Buy a home and use your pillar 2 for half the downpayment. Invest the 10% you avoided using for the downpayment in stocks for (probably) higher returns.
If you’re jobless for 6+ months, the entire 2nd pillar usually gets transferred to a blocked account (Freizügigkeitskonto, FZK). You’re legally obligated to transfer the FZK to your next Pensionskasse, but this isn’t enforced and there’s no penalty if you don’t. If you don’t, you get to invest the FZK in stocks or bonds using Finpension, VIAC, etc.
Those seemingly small annual differences in return add up to surprisingly large amounts over time.
Thanks. I believe I’m in a good path. I became aware of the problems for 2045 around 10 years ago and have tried to optimize resources since then. I write about this issue because people believe that doing their part of the contract is enough. Germany it’s showing this is not a good bet.
Back to Switzerland/Germany. Maybe I’m too entitled, but I believe my generation is the one marton says it’s going sustain the 1st pillar in the future. Well, that support of working immigrants is happening right now and the trend of less workers per retiree keeps developing. 1st pillar works today, albeit with some patches like the recent increase in VAT. However, immigrants are a solution for today, not for year 2045.
I watched it, though with a few distractions. Have to watch again, out of curiosity. Towards the end it was said that for 10 years Switzerland didn’t pay out the retirees in Kosovo because there was no pension treaty between Kosovo and Switzerland. The treaty is there again but Switzerland won’t reimburse the missing years. WTF, and why the people didn’t register in any nearby country to make the money flowing? Also, when there’s no pension treaty, the whole pension should be paid out not just suspended
There’s many questions in my head about this case, but in the end of the day the summary is: never trust the government with your money. I’d love to take my 2nd pillar out of the system.
There was the possibility for them to get their money back but only what they paid in. And that is not good. Nor okay.
Fully agree. Never have. It’s not that they purpously cheat you here but they change a law and oooops.
I remember very well what they promised with the second pillar. And then they had the idea to drop the “Gesetzlicher Mindestumwandlungssatz” (deepl says Statutory minimum conversion rate). Several times although always after long phases.
I’m not against AHV - not at all, it’s a very good thing, even though not sufficient - second pillar is okay too but should be voluntary. Third pillar is voluntary and is a good thing too.
Imo there should be AHV as it is and third pillars voluntary as it is.
Remember not to put all in one third pillar. You can have several and cashing them in in separate years is better re taxes.
You obviously don’t know so much about the situation of the Kosovas (not blaming you for it, I just do since the war started there). They can not just register in an other country. Not to mention that the surrounding - new - countries still hate them. Or at least treat them as inferiors.
Also thought about this. But, when someone only fights to right a wrong, reason is not involved anymore. In reality it’s 2 fights: to the right the wrong, and to get what you want while fighting the 1st fight.
Some people will say that X amount is spent on setting up an address in country that gets retirement payments and this is not fair. Others will say, lose 200 or lose 1’000? I’d say both.
This was an option, but the savings on were so small that cashing out would be the equivalent of 3-5 years of minimum 1st pillar payment. A 1st pillar statement was shown somewhere with 28k-30k francs, don’t remember the minute.
It’s probable that the low 1st pillar contribution was caused by Saisonnierstatut (what curley mentioned earlier) or some creative reporting by the employer.
That opens another can of worms. In this case, the workers allegedly contributed to the system for several years and somehow low savings. What to do with people that don’t contribute directly to the system and still entitled to the minimum payment? And, 13th payment on top of that.
This one is good, really good.
Germany has finally found a way to stop trains from being delayed all the time.
Everybody said it was utterly impossible and now a solution with such forehead-slapping simplicity one wonders why the Bundesbahn hasnt been doing it for ages.
They simply cancel delayed trains so that they dont show up on the statistics.
Vorsprung durch Technik my arse.
Buuut as they are going to make the Deutschland ticket more expensive it is expected that less people will use rhe rail, so all good.
Oh yes, the Oktoberfest started today and the main statuon is still closed and roadworks have stopped a lot of innercity trams.
Chaos is therefore ensured.
Ahhh Germany!
Ironically it seems we dont have enough soldiers, so the solution is offering to overpay young men to join the Wehrmacht, sorry, the Bundeswehr with around 2000€’s netto per month, free bord and lodgings, I dont get that kind of moolah by the way and if that doesnt work, then it’s back to conscription, or rather a lottery system.
Speaking of military; Trump is bitching that we ars not buying enough weapons from the US to give to Ukraine, we only spend about a billion by the way. That is of course on top of the monies we spend on keeping Uke refugees happy, housed and fed.
On one hand complaining that there is no money and that social programs are to be cut back and that pentioners should carry on working and on the other hand money is being crammed down tbe throats of people and institutions that havnt earned it.
It sucks.
This humorous analysis on IP points out the problem throughout Europe:
Too many chiefs and not enough soldiers, military gear designed and procured not for war but or making the manufacturer the most money with the least effort.
Most Western weapons in Ukraine are rendered useless on the battlefield after a short while because of complicated and expensive maintenance that can’t be done in the field - and most maintenance has to be done in Poland due to any shop being instantly a target for drones and rockets.
Meanwhile, deindustrialization is continuing at a rapid pace. A lot of new cars from MB and BMW are e.g. built in Hungary, with parts from Romania. Stil charging DE prices of course.
Seems Marx was correct after all: “capitalism eats its children”
That is where we are now.
The weapons the Ukes are getting are designed to fight the Red Army on equal terms, tank vrs tank, plane vrs plane, man vrs man. Classical cold war thinking of: “The red menace”
But this isnt the red army of the evil commie, it’s the Russian army and they no longer play the cold war ball and a few dozen Abrams, a handful of jets are not going to chuck the Russians out of Ukraine territory, 5000 or 6000 WW2 era T34’s cheap to build and expendable and thrown at tbe Russians may do the trick though.
Needs drones by the million, air, ground and naval.
Due to the Ukraine war Russia is far ahead of the West on quantity if not quality
Read a science fiction book once about a drone war
It turned into a battle between hackers taking over enemy drones and then recovering the hacked ones
Eventually their operating systems got so corrupted the drones turned to killing everyone
At the moment the Bundeswehr is conducting maneuvers all over Bavaria.
Including live fire with smallarms…
…
…
And nobody told the police!
In the ensuring fire fight between the police and the army one person was injured by flying bullets
And the best…: The maneuvers are designed to test the integration between the military and civillian institutes, like the police.
I would say there are not a few old-timey German generals spinning in their graves right now.
I don’t blame the Polizei. Masked guys shoot at them, blanks also make noise…what else to do?
The police said that she was alerted about a man with a gun and therefore approached with several emergency services. “As it turned out in the aftermath, the notified weapon carrier was a Bundeswehr member who was on site as part of an exercise,” it said in a statement.
According to reports in “Bild”, the field hunters are said to have shot at the alarmed officials with exercise ammunition - believing that this is part of the military exercise. The police are said to have shot back sharply and hit one of the soldiers.
According to the Bundeswehr, the injured man is a fielder; a spokesman for the Bundeswehr’s Operational Command said the gunman was a police officer. The exercise was previously registered, according to the information – but the police did not know about the exercise, as a spokesman announced late on Wednesday evening. The police in Erding are therefore not involved in the current exercise.