Blog
Insights on financial planning in Switzerland — pensions, taxes, real estate and estate planning.
What Wealth4Life is – and what it deliberately does not do
AHV, pension fund, Pillar 3a, mortgage, taxes: in Switzerland, each of these topics gets calculated on its own – yet they're connected. Wealth4Life simulates the whole household year by year, over decades. What the tool can do, who it's for, and what it deliberately does not do.
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Lump sum or pension from the pension fund – why there is no general answer
Retirement brings one of the biggest financial decisions there is: does the pension-fund balance become a lifelong pension, a lump-sum payout – or a mix of both? The decision is usually final. A look at the mechanics of both paths, and at why the answer depends on your own trajectory.
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Pension Fund Buy-Ins: How Tax Savings, the Blocking Period and Withdrawal Interact
A voluntary buy-in into the pension fund is considered a classic tax-optimization move. But the mechanism behind it has more moving parts than the tax deduction alone suggests: marginal tax rate, a three-year blocking period, later taxation on withdrawal. How the pieces work together.
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What Early Retirement Really Costs
Stopping two or three years early is a common wish, but its price hides in three systems at once: AHV, the pension fund and your own assets. The cost doesn't show up in the year you retire — it shows up decades later.
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Pay Down or Invest?
After buying a home, the question comes up anew every year: should free money go into the mortgage or into your wealth? Both have their own logic – and which one holds up in a specific case is decided over decades, not in the year of payment.
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Participation in Acquired Assets: What Your Property Regime Means at Divorce and Death
If you marry without a marital agreement, you live under participation in acquired assets – usually without noticing. The property regime only becomes tangible when the marriage ends, through divorce or death. At that point, the origin of every franc decides who owns what.
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Cohabitation or Marriage: The Financial Differences Few People Know
Same home, same life, same bills – but legally, cohabitation and marriage are worlds apart: in the state pension, in the pension fund, in inheritance law and in taxes. The differences show up in exactly the moments that matter most.
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Compulsory portions under the new inheritance law: how much room a will has today
Since the start of 2023, Switzerland has had a revised inheritance law: the compulsory portions have become smaller, the freely disposable quota has grown. Anyone who wrote their will earlier — or has none at all — may be planning around outdated limits.
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When a Partner Dies: What AHV, the Pension Fund and Inheritance Law Set in Motion
The death of a partner changes a household's finances in a dozen places at once: pensions disappear or newly begin, matrimonial property and inheritance law divide up the assets, taxes are recalculated. A sober look at a chain worth understanding once – beforehand.
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How the simulation calculates: assumptions, sources, limits
Anyone who entrusts their financial planning to a calculation model should know how it calculates. A look under Wealth4Life's hood: where the numbers come from, which assumptions you control yourself – and what the model cannot know.
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Why Wealth4Life Gives No Recommendations
A financial-planning tool that doesn't say what to do – isn't that only half a tool? On the contrary: the line between calculating and recommending is drawn deliberately. It has to do with conflicts of interest, with the law – and with who a decision actually belongs to.
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