So this is not a blog post related to IT, but I think it is very important for everyone regardless of their job, hobbies, sex or age.

What I got teached from my parents: Saving money and leaving it at the bank for bad times is the right way of doing it. What I did not know and understand in the past: Inflation eats your savings and your hard earned money. And it is a shame that nobody teaches this at school.

To hedge against inflation you have some options: buy houses or apartments and rent them out. This requires lots of capital and is not feasible if you are young. The other easy way of saving in real terms after inflation is investing in stocks. Not single stocks though, because they are risky. You have a basket of hundreds or thousands of stocks that you can buy for as low as 5 CHF. These baskets are called ETFs, or exchange traded funds.

Diversifying

Because single stocks are risky, ETFs are the way of doing it, because they are diversified. For example, if you choose a World ETF, you diversify across countries, sectors, currencies and company size. Never consider single stocks because you feel like they are the next NVIDIA.

ETFs are very cheap

World ETFs are very cheap, the TER (total expense ratio) of the cheapest ETF (Ticker WRDUSW) as of January 2026 is 0.06%, which means you pay 0.6 CHF a year for every 1000 CHF invested.

If you want to include Emerging Markets, which includes countries like India, Brazil, Mexiko, Poland, China etc. the cheapest ETF has a TER of 0.12% (Ticker ACWI on JustETF, see sources below).

ETFs are boring

Once invested you just wait and do nothing. Don’t try to time the market, because you invest for the future, for the next 10-30 years. Most of the investors feel like they have to do something because there is not much happening.

Getting started is not complicated

Opening a trading account is very easy. Nowadays it can be done through an app or website. After depositing your money you can select the ETF of your choice, buy it and you are good to go. Most of the brokers allow you to set a savings plan, which makes all of this automated. Just set it and forget it.

Sources:

https://www.justetf.com/ch/etf-profile.html?isin=IE00BD4TXV59

https://www.justetf.com/ch/etf-profile.html?isin=IE00B44Z5B48