UPDATE: the services are suspended since October 2022
(Disclosure: links marked with an asterisk * are affiliate links)
Do you want to know why at the end of the month there’s no money left on your bank account?
Do you want to learn how to track your finances, make a budget, improve your saving rate?
Do you want to move your first steps toward Financial Independence?
Mr. RIP is here for you 🙂
What is Personal Finance Coaching?
Personal finance coaching is a fee based 1:1 service I’m offering to help people navigate their personal financial life.
My goal is to help you getting started, and able to move your first steps toward Financial Awareness, Financial Intelligence, and Financial Freedom.
I can help you with the following issues:
Basics of Financial Awareness:
- Income, Expenses, and Net Worth tracking with spreadsheets.
- Income, Expenses, and Net Worth Analysis.
- Getting out of Debt.
- Budgeting.
Financial Intelligence & Freedom:
- Forecasting & Early Retirement Planning (see Reader Case Study with Mr. ATM).
- Passive Investing Education (what are Index Funds? What are ETFs? How to Rebalance? Lump Sum or Dollar Cost Averaging? How to Stick with a Plan?)
- Asset Allocation Guidance.
- No Security Selection support. I’m not qualified to give you direct securities recommendations. But I can teach you how I evaluate a financial instrument, where to find the most common ETFs and things like that.
Bonus for people in Switzerland:
- Swiss Pension System.
- Tax Efficiency and Tax Optimizations in Switzerland.
- Frugality and Money Efficiency Tricks in Switzerland.
If you think you might need my help go ahead and book your first appointment 😉
What is NOT Personal Finance Coaching?
My coaching service doesn’t constitute a professional financial advice. I’m not a Certified Financial Planner, nor a certified Financial Advisor, nor a Certified Portfolio Manager. Again, I’m here to offer my help, guide you through your journey, share my experiences, but I’m not touching your money, I’m not offering you investing advice, and I should not be held accountable for your eventual mistakes.
I’m not selling you any product. I share my investments publicly in my blog and my YT videos, and I don’t have any vested interest in any of the financial products I’ve invested in so far. With one exception which is: I have an affiliation with Interactive Brokers*, but as I said so many times in my blog I’d recommend it even without the referral bonus (take a look at the Affiliate Marketing section on my Transparency page).
I’m not promising you any financial result. I’m happy to offer my help and to guide you thru your own financial improvement trip, but please don’t come to me expecting to find the magic formula to 10x your wealth in a month.
You gotta work out very hard to build a financial six pack!
How much does it cost?
You can pick one of the following packages:
- Quick (a single 30 minutes meeting, good for Q&A): 200 CHF (+VAT where applicable)
- OneOff (a single 60 minutes meeting): 300 CHF (+VAT where applicable)
- Full Service (4 hours, to be consumed in 3 months): 1000 CHF (+VAT where applicable)
- Tailored (Full Service, plus a report and a custom spreadsheet): variable, (>=2000 CHF)
If you’re interested send me an email.
If you live in Zurich (or nearby) I’d love to meet you face to face.
Else, we will conduct the sessions via video call.
Please take a look at the FAQ section for cancelations, reschedule, and moneyback policies.
Mr. RIP’s credentials for this Offering
“Yeah, cool… but who the heck are you, Mr. RIP? Why should I pay you for such a service?”
Good point 🙂
In the end I’m just “a guy with a blog”.
But…
- I’m blogging mainly about personal finance since June 2016. Go read some of my posts and judge my skills yourself.
- I’m a Software/Research Engineer with a 20 years long successful career according to objective standards, with a deep passion for spreadsheets, numbers and optimizations.
- I’ve been tracking my Net Worth since 1991, for 30 years and counting, and expenses “down to the cent” for almost 6 years.
- I’ve been saving between 60% and 75% of my salary since 2011. I was also saving (though much less back then) when my salary was 1350 EUR/Month and living in Milan, with a non-working partner.
- I’ve accumulated almost 1.5M CHF of wealth from zero, just using my skills. No inherited luck, except maybe genetic.
- I’ve been investing mostly passively for 6 years, but I was there in 2000-2002 DotCom bubble (with money invested, a lot of mistakes have been made), in the 2008-2009 Great Financial Crisis, and in the 2020 Covid Flash Crash, buying (not selling) at the bottom. For full disclosure, I’ve been scared by the all time market high just four months after the Covid-bottom and I’m now a bit underexposed in stocks.
- I’m Technically Financially Independent if I decide to relocate anywhere in the world except maybe the VHCOL areas.
- I’m an avid learner, and I’ve devoted a good part of my last 7-8 years into expanding my knowledge in personal finance related topics.
- I’ve been living in both Italy and Switzerland, I live a multi-currency life. My knowledge, interests, and experiences expand beyond a single country.
- I’m already coaching people with their finances since 2015, and professionally thanks to my blog since early 2020.
- I’ve achieved all of the above while being part of a one income family, for which I’m the sole financial provider.
If that’s enough for you, please take my hand
F.A.Q.
Who am I paying my money to?
The services are offered by:
Retire In Progress GmbH
Freilagerstrasse 73, 8047 Zurich
VAT Number: CHE-474.826.710
What if I want to cancel/reschedule my interview?
Same guidelines for my other services apply. Take a look at them here.
I’m unhappy with the service, can I have my money back?
Same guidelines for my other services apply. Take a look at them here.
I would like to pay in EUR or USD or whatnot. May I?
Same guidelines for my other services apply. Take a look at them here.
Are you going to bill me back-office time?
Of course the Tailored plan requires extra offline work that’s going to be billed, but excluding that case I’m only billing you “1:1 face time”, unless you ask me to do something that requires more that 10 minutes of my time via mail or phone.
So, if you’re my customer you should feel free to ask me questions via mail or other mediums.
Please, keep in mind that not-billed requests are addressed by me on a best effort basis.
Where is the social proof? Where can I see your (un)satisfied customers feedback?
Oh, I don’t do that. I know that every respectable fake guru’s landing page should be filled with hundreds of 5 stars reviews, but I’m not going to do that. I don’t care. I’ve received a lot of private feedback and thank you messages, I’m not going to share them here. There are thousands of amazing public comments here on my blog, check them out if you care.
The closest thing to “customer feedback” I’ve published on my blog has been the 2020 Q1 free coaching review. Check it out. Mind that it’s long and articulated feedback, not a set of screenshots of decontextualized and cherrypicked sentences 🙂
Show me your finances!
Yeah, sure, I do it every month or every quarter since the beginning of this blog!
Since early 2021 I also conduct Live monthly/quarterly Financial Updates on my Twitch and YouTube Channel.
Here you can take a look at my complex spreadsheet, and here you can check my Spreadsheet Post Series on my blog.
Enjoy!
Show me an example of a (Early) Retirement Planning analysis!
I’ve published one on my blog in 2018 with Mr. ATM, centered around working in Switzerland and retiring abroad.
Take a look at it.
Also, feel free to copy the spreadsheets used in that Case Study and run your own math on your own 🙂
Show me an example of a Portfolio Design based on Individual needs and risk tolerance!
Nope, I can’t offer you any concrete customized suggestion that could be classified as “financial advice”.
But I can’t improve my finances, I only earn X per month… it’s impossible!
You’re probably right. If you only earn X per month you’re doomed.
But let me offer you two pieces of advice.
First, as an alternative to “just complaining” why not take some responsibility?
How? Since you’re here, I assume you can “read things on the internet”, right? Just use this skill to find ways to increase your earnings, we really live in an era of abundance! Please, avoid get rich quick schemes and other Fake Guru advertised, negative sum games. Find ways to create value.
If you work 40+ hours per week and only earn X you’re doing it wrong. You put a crappy price tag on your time. I can offer my 1:1 help but it will be expensive, so please don’t. I’m also producing a lot of material on my blog and my YT channel (mostly in Italian Language though) available for free.
Start from Naval Ravikant’s “How to Get Rich”, and Paul Graham’s “How to do what you Love”, then continue to Cal Newport’s “Deep Work” and “So Good They Can’t Ignore You“* books.
Second, unless you’re in the bottom 1% of the population by salary, you can always cut 10%. Just take 10% of your income, send it to your future self, to another place (a saving account, debt repayment, investing account) and live with 90% of your salary.
You can’t? Do you really think it’s impossible to live with 90% of your salary? Are you the poorest person in the world? I don’t know you, but I bet there are few Billions people living in worse financial conditions than yours.
But I only care about earning more!
Well, then you might want to check out my Career Development Coaching!