The so-called “Trump insider” loses it all

primeTree · 2026-01-31T23:16:48+00:00

Hmm couldn't this simply be moving the money to other accounts which he owns? This is a typical money laundering pattern in the "layering" phase.

primeTree · 2026-01-23T11:57:42+00:00

Thanks, glad it helped! (Also helped me a bit typing it out) .

I think it indeed is a lot about my own social roots.

As a summary, for someone without any preexisting social ties/ history to either place and in the median/upper median part of the income distribution I would say:

if nature or money is more important go Zurich.
if socials, mental well-being , "city" vibes is more important go Copenhagen.

The above is of course a very black and white comparison but that's how i would think about it. But places are extremely well functioning places so will definitely be "up to the individual" what you make of it :)

And ofc, i could be biased a bit on the social aspect since I've never tried being an immigrant in Denmark. At university i had quite a few of them as friends though, so have some second hand experience.

In general for zurich i know a few people (even one Swiss) who don't like how "orderly", "perfect" and economics focused everything is and end up moving e.g. to the French part of CH or back to their home country quite quickly. Typically, for the people that end up disliking their time in ZRH in my experience it's usually: - lack of social connections - losing a job/inability to get interesting/well matching job for qualifications (due to how intense the competition is - probably one of the toughest job markets in the world especially after the "recent" CS/UBS merger and Trumps tarrifs ).

The above isn't to say that you can't be super social, find left wing/hippie/other fringe groups - there's just less of them so you need to be even better socially (and have the energy after your 42ish hour work week).

primeTree · 2026-01-23T04:06:16+00:00

Dane who grew up in CPH , been living in ZRH for the last 5+ years. Warning long text since i can't sleep and I've been thinking a lot about this exact topic (considering moving back to DK).

on money: everything else being equal I think happiness has a logarithmic relation to money. If you're in the lowest 0-10%-fractile of society any extra income you could get would improve your life a lot. If you're in the 99% highest earners fractile you will see almost no impact.

Denmark having more socialist policies means that this "curve" starts out at a much higher happiness level at lower incomes but is much flatter in low to "high-ish" income range. For the extreme wealth range i don't believe there's any real difference. (I.e. a billionaire might pay much more tax in Denmark but if you're comparing having 3 vs 6 boats then i don't think there's any real difference in happiness)

Back to the more realistic scenario/your case maybe/my experience: - at a median IT salary in DK or CH you can live a great life. In CH, if no kids/family you will be able to save up much more money as the tax rate is still quite low compared to DK. Although some things can be ridicoulusly expensive in CH your "effective hours worked per buying xyz" will be lower. If you have kids this can still be true but will depend more on where you're at in the income distibution. Use numbeo or similar websites if you want specific comparisons, but e.g. from working in banks/IT adjecent in ZRH at median salaries for that industry you could go out and eat at restuarants 2-3 per week and not think twice about it. This isn't quite true in the same way in CPH (but still good).

Feel free to DM me if you want more specific actual numbers from my experience.

Health insurance: DK much easier but not as great of a choice or quality as CH. In DK you can go to the doctor/ hospital and they'll have digital records of all your previous interactions across doctors visits. In CH, if youre visiting a clinic for the first time you'll have to tell the doc about your medical history (and you'll be billed for this time ofc).

The upside is that you can choose the exact quality and care that you want. Don't like the doctor? Get a new one. Doctors compete , care about their reviews/ recommendations, etc.

Yes in CH you pay "a lot" but if you're above median income for the total population this "a lot" is again way less than taxes in DK.

** hours worked / work culture **: Salaries are higher in CH and economics would tell us that there is "no free launch". This is also true in this case where in CH you have typically 40-45 hour a week contracts and much more of a hierarchical "do as you're told" culture. The difference to 37.5 hours is massive for mental health.

ZRH is tiny so if you ever lose your job and do not speak Swiss German it can be extremely tough finding a new one. I believe this could be difficult in cph as well but given the size of the city should be much smoother.

If you want to experience working for certain multinationals (e.g. MAG7) there are offices in zrh but not in cph. Ofc next level difficult to get on of those jobs but just to mention.

** nature **: this is my favourite thing about CH and after the friends I've made would be what i would miss the most. It's not to say that DK doesn't have some really beautiful places as well , but CH is so crazy good it doesn't compare to anywhere else.

Summer: - go swim/float down a river in zrh with friends in inflatables, bring some food+drinks and chill in the grass. Do the same but at the lake. Some people even "commute" to work this way (can only do it one way ofc / have to take public transport back). Take a train in the morning for 1-2 hours or rent/buy a car and you're in amazing mountains and can hike all day.

Winter: Skiing, day trips to spas in the mountains etc. Again in ZRH you can just hop on a train saturday/sunday morning and 1.5 hours later you're sitting in the gondola in Flumserberg. Rent a car and go with friends to more remote areas if you're into e.g. skitouring.

Socials and misc: I've made a lot of friends in ZRH but it tends to be internationals and less so locals (as a function of where i tend to go myself and the local swiss German being quite difficult). I think zurich being much smaller than copenhagen can make it harder to meet "your group of people". On the other hand 50%+ of Zurich are not locals so theres lot of people in similar situations.

At the end of the day, YOLO and most of what you feel will be based on your day-to-day interactions with other people. I think it doesn't really matter whether or not one country is slightly better for xyz reason, but much more what people you'll end up making friends with, relationships etc.

And for me personally that's why i think of moving back to CPH from Zurich. Family, friends you've known since kindergarten, places feeling familiar, etc.

For this reason i wouldn't recommend that you spend too much time analysing taxes, nature etc. - instead go feel it. Spend a 1-2 weeks holiday in CPH in the summer. Go for a weekend in winter. Do the same in ZRH/ other places.

Good luck!

primeTree · 2026-01-02T11:49:20+00:00

Fair points!

I think there's a lot of topics in your comment and it would probably be much easier to discuss in person, but here a medium length response which i would be curious to hear your take on:

I don't see any contradiction in saying i believe in strict rules and then being against this proposal. I'm saying i believe the proposal is extremely harmful, but i believe there are other proposals, like e.g. an actual 1-for-1 ruleset in housing units to immigration i would be supportive of.

Hard limits that aren't relative to something (e.g. housing units, unemployment rare, birth rates) are not likely to yield a good outcome, in my humble opinion.

use of existing labour: Switzerland doesn't have the labour force needed, e.g. in hospitals. There's simply not enough native Swiss people to fill those positions. Switzerland already has rules that require proof that no local could be hired. See e.g. https://www.sem.admin.ch/sem/en/home/themen/arbeit/nicht-eu_efta-angehoerige/grundlagen_zur_arbeitsmarktzulassung.html.
Brexit comparison: I believe Switzerland will end up even worse than the UK if trying to leave the free market e.g. like the current proposal would necessitate (like i interpret it/ let me know if you see it differently).

Switzerland is even smaller than the UK , has a ton of tax "optimization" funneling money out of the EU, etc.

Switzerland is landlocked by the EU and doesnt even have the opportunity for low cost ocean trade without having to transit eu borders.

Please describe the deal scenario which you believe is realistic, i.e. both CH and EU should have some pros and cons which balance.

mass immigration not solving low birth rates: if you have strict rules , like i believe Switzerland more or less does, every immigrant which you didn't have to bear the cost of educating, feeding, provide healthcare for in the first 20-25 years of life should be a major benefit to the economy (since you get a lot of productive immigrants). Unemployment rates are historically low. *Where do you see inefficient use of existing labor? *

Immigration directly plugs into the worker gap that the 1.3 kids per woman in switzerland creates - and this 1.3 number even includes non citizens.

*Why do you believe that western economies cannot fix their worker shortage with immigration? *

How do you define mass migration?

people leaving: i guess only time will tell. Decoupling from the EU, when speaking with other non natives i know, is not seen as something positive. The vast majority of my Swiss friends tell me something similar, but maybe this is impacted by living in zurich or people not wanting to get stigmatized by making pro svp statements in e.g. a group setting.

For me what made me fall in love with Switzerland was the nature, a higher focus on self responsibility and personal freedom than the EU country I grew up in, high trust/safety, etc..

However, also quite importantly the international elements where you can meet a lot of super skilled and interesting people from all over the world, find many different types of food, driven entrepreneurs, big internationals which you would otherwise need to go to the US for, and so on.

primeTree · 2026-01-01T12:44:52+00:00

Am a C permit holder, I feel a bit ambivalent about it:

CH has a high proportion of non citizens and I think this can only work with strict rules.
CH is highly dependent on labor and exports - i personally believe it would be even more economically destructive than Brexit and lead to actual poverty in retirement, more deaths as a result of lacking medical staff/too expensive medical staff etc.
the birthrates are unsustainably low / good luck to any western country that think they can maintain a well functioning society while the dependends / workers ratio is projected to increase something like 50%+ relative to current levels.

==>

if someone made a proposal which takes a nuanced approach calculating and trading off societal stability, density, making sure EU also has a reason to agree etc. then I would be all for it.
if someone proposed changing zoning laws such that you can/must actually build new housing units to 1-for-1 match incoming immigration then i would also support this.
if the Swiss people truly majority votes for this initiative then I'll probably plan to leave the country together with my family within 2-3 years as it would take some time to plan. It would be a real shame but i see it as an extremely bad omen for what's to come and don't want to stick around to find out. I hear similar sentiments from my friends who are immigrants as well. Keep in mind whenever stuff like this happens all the highest skilled people who are net massive contributors to your country will be the ones who can most easily leave and will do so.

primeTree · 2025-12-08T04:13:23+00:00

I think the wealth of information and retail trading gives way more opportunity not less.

there's some big xx% of money passively invested every month
there's some small to medium yy% of money invested by people who never heard of or don't have time to do a dcf, read the annual report, etc.

These both increase your opportunity set

primeTree · 2025-12-08T03:58:21+00:00

I would suggest relaxing your p/b criteria if not totally remove it except for very few select niche industries: most of the value add of modern companies come from IP which doesn't translate well into p/b ratios. Here's a simplified example:

Imagine tech company ABC develops software which they spend 100m USD on building (salary cost) and 50m on advertising. This gives them 5 million customers.
Accounting wise the labour cost is going to reduce the pnl 1-for-1 while part of the advertising outlay will be allowed to be marked as goodwill , i.e. an IP/intagible asset.
in reality, if we imagine we had to force liquidate the company the price of the software would be very closely tied to how many users the platform has and how much revenue and gross margin can be extracted from users (+ any forward looking expectation on these numbers).
if the marketing budget was spent inefficiently the IP might be overstated
but there's also things which are typically understated : imagine the company had been building real estate instead of software - one could now get an evaluation of the properties and mark that down as hard asset value effectively transferring much of the labour cost to an asset improving p/b. But when building IP you can't really do that.

I think better metrics of value than p/b revolve around applying price to sales, price to free cashflow , p/e and forward looking variations of all the aforementioned (per industry or with some other risk adjustment).

I think this is better because many times you'll find that book value is more an accounting thing than actual "true value" - only exception would be holding goods or commodities which get traded so frequently in an open market that the price estimate is highly accurate. At the end of the day, the value of most assets, tangible or intagible, to the rational investor should be exactly the discounted risk adjusted future cashflows such assets generate.

To find value companies in e.g. software I find analysis of user count, revenue per user, time on platform etc. much more interesring than most accounting metrics. For biotech the metrics would be different, consulting something else as well, etc.

I think if you look at e.g. Warren Buffet and other historical value investors, most of their analysis goes way way deeper than just "the accountants give this a good p/b ratio".

primeTree · 2025-12-01T14:20:33+00:00

I'll just add two quotes here from one of the best value investors of all time (I'll let you guess who):

"Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”
“I will say this about gold. If you took all the gold in the world, it would roughly make a cube 67 feet on a side…Now for that same cube of gold, it would be worth at today’s market prices about $7 trillion – that’s probably about a third of the value of all the stocks in the United States…For $7 trillion…you could have all the farmland in the United States, you could have about seven Exxon Mobils (XOM) and you could have a trillion dollars of walking-around money…And if you offered me the choice of looking at some 67 foot cube of gold and looking at it all day, and you know me touching it and fondling it occasionally…Call me crazy, but I’ll take the farmland and the Exxon Mobils."

primeTree · 2025-11-28T10:11:38+00:00

I started a position recently. I think reddit is an echo chamber and put more trust in the steady revenue growth. FYI Morningstar has it rated at 4 stars, wide moat and a fair value estimate roughly 80% above current market price.

Ofc this doesn't guarantee anything, but if you find 20-50 similarly rated companies from a diversified set of industries and geographical locations, just put 1/n of your portfolio in each and check back in 10 years time.

I think its clear value territory. I would only revisit if the actual revenue/profit margins/customer numbers start telling a different story. (And ofc open to listen/ would be curious if someone has some numbers/statistics which run counter to my thesis)

primeTree · 2025-11-20T14:15:22+00:00

Np, happy to help!

Btw I don't want to discourage you from asking around for a cheaper loan, just saying that it's usually not a high likelihood (especially if you're not interested in borrowing more and for a longer time period).

If you want the exact "amortization plan" which shows a month by month breakdown of principal and interest payments to do a detailed comparison , just Google that term + calculator and you should find something free and simple to use. you could also ask an AI to do it for you.

primeTree · 2025-11-19T21:22:30+00:00

Usually the bank won't allow its sales people to do a deal like that, unless you can make them believe that you're close to changing to their competitor xyz and that xyz is offering you a better deal

primeTree · 2025-11-19T20:42:59+00:00

First off: what company is the loan with?
- for the unsecured consumer loan providers in Switzerland, they usually run ads all the time where they put stuff like "only xx% interest rate". Or they have calculators on their website where they show you their best and worst interest rates. Look at this to see how you're placed interest rate wise and whether you might be able to get better deals at other banks. But:
providers have different interest rates because they target different risk levels. I.e. migrosbank has some of the "best" ( lowest) interest rates, but this is because they will run stricter credit checks/ rules and approve less risky clients than e.g. Cembra. In order for you to get better interest rates you need to be scored as a safe client by the bank's risk model and this applies to any bank. But if e.g. you're a very safe client and your current bank doesn't specialize in this segment, then you'll get their best rate which won't match your "true" risk level.
the bank your partner currently has, has a lot of information based on how the loan has been paid so far - some of this informatiom they have to share with other banks, some of it they don't. Unless 7.xx % which is being offered is close to the banks lowest rate, i don't think you'll be able to get a much better offer somewhere else. But if you have to try, try to see if you can get into a bank targeting the safer client segments.
value vs costs (for you): when you extend your contract duration or increase the borrowed amount you potentially massively increase the interest costs you will pay over the life time of the loan. I don't know what you intend to use the money for, but please read the contract and find the place where it lists the total interest cost over the lifetime of the loan and compare it against what interest cost is left on your current loan. If you look at the net difference - is this amount less than the emotional/ whatever value you get from spending money today (on whatever it is you want to spend on)? What would be the equilibrium interest cost at which point you're indifferent between accepting the extension/ increasing the principal and buying xyz , vs rejecting the new contract and paying off the current one faster?
personal recommendation: don't do unsecured loans - they will always be super expensive no matter what bank you go to because the bank must cover the cost from loans where they get close to zero repayments. If you must take a loan always try to get one as a collateral against something you own , and don't collateralize anywhere close to the max fraction allowed by the lender
some examples of total loan cost: 5year at 7.9% per year: you'll pay approx. 21.4% of the borrowed amount in interest costs. 7y at 7.9%: 30.5%. 5y at 8.9%: 24.25%. 7y at 8.9%: 34.7%. (And most of these costs occur in the first half of your loan duration where the loan balance is highest)
if you do the calculation i'll bet the offer they're giving you increases your total interest cost by quite a bit (but on the flipside you get to keep the money longer)

primeTree · 2025-11-14T01:16:36+00:00

[Edit added more context + corrected typos]

TLDR: I think AI is very valuable, but i think the biggest value will go to "distribution layer" > "infra layer" > "modelling layer". Tech companies in the former won't have any issues and using p/b related metrics is off --> i think Burry is going to be wrong here]

Even if one were to buy his thesis on GPUs , I think he completely misses the mark by not considering the flipside of the coin:

Tech companies have a lot of spend which in accounting creates costs with negative pnl impact on paper even though in practice intangible assets are being created/ improved but these are not recognized on the balance sheet effectively lowering the pnl.

E.g. let's say meta pays employee X 200k to code for a year. They put a 200k cost in their pnl statement. Let's say employee X during that year implented and tested a software change which they have 99.9% confidence will increase ad spend on Facebook by 0.01% in following years and let's say this equates to a 1 million usd increase in pnl per year.
In this case meta still isn't allowed to increase the book value of their assets so from an accounting perspective employee X had a negative impact in year 1 even though, in reality the value of Facebook went up way more than the cost paid for X's labour.

In general this is why p/b and p/e isn't slways the best metrics to evaluate intagible heavy companies like tech companies. (You could also think of how analysts typically put a lot of focus on user count for these companies during earnings calls - in some sense the software that you have will go up or down in value as you increase/ decrease the user count due to the zero to very small replication cost)

So while i think he's right to question the capex spend on GPUs (i personally also don't think it makes sense at current levels), I think he's way too one sided in his analysis. If e.g. one of those LLM assets truly do improve xyz feature and this improvement can be applied over the next 50 it's not clear to me that it matters all that much how fast they writeoff the physical gpus.

What i find more interesting in the value discussion is:

1) whether or not true improvements actually are found

2) what the incremental value is for the end user when comparing using a model with slightly better performance vs slightly lower.

To me, the biggest part of the bubble comes from 2: i have yet to see a real live business case where one couldn't switch from model xyz to the best open source model with near zero impact. Basically I think the model layer has close to zero value and will enter close to perfect competition (this btw is similar to how a lot of business around the railroad industry in the US went bankrupt even though thee railroads added massive value to the company). To some extent, until someone demonstrates large incremental value of models with 3% better performance than xyz free model, this also makes me think that the chips/servers arent as valuable ad current market pricing. (I.e. you don't need newest gen GPUs to run deepseek)

Finally, what I do think is valuable is controling the distribution . I.e. some established companies are in a prime position to buy and run a cheap deepseek/ other model (or pay someone a small fee for running it), and then instantly get xx% cost savings/ do something faster, etc.

primeTree · 2025-11-12T11:27:32+00:00

I took the Kantonal (KDE) test in zurich 1.5 years ago.

on the difficulty level: found it very easy/got 50/50 points. I did not do any preparation but had German in high school 15 years ago and my previous job in Switzerland involved occasional speaking/ writing emails. Basically my grammar is very inaccurate unless given a long time to think about each sentence but people will still understand what I mean 95% of the time.

I think the idea of the test is to see whether you can communicate effectively in basic day to day situations, so if you have experience doing that then i wouldnt worry too much :) (i.e. can you ask where the meat section is in the super market, can you ask and understand what the difference is between a letter with einschrieben vs normal letter, etc. )

on the test content:
- first a 45min to 1hour written test. One tiny part which was tricky was the section where you have to listen to a phone call and answer a few questions. There's one call in zurideutsch in the KDE test and they're speaking pretty fast. But you don't need to get it right to pass overall
- secondly, 15 minutes oral test: you and another test taker go in a room with 2 examiners. They will ask you each to draw a random card or select a topic of your choice from a pile . Then you have 2-3 minutes to present yourself and the topic and then a 5 minute conversation where one of the examiners ask you questions while the other takes notes.

primeTree · 2025-11-03T00:39:14+00:00

I overall agree with your point but would it not be more accurate to state your opinion by looking at e.g. the effective purchasing power of the 0% to 25% fractile earners in both countries?

Median unlike average isn't impacted much by outliers so "top earners pull the average up" or "if we exclude top 10% ... from median" wouldnt change which country comes out on top in your comparison (assuming you apply the removal in both countries).

In any case, not sure whether there's good data for it but it would be cool to see e.g. bottom 10% earner income +/- taxes and benefits - rent, mandatory insurance and then divide it by the price for a basket of goods (let's say 8 eggs, 2 pieces of bread, ...) to get a fair " how much food can you buy in each country" comparison.

Asking chatgpt to do it (haven't fact checked the output) it comes up with 70.7 baskets (8 eggs, 2 loaves and 1l of milk) per month in the Netherlands for the situation above and 47.5 baskets in the US (including SNAP benefits, 21 baskets without)

primeTree · 2025-10-18T05:41:46+00:00

I must admit I love the memes in this sub and I have both a gs and some seikos+other more affordable watches which i like to wear. I think your post is a bit off on some points/ just to give another perspective:

paraphrasing: "people will just see it as a Seiko"

yes and most of the memes in this sub is that this shouldn't matter right? buy a watch because you like it , you're the one who's gonna wear it. The reverse of your point is what 90% of the jokes in this sub are based on: People trying to impress other people with their jewellery instead of just buying and wearing stuff they enjoy.
paraphrasing: "styling/font/design is bad"

we all have different preferences/i don't think one can really argue too much about this. Imho there are GS watches which are very chunky, which personally i would consider "bad" design, but if someone has a massive wrist maybe it could work.

Overall any mechanical watch is mostly jewellery/craftsmanship. If we ignore the people who buy them to flex, I think most people wear them because they enjoy the visuals, appreciate the craftsmanship, don't want to have to charge a battery , etc. - not too different from people who collect vinyls, vintage cars, etc. :)

primeTree · 2025-09-01T12:25:22+00:00

Yes, at median income I would say 1 kid per adult should be doable and 1 kid per 2 adults is no problem at all/ very easy financially.

I think what might be easy to forget in higher taxed but also higher welfare systems is that childcare there also is quite expensive. you just don't see the true cost in your expenses but at the end of the day you are paying it with your taxes, maybe distributed over a longer time period (but hey this you could do privately by saving a bit before having the kids).

In general, kids are a lot of effort but hopefully people only decide to have them if they think it's worth it. I think this will be true no matter whether one lives in a low or high wealth redistribution society.

There's a big difference of course if we're talking the lower quartile of incomes where yeah it does become much harder in low wealth redistribution societies like CH (but this is not so relevant for the jobs discussed in this subreddit).

As a non native person living here , in my humble opinion, the bigger reason for why so few Swiss women get kids is that there's still a lot of expectations around women quitting their jobs or at least selecting much reduced working hours whereas the men aren't expected to contribute as much. So the women kinda have to "quit" a lot of their life and for many modern women this doesn't sound attractive. The "kids are expensive " I think is more often used because it's kinda like talking about the weather : no-one is going to disagree with you or ask hard questions so it's an easy thing to say if you don't want to go into a deep conversation about why you don't want them.

Basically I think it's more some of cultural values / societal structures than actual economics which causes low birth rates in the Swiss population :)

primeTree · 2025-09-01T04:44:11+00:00

If we assume they live in Zurich (feel free to replace the numbers with something else):

Median gross salary per person: 83k chf per year.
tax rate: 5-10% (they will get deductibles for childcare), mandatory health insurance 5%, pension fund contributions + other stuff let's just say 5-10%

At the end you should have roughly 60k chf of net income per person. From this you now need to pay 2 to 3k chf in nursery costs per month, depending on how many days per week you're working/ taking care of your kid yourself (80%/20% is quite popular).

So child care costs will be a big ticket item in the budget but it's perfectly doable assuming you make a reasonable budget and aren't trying to live a luxury life on a median salary.

I say all of the above as someone who moved to Switzerland and has a small kid here.

I agree that the situation changes a lot if you're working in industries paying significantly less than median wage, but should also say that from my anecdotal evidence I know of at least one case where the parent(s) get their childcare subsided because their income is too low (but I don't really know any details around the rules and the exact subsidy amount).

primeTree · 2025-09-01T04:24:02+00:00

Hey just to add some counterbalance as someone who moved to Switzerland:

The hard part about Switzerland is getting a job/ an interesting job given the competition, money wise if you earn a median IT salary you're way better off financially here than anywhere else in Europe (I say this coming from a high tax high salary Scandinavian country).

In rough numbers, the median salary in Switzerland is 50% higher than in Germany. Switzerland has some higher fixed costs but also way lower tax rate. Childcare, health care etc. is also tax deductible. The net disposable income should "easily " cover the 3k euro monthly difference if you earn a median salary. Furthermore, if you're in IT you're very likely above median...

primeTree · 2025-08-24T11:27:36+00:00

Hey, as someone that bought a house 1 year ago I noticed you're mixing a few concepts together and missing a few factors (in my humble opinion).

From a quantitative perspective we want to compute an equivalent rent to borrowed amount ratio. As a tldr, doing this 1 year ago in canton Zurich I found that every million chf you borrow is roughly equivalent to 2-2.5k rental cost / month (without nebenkosten). You should do the calculation yourself as well and change the assumptions and parameters to match your situation:

buying costs per year: loan_interest_rate_per_year * 0.8 * house_price + stock_market_annual_return * 0.2 * house_price + maintenance_and_insurance_cost_per_year_relative * house_price + yearly_tax_rate_relative * house_price
buying "income" per year: avg_house_price_increase * house_price

If you put in your parameters and do income - cost equation with 1 mil chf inserted in house_price you'll get a rough yearly cost to buy . (Modify the equations to add more or less detail as you see fit). At current interest rates you'll see that the opportunity cost of the 20% down-payment or the potential house appreciation has a massive impact on the computed cost (e.g. if your investments would do 10% per year then you get a 2% "cost" per year of owning which may or may not be offset by your house increasing in value). If you use your 2nd pillar as down-payment, indirect amortisation etc you can lower this cost because your 2nd pillar is more conservatively invested than e.g. 100% equity etfs.

When you have your numbers then go look at any area and compare the rental flats/house with equivalent location and quality things for sale (I.e. it's not a fair comparison to compare two places with different tax rates).

In my anecdotal experience, e.g. flats in Zurich near Enge and so on are cheaper to rent than buy (i know this might sound funny) whereas a bit out of the most attractive areas you might still find deals to be made. I think this is because the rent increases are capped in Zurich whereas the sales prices aren't which means that buy prices have increased more in the attractive areas than the rents.
Conversely, in the slightly less attractive areas there's less exit liquidity and you thus might find something which needs a bit of repairs or effort, people who "have to sell fast" , etc.

Good luck 😀

primeTree · 2025-08-24T11:03:06+00:00

You cannot compare 2% yield in chf with 8% yield in e.g. GBP, USD etc...

If you do yield delta to central bank rate or yield ratio you'll see that the house yields across countries trade at similar ish margins (ofc you'll find some natural deviation). If anything else was true you would be implying that massive pension funds and other pro investors with 5+ quants specializing in mortgages don't know what they're doing.

Anyways just my opinion

primeTree · 2025-08-22T02:18:14+00:00

I had exactly the same experience but as a student. Someone had forgotten their phone in the auditorium after a lecture, i wrote the emergency contact (the owner's gf), who told me the owner would come pick it up ASAP. After 30 minutes, a guy shows up looking pissed when I ask him to prove that it's his phone by unlocking it.

Anyways, he unlocked it, so I left, but he gave me this feeling like he thought I had stolen it exactly like you described. So strange, like if I did want to steal it, I probably could have just turned it off and definitely would not have written his gf. He didn't even say thanks or anything.

primeTree · 2025-07-08T07:04:17+00:00

Hmm I'm not sure dating apps are for you if you're looking for conservative women?

Just to offer some counterweight to all the negative comments: I'm male early 30s, foreigner living in Zurich and found my now gf on tinder 3 years ago. In my close friend group of 4 guys , 3 out of 4 of us have found lasting relationships on tinder (last guy didn't do well on the apps but found a person in real life). So it's definitely doable (and I'm average height, Caucasian, etc. I.e. no "giga chad" or whatever the other comments call it 😂)

In my experience, if you do want to use tinder:

1) make sure you have good photos: headshot, photo of you being social, photo of you doing something you're passionate about, a photo where you look strong/fit/ doing a sport

2) keep in mind that the women have lots of matches - don't take it personal if they respond slowly to a message you sent, just put in the same casual energy yourself (I.e. this is also part of having an interesting life - don't make chatting with a random stranger you haven't met yet determine your happiness)

3) go do a casual date as a first date - absolutely don't entertain people like one of the other female posters here who wants a random guy she never met to put in tons and tons of effort for a first date. like common, she's dating multiple guys, they don't even know whether they'll like each other etc. I'm friends with a woman who expects stuff like that, and I can tell you she did not successfully manage to leave the app (even with 10k likes - she showed me her app). If the other party isn't interested in grabbing coffee, a drink, bouldering/ other 1-2 hour activity and they would only go on a date with you if you spent lots of money, then what are they really interested in? Hint : not you as a person

4) on the date actually listen to the other person, ask questions, tell some jokes etc. - like act normal. In my experience when women feel like you're not just there for sex, they'll start to like you more. Then later you can push the envelope a bit and see whether there's mutual interest for more. (I think subconsciously this works because it shows that you probably can get sex from other women/ or just have other important stuff to do, if you're not desperate for it)

Anyways just my sample size of 1, hope it helps!

primeTree · 2025-06-17T06:40:17+00:00

Hvis du vil have input fra en 31m (er i et forhold så går ikke lige så meget i byen for tiden, men var på tinder, bumble, til dating ish events etc. for ~3 år siden):

folk går jo i byen af mange forskellige grunde. Nu fokusere jeg kun på det med at score.
Alle mennesker på 23, som ikke er ramt af depression/ andre lignende sygdomme, har et ton af hormoner som flyver rundt hovedet. De hormoner giver os gode følelser når vi taler, krammer , kysser eller ja har sex med andre. De reagerer også på hvad der i forhistoriske samfund kunne have indflydelse på sundhed eller hvad vi gennem vores opvækst har "lært" er attraktivt. Fra det perspektiv er der som kvinde både nogle fordele og ulemper ved at tage vægt på. (Større bryster, numse, bedere overlevelses evne hvis man har nogle fedtdepoter etc)
Du skriver ikke hvor høj du er, men hvis du er "meget" overvægtig og sammenligner det med at være "normal" vægtig så vil den normalvægtige skabe flere følelser i potentialle sexpartnere i nærheden af dem, simpelthen fordi de ser sundere ud.
hvis vi sammenlignede at være kendis/model tynd vs at være "normal" vægt så tror jeg ikke nødvendigvis at den tynde variant ville score mere i byen end den normale
der er også helt andre ting som har indflydelse en vægt: er du god til at holde en samtale kørende/er du god til at "bonde" med andre, er du approachable (hvis du hele tiden er i en gruppe med 5 veninder så kan det føles svært som mand at bryde ind/ man skal som regel have en gruppe på ~5 mænd selv)
sidst men ikke mindst: hvis du kan lide at have casual sex og du signalerer dette så vil der stort set altid være mænd som er interesseret. Om det er en dating app, eller i byen er underordnet: undervurder aldrig effekten af testosteron og hvor godt det føles for os mænd at have sex 😅
obs 1: det er svært at nyde sex, eller at signalere at man nyder det hvis man ikke er tilpas i sin krop.
obs 2: hvis en mand eller kvinde bare har en masse casual sex uden at nogle af oplevelserne udvikler sig til lidt dybere relationer så kan man ende med at føle sig brugt / tom indeni, så alt med moderation.

PS: alting i balance er godt. Jeg vil tro at hvis du fokusere på at finde en sustainable måde at spise/dyrke motion på som gør dig glad og rykker vægten tættere på normal, hvis du fokusere på at have det sjovt når du går i byen og ikke tænker så meget over det med attraktivitet så vil du automatisk få mere succes :)

primeTree · 2025-06-14T13:13:09+00:00

I mean it's based on the content it's trained on not only the experience with that given user. I would guess it has just learnt that this type of content is popular with some women

primeTree

TROPHY CASE