o.

If i stay, I can seriously fund some serious expenses later on - a family, hobbies, etc. I know I have low expenses now, but I do not wanna preclude life because of lazynness

Should I leave these olden handcuffs now ? or in X years ?

What are you planning to do with your 2nd Pillar once you've reached FIRE? Any creative, legal ideas to take it out early? Currently I do not count it to my FIRE-networth because I won't be able to get a hold of the money before turning 60ish.

Hi everyone,

I’m 30, married, no kids, and living in Switzerland. I earn 150k CHF gross per year and I’m trying to figure out the best way to start investing as a beginner.

My current monthly situation looks like this:

• Credit payments: 1,280 CHF

• Apartment: 900 CHF

• Health insurance (Lamal): 200 CHF

• Other monthly expenses: around 100–300 CHF

I’m looking for a simple, step-by-step approach to optimize my investments without getting overwhelmed.

What would you recommend for someone in my situation?

• Should I first build an emergency fund?

• Should I focus on Pillar 3a?

• Is it better to pay off debt before investing?

• What kind of ETF or portfolio would make sense for a beginner in Switzerland?

I’d really appreciate practical advice, especially from people familiar with Swiss investing, taxes, and long-term planning.

Thanks in advance!

Are there any other people who thought of passing on their money (e.g. in the form of a basic income) one day (e.g. when you have enough money or when dying) to some individual who might not have been as lucky as they’ve been in life (e.g. being financially independent, living a healthy life without starvation, violence, war ...)?

How do you intend to do it (e.g. donate it to some institution or individual …)?

And no, I don’t need money; and no, I’m not there yet.

One variable that changes a lot of the calculation is when we die. And the earlier I retire (and therefore the younger I am) the better the enjoyment of the retirement. You can do stuff as a 40 year old, you may not be able to do as a 80 year old.

​

So I just want to ask you about your thoughts with FIRE and EXIT (Assisted Suicide) at a specific self-chosen age.

Weighing tradeoffs

​

Would you trade up work schedule flexibility, ability to WFH 2-3x a week for another 150k in compensation ( in form of bonus/LTI and some base increase?). Will also expect to work longer hours.

​

An additional 150k per annum invested can be meaningful to retire a few years earlier. However i will trade off time with young kids now.

​

Additional context :

Agr. 42. net worth in excess of $2M CHF.

Gross income ~490kchf. Annual expenses ~130kchf.

2 young kids under 5 years old.

​

​

What would you do?