Second part of a series on pensions within a couple and a family. The first, The most expensive decision of your financial life, dealt with the pension gap created by part-time work. This one deals with what happens when the couple is not married. Each part can be read independently.

Photo: Maria Ziegler on Unsplash

A married couple who separate divide the pension accumulated during the marriage. In half. Automatically. Whatever the division of roles was.

An unmarried couple who separate divide nothing. After fifteen years. After three children. After a career interrupted so that the other could keep going.

Nothing.

Two weeks ago I wrote about the Sunday evening conversation in the kitchen, the one where one of the two cuts their working hours and nobody notices that a financial decision has just been taken.

That piece ended on a simple suggestion: open the pension certificate together.

For a married couple, that is the right exercise. For an unmarried couple, it is only half of it.

Because there is a distinction almost nobody makes, and it changes everything: being underprotected by convention is not the same thing as being unprotected by law. The first can be fixed by a conversation. The second cannot.

That is the subject of this edition.

This is not a marginal situation

First, let us measure how many people are concerned, because the reflex is to assume this only applies to young couples with no ties.

According to a Federal Statistical Office study cited by Swiss Life, half of couples aged 35 to 44 without children live together unmarried. And still according to the FSO, one couple in five with children also lives without being married.

These couples have joint accounts, mortgages, children, lives entangled for ten or twenty years. The living arrangement became ordinary far faster than awareness of its consequences.

That is the whole problem. It is not that people choose badly. It is that they do not know they are choosing.

Marriage is not a ceremony. It is a protection contract you never had to negotiate.

This is the heart of this edition, and I would like you to keep it in mind even if the rest fades.

When you marry, you are not only signing up for a party and a name. You subscribe, without reading it, to a set of protections that the legislator put there precisely because it knew that living together creates financial imbalances.

Here is what that contract contains, and what you never had to ask for:

Division of occupational pension assets. Article 122 of the Civil Code: assets accumulated during the marriage are split in half on divorce, whatever the matrimonial property regime, whoever built them up.

AHV income splitting. Income earned during the marriage is shared between the two spouses.

The widow’s or widower’s pension. On death, the surviving spouse is entitled to an AHV pension, under certain conditions.

Statutory inheritance rights. The surviving spouse always inherits, whatever the family constellation, and is exempt from inheritance tax in every French-speaking canton.

Maintenance after separation. Depending on the situation, a contribution may be owed.

Five protections. None of them activates for an unmarried couple. Not one.

And the point I really want to land: these protections do not exist because marriage is morally superior. They exist because the legislator observed that living together produces a financial imbalance, and decided to correct it. Cohabitation produces exactly the same imbalance. It simply has no corrective mechanism.

Photo: Romain Dancre on Unsplash

The four scenarios nobody wants to imagine

1. You separate

No division of occupational pension assets. No AHV splitting. No maintenance contribution for the ex-partner, even after fifteen years of shared life and even if he or she cut back their work for the couple’s children.

The one who stepped back financed, with their missing contribution years, the other’s pension capital. And they walk away with nothing.

One detail that is not a detail: the children are protected. Maintenance is owed to them, and joint parental authority is now the norm. The law protects the children of cohabiting couples. It does not protect the cohabitants.

2. One of you dies

This is the most brutal scenario, and the least well known.

The AHV pays nothing. No widow’s pension, no widower’s pension, whatever the length of the relationship, even where there are children in common. Accident insurance is no more generous.

The pension fund has no obligation. Some do provide benefits for a surviving partner, often subject to a shared life of at least five years and a written declaration filed while the insured person was alive. Many provide nothing.

And here lies the most common trap in this whole edition. When a fund does provide something, it almost always requires that a beneficiary designation form has been filed, during your lifetime, with the fund. Not filled in. Not kept in a folder. Filed.

Many people are convinced they have done it. The form is short, it takes ten minutes, and it has not been done. You find out at the worst possible moment, and by then it is strictly too late: the designation cannot be regularised after death.

The VZ VermögensZentrum puts the order of magnitude for the model household in its analysis at up to 60,000 francs less per year. That amount obviously depends on income and household composition, but it gives the right scale: we are not talking about an administrative annoyance, we are talking about a family’s annual budget.

And you do not inherit. A cohabiting partner is not a legal heir. Without a will, they receive nothing, and the estate goes to the deceased’s family, including siblings you may never have met.

3. You do inherit, and the tax authority takes care of it

Suppose you made a will. Well done, that already puts you ahead of most.

You are then treated by the tax authority as a third party, a stranger with no family link.

The figures are hard to believe when you first see them, so let us take the time to explain where they come from, because it is the mechanism that makes them credible.

In Geneva, the inheritance tax act sorts heirs into categories. The cohabiting partner falls into the last one, that of persons with no family link, whose base scale peaks at around 26 %. Then comes the second layer, the one almost nobody knows about: the additional centimes, which amount to 110 % of the duty and apply to categories three, four and five. The surviving spouse is expressly exempt from them.

The result: the effective rate approaches 55 %. On an estate of 500,000 francs, the VZ VermögensZentrum comparison puts the Geneva bill at around 270,000 francs, against roughly 71,000 francs in Zug.

A married spouse pays zero. In all twenty-six cantons.

These amounts are orders of magnitude: the real calculation depends on the composition of the estate, the debts deducted and the scale in force on the day of death. But the gap itself is not an order of magnitude. It is structural.

And the canton changes everything, which should make you check yours today rather than tomorrow:

• Geneva and Vaud: no relief, the cohabiting partner is taxed as a third party

• Fribourg: reduced rate after ten years of proven shared household

• Jura: reduced rate beyond ten years

• Neuchâtel: reduced rate from five years of shared household

• Bern: preferential rate, without exemption

• Valais: full exemption since 1 January 2025, from five years of shared life or where there is a child in common

In all these cases, proof of the shared life is decisive. Registered address, continuity, supporting documents. What the two of you know is not enough; the authority has to be able to establish it.

A necessary warning about this list: cantonal regimes move, published rates sometimes differ from one source to another depending on whether they include the additional centimes, and the duration conditions are strict. Treat this as a map telling you whether to go and check, not as the scale applicable to your case. The scale applicable to your case is in your canton’s law, and a notary will produce it in ten minutes.

4. One of you loses capacity

This one is not financial at first glance, and yet it is the one that surprises people most.

Without a power of attorney, a partner has no automatic power of representation with doctors, banks or the authorities. Twenty years of shared life do not give you the right to decide for the other, nor even to access an account to pay the shared rent.

And if the lease is in one name only, the other has no right to stay in the home.

💶 The bill

Recurring section. One real decision, and what it costs when you have not identified it. No product recommendations, only the documented gap.

The decision: not to marry. Which, in most couples, is not even a decision. It is the absence of one.

What the couple thinks it is doing: nothing in particular. Living together, like everyone else, without going through a formality that strikes them as symbolic or outdated.

What the couple is actually doing: giving up five protection mechanisms it does not know exist, and turning a division of roles into a one-sided financial risk, carried entirely by whoever earns less.

The order of magnitude, in three figures:

• Death: up to 60,000 francs a year in missing benefits for a model household, according to VZ

• An estate of 500,000 francs in Geneva: around 270,000 francs of tax for a cohabiting partner, zero for a spouse

• Separation: no division of accumulated pension assets, against 50 % for a married couple

The mirror image: the one who kept working is not the winner either, contrary to appearances. They carry a considerable legal and tax risk on their own estate, they have no protection if they are the one who falls ill, and they live with an asymmetry they did not choose and of which they might one day become the involuntary beneficiary.

The question to ask: if one of us died tonight, what would the other live on next month, and by what right would they stay in this flat?

It is an unpleasant question. It is also the only one whose answer can be verified in a single evening.

Photo: Jen Titus on Unsplash

What replaces the mechanism the law does not give you

There is the real question, and it is the most uncomfortable of all: what replaces, in your household, the mechanism the law would have put in place automatically? And has either of you actually built it?

I am not going to tell you what to do, you know my line. But I can tell you what needs discussing, and with whom.

The cohabitation agreement. Legally binding. It can settle the division of household costs, the ownership of assets with an inventory, and provide compensation on separation, in particular for whoever reduced their work. The Geneva Chamber of Notaries makes an adaptable contractual template available.

The will or inheritance pact. Without one, the surviving partner receives nothing. With one, they receive what the disposable portion allows, respecting the statutory entitlements. Worth noting: the reform of Swiss succession law that came into force on 1 January 2023 increased the disposable portion, and therefore the room for manoeuvre.

The declaration with the pension fund. To be made during the insured person’s lifetime, and to be checked against the fund’s regulations, because conditions vary from one fund to another.

The question of death cover, whose tax treatment differs according to the type of contract, which can considerably change what the survivor actually receives.

Powers of attorney, medical and banking, and the advance care directive.

And the joint lease, which is the simplest measure of all and one of the most effective.

Each of these questions depends on your canton, your fund, your asset situation and your children. This is exactly the kind of subject for which a notary or a qualified adviser is well worth their fee.

It is not romantic. I know.

It is simply less painful than a court explaining that it has nothing to divide, or a tax assessment at 55 %.

The tool: the two-hour evening

Once. Not every year. Once, and it is settled for a long time.

Take an evening, and answer these five questions in writing, together:

1. Is the lease or the title deed in both names?

2. Do we each have a will, and does the other appear in it?

3. Does my pension fund provide anything for my partner, and have I filed the designation form with them? Do not answer from memory. This one is verified by a call to your fund, and it is the question that produces the most unpleasant surprises.

4. Is there a power of attorney if one of us can no longer decide?

5. If one of us reduced their work, have we written down anywhere how that is compensated?

Five questions. If you answer no to three or more of them, you do not have a relationship problem. You have an appointment to make.

The question to take with you

Two weeks ago I asked which of you two would walk away with the pension you built together.

This time the question is simpler and more brutal:

What would the law do for you, if you were married?

Make the list. Then look at which of those things you have organised yourselves.

The gap between the two is exactly the risk you are carrying without knowing it.

See you in two weeks,

Marion Fogli

Finance Made Human provides no financial advice, and no investment or product recommendation. This content is educational and does not constitute legal advice. Inheritance, tax and pension rules vary by canton and change over time: for any decision, consult a notary or a qualified professional.

Did this edition help? Forward it to the person you live with. This is a conversation that takes two, and most people are waiting for the other one to open it.

📚 Sources

• Swiss Civil Code, art. 122 to 124e: equal division of occupational pension assets accumulated during marriage

• ch.ch, official portal of the Swiss authorities: absence of statutory inheritance rights for a cohabiting partner; conditions for AHV survivors’ pensions

• AXA, dossier on cohabitation in Switzerland: no entitlement to an AHV widow’s or widower’s pension or to an accident insurance survivors’ pension, no division of pension assets on separation, no power of representation without a power of attorney

• VZ VermögensZentrum: order of magnitude of 60,000 francs a year in missing benefits for a model household on death; inheritance tax comparison; one couple in five with children lives unmarried according to the FSO

• Geneva Inheritance Tax Act (LDS, D 3 25) of 26 November 1960, art. 17 to 22: heir categories, exemption of the surviving spouse, additional centimes applicable to the third, fourth and fifth categories; scale for calculating inheritance duties (BCDS, D 3 25.09)

• Geneva cantonal tax administration (ge.ch): additional centimes amounting to 110 % of the duty, excluding the first category

• Geneva Chamber of Notaries: contractual template for the cohabitation agreement; order of magnitude of around 55 % for the surviving partner in Geneva

• RSM Switzerland and Lexunion: tax treatment of cohabiting partners by French-speaking canton, reduced rates in Neuchâtel, Fribourg, Jura and Bern, Valais exemption since 1 January 2025

• Swiss Life: share of couples aged 35 to 44 without children living unmarried, based on an FSO study

• Reform of Swiss succession law in force since 1 January 2023: increase of the disposable portion

Photo: Crew on Unsplash

In Switzerland, women receive around a third less pension income than men.

In the second pillar alone, the gap climbs above 40 %.

This is not a competence gap. It is not an ambition gap. It is the mechanical result of a conversation that took place fifteen or twenty years earlier, on a Sunday evening, in a kitchen, and lasted five minutes.

It sounded something like this:

“It makes no sense for you to go back to 100 %. Between daycare and the commute there would be almost nothing left.”

Nobody lied. The arithmetic was correct. It was excellent, in fact, on the scale of a month.

And that is exactly why it was so expensive.

The correct calculation that produces the wrong result

When a couple weighs up part-time work, they compare two things: the additional net salary on one side, childcare costs on the other. On that basis, cutting back hours often looks rational, sometimes obvious.

What that calculation leaves out:

The second-pillar contribution, which is proportional to salary. Less salary, less capital accumulated.

The coordination deduction and the entry threshold, which penalise low incomes twice over. Income is only compulsorily insured above a certain annual threshold, and only the portion of salary above the coordination deduction is taken into account. A reduced salary does not produce a proportionally reduced pension: it produces a pension reduced by more than the proportion.

The lost years of accumulation. Let us be precise here, because the second pillar is not a high-performing investment: the minimum LPP interest rate is administered and low, so this is not the spectacular snowball effect of equity markets. But a contribution not paid at thirty-five is never made up, and it is the contributions themselves, far more than their return, that build the pension.

Pillar 3a, which widens the gap further, since you contribute less when you earn less.

The outcome is documented. According to Federal Statistical Office data, the overall pension gap between women and men reaches roughly 37 %, or in the order of 20,000 francs less per year. Swiss Life, in its study on the gender pension gap, measures a gap of about one third over the 2019 to 2021 period, and flags something that should alarm us: while the gap has been slowly narrowing in Europe since 2012, it has barely moved in Switzerland.

Looking at occupational pensions in isolation, the median gap reaches 41 to 43 %. That amounts to roughly 860 francs less per month, or more than 200,000 francs accumulated over twenty years of retirement.

Two hundred thousand francs. Decided on a Sunday evening, in five minutes, without either person feeling they were making a financial decision.

One honest caveat about that figure, because it matters. It describes the pensions of people currently retired, and therefore the outcome of careers that began in the 1970s and 1980s. It is not a projection of what a young mother cutting her hours today will receive. Reforms under way, in particular the lowering of the entry threshold and the adaptation of the coordination deduction to part-time work, should narrow the gap for future retirees.

What does not change is the mechanism. The figure measures one generation; the machinery is still in place and works in exactly the same way on yours.

Why nobody sees it coming

Here is what makes this subject so particular, and why it belongs in this newsletter rather than in a pensions handbook.

The decision is taken at the best moment of your life. A child has just been born. The couple works. Trust is total. This is precisely the moment when nobody wants to put a hypothetical separation on the table or calculate their pension at sixty-five.

It does not look like a financial decision. It looks like a logistical decision, almost a loving one. You talk about daycare, commuting, quality of life. The word “pension” does not come up once.

The cost is invisible and deferred. Overspending shows up on a statement the following month. A contribution not paid shows up nowhere. There is no line, no notification, no statement telling you: this month, you gave up this much future pension.

And it is reversible in theory, irreversible in practice. Nothing stops you from raising your working hours again. Except that the lost years are not recoverable, and the labour market rarely deals kindly with a return to full time after eight years at 40 %.

This is a money script in the most literal sense: an automatic decision, taken for good reasons, whose consequences arrive thirty years later at the door of someone who has forgotten making it.

Photo: Simon Maage on Unsplash

And when it is the man who steps back?

I want to cover both cases, because the mechanism is strictly identical and the male version is almost always forgotten.

It is still a minority, but it is very real. According to Federal Statistical Office data, 78 % of working mothers raising children under 25 work part-time, against 12 % of fathers. Those 12 % exist. And the number of men reducing their hours to follow a partner’s career, handle an international move or look after the children is rising.

The system makes no distinction whatsoever. The entry threshold, the coordination deduction, the proportionality of contributions: all of it applies identically. A man who goes to 50 % for ten years digs exactly the same hole as a woman.

But there is an asymmetry, and it is not in the law. It is in how people look at him.

The man who cuts back faces a double social penalty. He loses pension entitlement like anyone else, and on top of that he loses something nobody puts a number on: legitimacy. People ask a woman at home whether she is happy. They ask a man at home when he plans to go back.

And that has a very concrete financial consequence. Because he feels indebted, he asks for less. He does not claim compensation. He finds it would be out of place. So he pays twice: in francs, and in silence.

If you are that man, or if you live with him, what follows concerns you every bit as much.

💶 The bill

Recurring section. One real decision, and what it costs when you have not identified it. No product recommendations, only the documented gap.

The decision: going from 100 % to 60 % after a birth.

What the couple calculates: net salary lost, minus childcare saved. A monthly trade-off, often favourable to part-time.

What the couple does not calculate: the second-pillar contribution is not proportional to salary, it is proportional to salary minus the coordination deduction, and it does not exist at all below the entry threshold. On a modest income cut to 60 %, the pension loss goes well beyond the 40 % of salary given up. Add thirty years of compounding on contributions never paid, and the missing contribution from the year your child turned two is still costing you in 2055.

The order of magnitude, at the finish line: in the second pillar, the median pension for women shows a gap of 41 to 43 % against men’s. Around 860 francs a month. More than 200,000 francs over twenty years of retirement.

The mirror image: the one who stays at 100 % has gained nothing here. They have accumulated pension capital which, in their mind, is theirs. It is not quite: it was made possible by the other’s withdrawal. It is wealth built by two people and registered in one name.

The question to ask before deciding: by how much does the household’s total pension provision fall if one of us goes to 60 % for eight years? And how do we compensate that gap, between us, during those eight years?

Your pension fund can produce the first figure on request. The second, nobody will produce for you.

What the law says, and what it does not

Here, one piece of good news and one trap.

The good news, if you are married. Article 122 of the Civil Code provides for equal division of occupational pension assets accumulated during the marriage, whatever the matrimonial property regime and whatever the division of roles within the couple. In the event of divorce, the law therefore corrects the imbalance, at least for the second pillar and for the duration of the marriage. The AHV also has an income-splitting mechanism.

The legislator saw the problem. The legislator dealt with it.

The trap, if you are not. None of these mechanisms applies to unmarried cohabiting couples. In the eyes of the law, you are two separate individuals. On separation, there is no division of pension assets accumulated during the shared life, no maintenance contribution, no claim on the AHV contributions paid by the other, even if one of the two reduced or gave up their work to look after the couple’s children.

Take a moment with what that means. The one who stepped back financed, with their years, the other’s pension capital. And on separation, they walk away with nothing.

This is not a marginal case. According to a Federal Statistical Office study cited by Swiss Life, half of couples aged 35 to 44 without children live together unmarried. The living arrangement became ordinary far faster than awareness of its consequences.

There are remedies, and they are tedious to put in place: a cohabitation agreement, which is legally binding and can set out the division of assets and compensation on separation, and naming your partner with the pension fund where its regulations allow.

It is not romantic. It is simply less painful than a court explaining that it has nothing to divide.

Photo: Jen Titus on Unsplash

My opinion, and I stand by it

You know I give no financial advice and recommend no products. That line does not move.

But there is one thing I can say, and it is a personal opinion, not a prescription:

The one who keeps working should fill the other’s gap.

Not out of generosity. Not as a favour granted. As the acknowledgement of a simple fact: the two careers produced a single pension, and it is registered in one person’s name.

When one of the two cuts back so that the household functions, they are not making a personal choice about comfort. They are financing, with their own future retirement, the continuity of the other’s career. It is a transfer. It is real. It is simply rarely named.

A couple’s pension that exists on only one head is an accounting anomaly we have ended up finding normal.

And I say this in both directions, without any qualification: whether it was she or he who stepped back changes absolutely nothing. The duty is the same.

That leaves what “filling the gap” actually means, and I do not want to let you believe it is simple.

The usual reflex, buying into the second pillar, is capped and conditional. Above all, it is calculated from the insured salary: someone working reduced hours, or below the entry threshold, often has very little buy-in capacity, sometimes none at all. In other words, the most obvious tool is precisely the one that works least well for the person who would need it most.

The levers to discuss with a professional, none of them a recommendation from me, and none of them right for every situation:

• buying into the pension fund, with its caps and conditions

• pillar 3a in the name of whoever is accumulating less, rather than whoever earns more

• voluntary insurance with the fund for part-time income, where the regulations allow it

• the cohabitation agreement and the beneficiary clause, if you are not married

• and the tax question, which often changes the trade-off between these options

Each has its caps, its conditions, its tax effects, and depends on your fund, your status and your canton. I cannot and will not decide for you.

The only thing I can state without risk: this conversation has to happen during the part-time years. Afterwards, all that is left is to take note.

The tool: the five-minute conversation

You need neither a spreadsheet nor an appointment. Three questions, once a year, together.

1. How much did each person’s pension provision grow this year? Each of you takes out your pension certificate. You lay them side by side. This is often the most instructive moment, because many couples discover the real gap at precisely this instant.

2. Does that gap match what we decided, or what we let happen? A chosen gap and an inherited gap are not handled the same way.

3. What are we doing this year for whichever of us is accumulating less? The answer can be “nothing for now”. What matters is that it is said out loud, by both.

The pension certificate arrives every year. Most people file it without opening it.

Open it together. Once a year. Fifteen minutes.

It is the best-paid quarter of an hour in your year.

The question to take with you

If your relationship ended tomorrow, which of the two of you would walk away with the pension you built together?

If you know the answer and you are comfortable with it, good, this subject is settled for you.

If you do not know, that is not a gap in financial literacy. It is simply that nobody ever told you that the Sunday evening conversation in the kitchen was a financial decision.

Now you know.

See you in two weeks,

Marion Fogli

Finance Made Human provides no financial advice, and no investment or product recommendation. This content is educational. Pension situations are individual and depend on your fund, your status and your canton: for any decision, consult a qualified professional.

📚 Sources

• Federal Statistical Office, new pensions statistics: overall women-men pension gap of around 37 %, in the order of 20,000 francs per year; gap of 41 to 43 % in the second pillar

• Swiss Life, study The gender pension gap, a pension shortfall?: gap of around one third over 2019-2021, stagnation in Switzerland while the gap narrows in Europe since 2012; share of couples aged 35 to 44 without children living together unmarried

• Swiss Federation of Trade Unions, Equal Pension Day: average gap of 17,293 francs, or 32.8 %

• Federal Statistical Office, statistical report on families: 78 % of working mothers with children under 25 work part-time, against 12 % of fathers

• Swiss Civil Code, art. 122 to 124e: equal division of occupational pension assets accumulated during marriage; Vested Benefits Act, art. 22a

• ch.ch, official portal of the Swiss authorities: no pension division, no maintenance contribution and no claim on AHV contributions when cohabiting partners separate

• Comparis, dossier on pension shortfalls: entry threshold and coordination deduction in the LPP

Photo: Hendrik Cornelissen on Unsplash

54 % of holidaymakers check their bank account every day, or close to it, while they are away.

69 % go over budget anyway.

Sit with those two numbers for a second, because they should not be able to coexist.

These people are not in the dark. They watch the amounts land, in real time, on their phone, between two swims. They know exactly where they stand.

And they overspend anyway.

Which means that the problem is not information. If missing data were the cause, a budgeting app would settle the matter. It does not, and you know it, because you probably have one.

So what is really going on during those two weeks?

It took me years to understand it. And the answer fits into one sentence that I am going to ask you to keep in mind all the way through.

The September statement

A few years ago I came back from two weeks in Corsica with a tan, a light head and a quiet conviction: I had been sensible.

Three days later, I opened my statement.

It was not the amount that struck me. It was the gap. The distance between the person I had been for those two weeks, relaxed, generous, spontaneous, and the one now reading the lines one by one, with that small tightening in the chest you probably know.

Many years spent in finance. A digital bank co-created.

And I had not seen it coming in my own account.

So I asked myself the only useful question: what exactly made me say yes?

Line after line. And what I found looked nothing like what I was looking for.

Budgets do not break where there is the most love. They break where there are the most eyes.

Here is what the Yomoni 2026 study reveals: 52 % of respondents have already paid more than their fair share on a group holiday. And above all, look at where the budget tension concentrates:

• Among friends: 33 %

• With family: 19 %

• As a couple: 17 %

Read that the right way round. We always assume money explodes inside the couple. That is the cliché, the argument topic par excellence. Yet that is where it breaks the least.

It is among friends that the wallet slips. Double the couple.

Why? Because with your partner you have a history, an implicit contract, and the ability to argue without losing everything. You can say “no, that is too much” and have dinner together that same evening.

With friends, saying “that is too expensive for me” is not about an amount. It is about you. In front of witnesses. In a swimsuit.

So you say yes. And you call it generosity, or spontaneity, or “we are not here to count”. When it is often, very simply, the fear of being seen.

Your budget does not crack when you lack discipline. It cracks when someone is watching.

The rest of this newsletter is nothing but an exploration of that sentence.

🇨🇭 And in Switzerland?

The Swiss Bankers 2026 survey shows that 42 % of Swiss households plan to spend between 2,000 and 4,000 francs on holidays, against 36 % last year. The Swiss budget remains the highest in Europe, around 3,052 euros per household, ahead of the British and the Germans. And according to the Comparis index, leisure prices are rising markedly faster than general inflation, with some travel items up as much as 77 % in five years.

In other words: the higher the budget, the more expensive other people’s eyes become.

Photo: Peter Thomas on Unsplash

Two anaesthetics that make the gaze even stronger

Other people’s eyes alone would not be enough to derail a budget of several thousand francs. The gaze needs accomplices. It has two, and holidays bring them together perfectly.

The first: paying no longer hurts

In 1998, researchers Drazen Prelec and George Loewenstein described a mechanism they called the pain of paying: paying triggers genuine discomfort, and that discomfort acts as an automatic brake. Pulling three notes out of your wallet stings. It is meant to sting.

Except that the brake disappears the moment you separate the act of paying from the moment of consuming.

And holidays are the world champion of separation. The flight booked in February. The hotel paid in May. The deferred debit card on site. And increasingly, instalment payment: according to the Cofidis/CSA Research survey of May 2026, more than one French person in five considers consumer credit useful for financing summer holidays, rising to 47 % among the under-35s. 12 % are considering payment in three or four instalments.

And no, this is not just a French affair. The Swiss buy now, pay later market is expected to grow by nearly 21 % in 2026 to approach 2.9 billion dollars, after average annual growth of more than 25 % between 2022 and 2025. A small surprise for many: Klarna is not the one leading the dance in Switzerland. The market remains dominated by local players, CembraPay (PowerPay) and MF Group first among them, with TWINT Pay Later and Klarna clearly present but behind. The thirty-day invoice is an old Swiss habit. It has simply gone digital, and it has become far easier to say yes to.

The result: at the moment your friend suggests the restaurant on the harbour, your body has no defence mechanism in working order. The brake that should have engaged was disarmed three months earlier, in your living room, by a click.

The second: the “holiday” mental account

Richard Thaler demonstrated it forty years ago: our brain does not treat money as interchangeable. It opens separate drawers, and each drawer has its own moral rules.

The “holiday” drawer has a rule all of its own: it is morally exempt.

A 180-franc dinner on a Tuesday in November: unthinkable. The same dinner, the same amount, on a Tuesday in August on a terrace: “we are on holiday”.

This is not hypocrisy. It is a mental frame, and it does exactly what it is built to do: suspend judgement. The problem is that it slams shut on the day of the statement, and you then judge the holiday self by the standards of the September self.

Two different people. One single bill. And the second one never asked for any of it.

The part you paid for is not the part that lasts

There is one study I quote more than any other, because it dismantles a belief I held myself.

In 2010, Jeroen Nawijn and his colleagues followed 1,530 Dutch adults, 974 of whom went on holiday and 556 of whom stayed home, measuring their happiness before and after.

The holidaymakers were considerably happier than the others. But mostly before leaving.

The measurable benefit on return lasts about two weeks, and only among those who described their stay as very relaxing. Any residual trace had vanished by around the eighth week. As the authors put it, the pleasure begins weeks, sometimes months, before the actual departure.

A meta-analysis published in European Psychologist in 2023, covering 13 studies and 1,428 participants for stays of 11 days on average, confirms and hardens the finding: the improvement in wellbeing fades from the very first week back at work.

In other words: you paid several thousand francs for the part that evaporates in seven days. The part that lasted eight weeks, the waiting, the research, the map open on your screen on a Tuesday evening in March, was free.

This is not an argument for staying home. It is an invitation to stop believing that the amount buys the duration. It never has. And during those two weeks, what you were buying with the largest amounts was often not even your own pleasure.

Photo: sue hughes on Unsplash

September, or the worst possible timing

The Yomoni study is unambiguous: 61 % of respondents regret, once home, spending they took on in order not to stand out.

Regret never arrives during. It arrives after. And it arrives at the worst chosen moment of the year: back to school, back to work, a saturated calendar, maximum decision fatigue. Your capacity to decide calmly is at its lowest exactly when the bill shows up.

Then comes the shame. Because if you earn well, going over budget is not experienced as a material constraint. It is experienced as a personal failure. At my level, I should know how to handle this.

An acquaintance of mine, a CFO, someone who signs off seven-figure budgets without blinking, told me she had left her September statement unopened for three weeks. Three weeks. She walked past the envelope every morning.

When she finally opened it, the amount was lower than what she had imagined.

Three weeks of tension, degraded sleep, avoidance, for a figure that was less bad than the version she had built in her head. That is the real cost. Not the 400 francs of overspend: the twenty-one days.

And her case is not a statistical exception. A LendingTree survey of more than 2,000 American consumers shows that six-figure earners are among the most likely to take on debt, at 47 %, with the highest average amount of any category. Among those who did take on debt, 59 % say they are stressed by it and 47 % regret it.

Earning well does not protect you. It simply moves the threshold, and adds shame on top.

The tool: the Post-Holiday Debrief

Twenty minutes, a Sunday in September, a coffee. Three columns, not one more.

The expense Actual pleasure (1-10) Who was watching?

The first two columns are ordinary. The third one is the whole newsletter.

For every meaningful line, one single question: was this expense for me, or for the image of me in someone else’s eyes?

You will see a pattern emerge. Mine, that first year, was impossible to ignore: my highest expenses had the lowest pleasure scores, and almost all of them had an audience.

This is not an exercise in guilt, it is an exercise in data. You are not judging yourself, you are observing yourself. And the following summer, you will not need more willpower. You will just need to recognise the moment when someone is watching.

The question to take with you

I am not going to tell you to spend less next summer.

I am going to ask you a question:

On your last holiday, which expense do you remember with the most pleasure? And how much did it cost?

In the vast majority of answers I receive, those two things have nothing to do with each other.

Because budgets do not break where there is the most love. They break where there are the most eyes.

See you in two weeks,

Marion Fogli

Finance Made Human provides no financial advice, and no investment or product recommendation. This content is educational: it explores the psychology behind our financial decisions, so that you can make your own with a better understanding of yourself.

📚 Sources

• Yomoni study, 2026 holiday budget (budget overrun, social pressure, post-holiday regret)

• Cofidis / CSA Research survey, 6th edition, summer 2026 holiday budget, sample of 1,010 people, May 2026

• Swiss Bankers 2026 survey, holiday budgets of Swiss households

• Comparis leisure price index, 2026

• ResearchAndMarkets, Switzerland Buy Now Pay Later Databook, Q1 2026 update (market size, leading players)

• LendingTree, holiday spending survey of 2,000+ American consumers, 2025

• Nawijn, J., Marchand, M. A., Veenhoven, R. & Vingerhoets, A. J. (2010). Vacationers Happier, but Most not Happier After a Holiday. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 5(1), 35-47

• Meta-analysis on vacation effects and their fade-out, European Psychologist, 2023 (13 studies, N = 1,428)

• Prelec, D. & Loewenstein, G. (1998). The Red and the Black: Mental Accounting of Savings and Debt. Marketing Science

• Thaler, R. (1985, 1999). Work on mental accounting

Photo: lo lindo

“Hi everyone! We’re putting together a group gift for Camille’s 40th. 80 CHF each, does that work? Give me a 👍”

I gave the thumbs up like everyone else.

And I transferred 200.

Nobody knows. Camille doesn’t know. The group doesn’t know. There is no line, anywhere, that records what each of us actually gave.

Hold on to that. We’ll come back to it.

Ask yourself an absurd question

What if everyone gave exactly the amount requested?

Take three seconds. Fifteen people, 80 CHF each, 1,200 CHF in the pot. Clean. Fair. Perfect.

Except it never happens.

There is always someone who “forgot.” Who gets chased once, then twice. Who eventually apologises a little too elaborately, or simply never pays at all.

And yet the total comes out right.

Because someone, quietly, filled the hole.

The group gift is an invisible redistribution

That is the idea I want to leave you with today, and it is the only one.

A group gift is not a system of equality. It is a system that looks like equality. Inside it, those who can afford to subsidise those who can’t, without anyone knowing, without any debt being created.

It doesn’t survive despite its cheaters. It survives because of them.

And if you’re certain there is no cheater in your WhatsApp group, it’s probably because you are one.

Let me be clear about something, because it matters. I have been on both sides. There was a time when I was the one being chased, the one replying too late, the one hoping nobody would count. What I’m writing here, I’m not writing from above. I’m writing from having crossed over.

Photo: Dan Stephens

In 1975, researchers counted the tips

And the result contradicts everything I’ve just told you.

Freeman, Walker, Borden and Latané observed tipping in restaurants. The verdict: the larger the group, the smaller the tip per person. Not out of stinginess. Because responsibility dissolves. “The others will make up for it.”

Psychologists call it social loafing. And the factor that makes it worse is anonymity. When nobody can see what you gave, you give less.

Fifty years of replications. A solid finding.

Except that evening, anonymity produced exactly the opposite in me.

The same mechanism that lets one person disappear lets another give in silence. It doesn’t manufacture the stingy or the generous. It simply removes the witnesses, and each of us becomes a little more of what we already are.

So why do I say nothing?

It isn’t shame. I am entirely at peace with the decision.

It is simpler than that: naming the amount would have turned it into a debt.

We all know money keeps quiet in one direction. We hide what we don’t have. The hard month, the overdraft, the “not this time.” We would rather look disorganised than look short.

But there is a second silence, and nobody talks about it: we also hide what we gave.

Both protect the same thing, the relationship.

Because the moment a number appears, it ranks. It creates a creditor and a debtor. It turns “I care about you” into “you owe me.”

One piece of evidence, then I’ll let you go. In 2009, Flynn and Adams (Stanford) measured the link between the price of a gift and the gratitude it produces. Givers are convinced that more expensive means more appreciated. Recipients report no correlation. None.

The amount buys nothing. It can only weigh.

What happened on the night of the party

Camille opened the gift. She thanked everyone the same way, with the same warmth, without knowing who had put in what.

That was exactly the point.

Nobody was put on the spot. Nobody had to explain themselves. Nobody owes anybody anything. The group gift did the one thing it does best: it erased the numbers and left only the gesture.

My 200 CHF bought nothing at all. They quietly filled a hole I will never name.

Photo: Annie Spratt

Your experiment for the week

At the next group gift, don’t change your amount. Change your question.

Instead of “how much should I put in?”, ask yourself: “who in this group is paying for someone else?”

And if the answer tightens your stomach a little, because this month the person being subsidised is you: you are not stingy. You are someone with a budget and no permission to say so.

That permission, I am giving you here.

And you: have you ever given more than was asked, without telling anyone? Or less, hoping nobody would count? Reply to this email, I read everything. 💙

Marion Fogli

Finance Made Human is a space for education, not financial advice.

My eldest son just turned 19 in March.

And the other day, someone mentioned a card I had sent almost twenty years ago. With a photo of him as a baby. And a few handwritten words.

That person had kept it.

That is the moment I understood what I had stopped doing.

For a long time, I sent one paper greeting card per year. But not just any card.

I created it myself. I selected photos of my children taken during the year. I chose the ones that told a story. I designed the layout. I ordered the printing.

Then, when the cards arrived, I would take out my pen. And on each one, I would handwrite a thought for the person I was about to send it to. A real thought. Not the same one for everyone.

I did this for eight hundred people.

Yes, eight hundred. I keep in touch with a lot of people, and I especially keep in touch with those who have brought so much to my life. Cousins, lost-touch friends, former colleagues, teachers, mentors, old neighbours, parents of my children’s friends. Each one, in their own way, has mattered.

It was long. It was expensive. It was my year-end ritual. Throughout the month of December, every evening after the children went to bed.

Then one day, I switched to video. A video message sent on WhatsApp or by email. Faster. Cheaper. One single video for everyone.

Then, by slow drift, I switched to a Twint for birthdays for those I saw less often. The amount. The little text field. “Happy birthday, all the best for the year ahead.” Three seconds.

I know exactly why I did it. And I know exactly what I lost in the process.

That is what I wanted to talk to you about today.

What my card really cost

Let us do the math together, without modesty.

A personalised printed card: 3 francs each. A stamp: 1.20.

Multiplied by 800. That is already over three thousand francs every year. In direct cost alone.

But the real cost is time.

Sorting through thousands of photos. Selecting the ones that told the story of the year. Designing the layout. Placing orders with the printer. Receiving eight hundred cards. Handwriting, evening after evening, a personal thought for each of the eight hundred recipients. Slipping them into envelopes, one by one. Writing each address by hand. Buying stamps. Sticking them on. Going back and forth to the post office, because of course, you never think to do it all in one go.

In total, dozens upon dozens of hours, stretched across all of December and spilling into January. Every evening, after the children were asleep. Year after year.

A video as a replacement: thirty minutes to record it. Just once. Sent to everyone via WhatsApp.

A Twint with “Happy birthday”: three seconds. Zero francs in fees.

The math is undeniable. And that is precisely the problem.

Because what my card cost, it was not its price. It was its inefficiency.

Inefficiency as a declaration of love

While I was sorting through my photos, I was thinking about each person. Which image would they like? What would they enjoy seeing of my children? Which shared memory could I evoke?

When it came time to write the handwritten note, that person occupied all my attention for the few minutes the writing took. I remembered a conversation we had. A question they once asked me. A moment we had shared.

Eight hundred recipients meant eight hundred moments where I slowed down and genuinely thought about someone. Eight hundred times, during the year, where I offered a loved one a real place in my mind.

That entire process was the real gift. The card itself was only the trace.

The video saved time. But it killed the eight hundred moments. In their place, one single thought, valid for everyone. An average. An attention diluted by numbers.

And Twint, in turn, killed even the thought.

The Swiss detail that makes it dizzying

Twint is used by 6 million people in Switzerland. Out of 9 million inhabitants¹.

“To twint” has become a verb.

It is, statistically, the fastest behavioural revolution in the country’s recent history. And no one is talking about it. Because it happened painlessly. With our full and complete consent. One second at a time.

What the person on the other end actually receives

When you receive 50 CHF by Twint with “Happy birthday”, what do you actually feel?

You are pleased. Of course. You say thank you.

But honestly: you know it took three seconds. You know the person did not think about you for two weeks. You know you are one of the eight Twint notifications they have sent this month.

But that birthday card from Aunt Suzanne in 2003, you still have it. You could open the drawer in your mind, right now. The bottom-right drawer, in the living-room cabinet.

And then there is this other proof, the one life brought me without warning. My first cards go back nearly twenty years. To this day, people still mention them. “Do you remember, that card with your son as a baby, I kept it.” Twenty years later. They still exist, in drawers, in albums, in memory boxes.

Twint does not fit in a drawer.

That is the whole difference.

The question I do not want to ask

If I do not have twenty minutes to give someone, once a year, is that person truly part of my life?

Or am I keeping up the illusion of having two hundred people in my life, when in reality I have eight?

I do not have the answer. I suspect it is uncomfortable.

Your exercise for this week (and mine too)

One single person. Not ten. One.

The one you know you will be sending a birthday Twint to in the coming months.

Buy a card. A real one. Write it now, without waiting for the date. Keep it in your bag.

On the day, send the Twint if you want. The money can still be useful. But add the card by post. Handwritten.

Observe what happens when they receive it. And especially, observe what happened inside you during the days when the card was waiting in your bag.

That second thing is the interesting one.

In closing

Twint made giving faster.

It did not make the connection deeper.

No one warned us that these were not the same thing.

And as for me, this year, I am taking out my pen again. I am sorting through the photos. I am reordering my cards. I do not know whether I will manage the full eight hundred. But I am going to start again, one by one, with as many moments as I can.

Marion Fogli

Sources & verified figures

1. TWINT SA, August 2025. Over 6 million users in Switzerland, nearly two-thirds of the population. twint.ch

2. 24 Heures, February 2026. Twint crosses the 900 million transactions mark in 2025, of which 23% are between private individuals. 24heures.ch

3. Brand Asset Valuator, March 2025. Twint named the strongest brand in Switzerland.

Finance Made Human is an educational newsletter. It does not provide any personalised financial, tax, or investment advice.

Photo credit: Aaron Burden, via Unsplash.

For years, I have watched couples (including those close to me) tear each other apart over things that had nothing to do with money.

Except they did.

Everything had to do with money.

The argument about where to go on vacation. The awkwardness at the bill with the in-laws. The tension rising when one suggests renovating the kitchen. The heavy silence after she bought that bag. The sharp remark about “your” car, “your” gym membership.

On the surface: trivial daily annoyances.

Underneath: always the same question, never spoken out loud.

“Who earns more? And what does that mean for us?”

After years in finance, I can tell you this with certainty:

The salary gap in a couple is not a mathematical problem. It is a psychological one. And it is probably the most universal, and least discussed, dynamic in any relationship.

The numbers are striking. In Switzerland, in 2024, the pay gap between men and women working full time was 12% (90,800 CHF compared to 80,000 CHF median annual salary)¹. In the finance and insurance sector, that gap climbs above 25%². 32% of Swiss men earn more than 104,000 CHF per year, compared to just 21.7% of women¹.

Across Europe, 10% of households now have a woman as the main breadwinner, and that figure rises to 25% in some regions of Southern Europe³.

In other words: the vast majority of couples live with an income gap. And most never talk about it.

The illusion of the surface problem

Couples think they are fighting about vacations, the house, going out.

But those are never the real fights.

The real fights are always about something else: power, worth, recognition, fear. And as long as you confuse the surface topic with the real one, you will keep going in circles.

The research has been clear for over a decade: money arguments are THE number one predictor of divorce. Not sex. Not children. Not in-laws. Money⁴.

And a cruel detail: household income does not protect you. Sonya Britt’s study (Kansas State University) on 4,500 couples controlled for income, debt, and net worth. Regardless of socio-economic level, money arguments predict separation at every rung of the ladder⁴.

Having more does not solve anything. Having more makes the gap more visible.

The 4 roles you play without knowing it

Photo: Etienne Boulanger, Unsplash

In every couple with a significant income gap, I observe the same four dynamics playing out. No one chose them. No one talks about them. And yet they silently structure the relationship.

Do you recognise yourself in any of these four?

1. The “Silent Payer”

This is the one who earns more. Who pays more. Who, at first, does so gladly, out of love, out of generosity, because “it is normal.”

Then slowly, resentment sets in. Unspoken. Not even conscious at first.

“I pay the rent, the vacations, the restaurants, and I do not even get a thank you.” “I work 60 hours a week so we can have this life.” “If I stopped tomorrow, what would they do?”

The Silent Payer does not dare say they feel alone in the effort. Because saying it means admitting one is “keeping score.” And keeping score, in a relationship, is taboo.

So the resentment leaks out elsewhere. A sharp comment. A sigh at the bill. A remark about “that new bag, really?”

2. The “Shameful Contributor”

This is the one who earns less. And who, despite everything they bring to the relationship, develops a chronic guilt.

“I am not contributing enough.” “I have no right to complain, they are the one paying.” “If I spend on myself, it is money I do not really deserve.”

The Shameful Contributor compensates. Often invisibly: the mental load, the daily tasks, the career sacrifices, the children. They make themselves indispensable elsewhere because deep down, they do not feel legitimate.

And then one day, exhaustion arrives. With it, a terrible question:

“If everything I bring is invisible, does it really count?”

3. The “Hidden Power”

Here is the most insidious dynamic, because it sets itself up without either partner noticing.

Big decisions slowly drift towards the one who earns more:

• Where you live

• Which house you buy

• The vacations “we can afford”

• When to have a child

It is never said outright. It is just that their opinion weighs more. Naturally. Logically. “They pay, so they decide.”

The Hidden Power is not visible on good days. It becomes visible the day the other person says “no” for the first time, and the reaction is disproportionate.

Because we forgot that the other person HAD the right to say no.

4. The “Taboo Reversal”

And then there is the least discussed dynamic of all: when SHE earns more.

In 2026, we would like to believe this is no longer a thing. The reality? It is still one of the most charged taboos in heterosexual relationships.

And European research confirms it with uncomfortable precision.

A 2024 study published in Oxford’s European Sociological Review, conducted across 9 European countries including France and Finland, measured men’s psychological well-being based on whether their partner earned less, the same, or more⁵. The result? In EVERY country studied, without exception, men in couples where the woman is the main breadwinner showed significantly lower well-being. Even in countries considered the most egalitarian.

In other words: even where the culture is supposedly evolved, psychology has not followed.

It is not easier for women. In female-breadwinner households, women often continue to carry the bulk of the “mental load” of daily life, on top of being the primary earners, leading to significantly higher rates of stress and burnout⁶.

And statistically, in France, in 1 out of 4 couples, the woman earns more (INED study). When she exceeds 55% of household income, the risk of separation increases by 11% to 40% compared to couples with balanced incomes⁷.

Not because they love each other less. But because no one taught them how to navigate this culturally charged imbalance.

He develops a fragile masculinity he does not dare name. She apologises for her success, minimises it, slows her career to “preserve balance.” Both put on a social performance: in front of friends, family, they pretend.

The Taboo Reversal is exhausting because it adds an extra layer: not only does the gap exist, but it must be hidden. From others. And sometimes from themselves.

Why it is psychological, not mathematical

None of these 4 dynamics is anyone’s “fault.”

They are not a sign of a bad couple, a bad partner, a bad love.

They are the natural result of what happens when we do not TALK about money.

And we do not talk about money.

In Switzerland, Caritas openly acknowledged it during the recent Swiss Money Week: “Talking about money and financial difficulties remains a taboo.” A study by the Swiss psychology journal Aware Psychologie even ranked “discussing salary with colleagues” among the top 15 taboos in the country⁸.

And that taboo follows us right into our relationships. In the United States, 17% of people in a relationship NEVER discuss money with their partner⁹. 40 to 43% of adults in a relationship admit to some form of “financial infidelity”: hiding a purchase, debt, account, or income from their partner¹⁰.

It is (almost) never malice. It is avoidance. Because no one taught us how to have this conversation.

Money in a relationship is never just money. It is security. It is love. It is self-worth. It is power. It is identity.

That is why mathematical solutions (50/50, prorated by income, joint accounts, separate accounts) never truly solve the problem. You can have the most equitable spreadsheet in the world and still feel misunderstood in your relationship.

Because it is not about financial fairness. It is about emotional fairness.

Three questions to dare ask, together

If you want to start untangling these dynamics, forget the technical questions (”how much do we put in the joint account?”). Start with these three questions, together, out loud:

1. What does money represent for you? Security? Freedom? Status? Love? Control?

2. What power dynamic have we built without ever discussing it? Who really makes the big decisions? Who feels they have to ask?

3. What does each of us contribute BEYOND money? Mental load, emotional energy, career sacrifices, support, presence…

These three questions will not be resolved in one evening. But they open the door.

Your exercise for this week

Photo: Priscilla Du Preez, Unsplash

Choose a calm moment. Not after an argument. Not before bed.

Ask your partner ONE of these three questions. Just one.

Listen. Without interrupting. Without correcting. Without defending.

Then answer it yourself.

That is all.

No spreadsheet. No solution. Just a conversation you have probably never had.

In closing

The salary gap in a couple is not a problem to solve.

It is a conversation to dare to have.

And that conversation, paradoxically, is almost never about money.

It is about who you are. Who they are. And who you want to become, together.

Tell me: do you recognise any of these 4 dynamics in your own relationship, or in those you observe around you? The Silent Payer? The Shameful Contributor? The Hidden Power? The Taboo Reversal?

Reply to me, I read every message.

Marion Fogli

Verified sources

1. Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO), 2025. Swiss Labour Force Survey 2024. Median full-time salary: 90,800 CHF (men) compared to 80,000 CHF (women). Switzerland.

2. FSO, 2024. Swiss Earnings Structure Survey. Gender pay gap in financial services and insurance: above 25%. Switzerland.

3. Vitali, A. & Arpino, B. (2016). The Geography of Female-Breadwinner Couples in Europe. European Sociological Review. Analysis of 18 European countries (European Social Survey 2010/2011). Europe.

4. Dew, J., Britt, S., & Huston, S. (2012). Examining the Relationship Between Financial Issues and Divorce. Family Relations, 61(4), 615–628. Longitudinal study on 4,500 couples. Kansas State University. USA. DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-3729.2012.00715.x

5. Kowalewska, H. & Vitali, A. (2024). Female-Breadwinner Well-Being “Penalty”: Differences by Men’s (Un)employment and Country. European Sociological Review, 40(2), 293–311. Study across 9 European countries. Europe (France, Finland, Germany, Poland, Portugal, etc.). DOI: 10.1093/esr/jcad057

6. Haupt, A. & Gelbgiser, D. (2022). Research on cognitive household labor and its impact on psychological well-being.

7. INED, French National Institute for Demographic Studies. Income differences within couples and risk of separation. Permanent Demographic Sample. France. ined.fr

8. Caritas Switzerland / Swiss Money Week (2023-2025). “Talking about money remains a taboo in Switzerland.” Aware Psychologie journal: “discussing salary” ranked among the top 15 taboos in the country. Switzerland.

9. Policygenius (2021). Couples & Money Survey. USA.

10. NEFE / Harris Poll (2021) and Bankrate (2025). 40 to 43% of adults in a relationship admit to “financial infidelity.” Associated academic study: Garbinsky, E. et al. (2020). Love, Lies, and Money. Journal of Consumer Research, 47(1), 1–24.

Transparency note: Exact figures vary by cultural context, but the underlying psychological dynamics (studied in Switzerland, France, Europe, and the United States) remain largely universal.

Finance Made Human, Where finance meets humanity

Photo credits: Vitaly Gariev, Etienne Boulanger, Priscilla Du Preez via Unsplash. Unsplash License, free for commercial use.

One of those restaurants you don’t go to every day, the kind of place you save for the big occasions. They went all in: the lobster, two different wines for the starter and the main, the grands crus, the cocktails, the digestifs. Me: a 32 CHF starter, a 54 CHF main, and a bottle of sparkling water. Yes, sometimes I celebrate without a drop of alcohol, it happens. No dessert. No coffee. No fine wine. No second bottle. No cocktail. No digestif. Ninety-five francs, sparkling water included.

And when the time came to pay, someone said “let’s just split it eight ways, it’s simpler.” 340 CHF a head, 10% tip included. I smiled.

Now that I have your attention: let’s talk about the most dishonest moment in social life → the arrival of the bill.

The scene is universal.

The meal is over. It was a wonderful evening, old friends, something to celebrate, the kind of moment you don’t get often. The conversation is still good. And then the waiter approaches, bill in hand, and sets it down in the center of the table.

Something shifts in the room. Imperceptible, but real. Eyes drop for a fraction of a second. Someone reaches out a little too fast. Someone else pretends not to see. And you, you run a calculation you would never say out loud, least of all tonight, least of all to them: “Starter 32, main 54, one sparkling water, not a drop of wine, I’m at ninety-five francs. They had the lobster and kept the bottles coming. If we split eight ways, I’m paying for their evening.”

You won’t say anything. Of course you won’t. They’re your friends, we’re celebrating, this isn’t the moment. It’s never the moment.

And that is exactly where all the psychology plays out.

Why this moment hurts (really, neurologically)

It’s not in your head. Well, it is but literally.

The arrival of the bill triggers three simultaneous calculations in your brain, and none of the three is financial. There’s the fairness calculation (”am I paying my fair share, or theirs?”). The social calculation (”what will they think of me if I pull out a calculator?”). And the status calculation (”do I put my card down first to show that I can?”).

It was never about the money. It’s about what money makes visible: your relationship to fairness, to belonging, and to your own worth. The bill is simply the moment when all three land on the table at the same time as the check.

Economists have a name for this, and they’ve measured it. A study published in The Economic Journal calls it “the unscrupulous diner’s dilemma”: when a group knows it will split the bill equally, everyone orders more expensively than they would alone, not out of greed, but because the structure pushes them to. The most telling detail of that research: asked before ordering, 80% of participants would prefer to pay for themselves. They know. Everyone knows. And yet, by the end of the meal, almost no one dares say it.

Why the silence? Because the social cost of speaking is higher than the financial cost of staying quiet. No one wants to be “that person,” the one who complicates the bill. So the person with the salad pays like the person with the lobster. And resentment settles in silent, invisible, but it settles in. Income gaps don’t damage friendships. What damages them is the unspoken resentment that compounds, dinner after dinner, because no one ever dared say a word.

That 340-franc evening was extreme, the kind of once-in-a-blue-moon dinner you only have two or three times in a life (it was a fantastic night). But make no mistake: it’s exactly the same mechanism, on a smaller scale, in dozens of ordinary dinners you’ve already lived. The colleagues’ meal at sixty francs a head. The birthday where you didn’t drink. The Sunday brunch. The amount changes, the mechanism is identical.

And there’s that scene, you’ve surely seen it. Someone, around the table, finally dares: “Wait, I only had a salad.” And watch what happens in the second that follows. It’s not gratitude. It’s a chill. Glances exchanged. A slightly sharp “oh come on, we’re not going to count.” The person who told the truth, the one who is right, arithmetically, instantly becomes the one who committed a social offense. They named money. At the table. Among friends. You don’t do that.

Reread that scene. The honest person is punished, the convention is protected, and everyone leaves having internalized the lesson: next time, keep quiet and pay. That is precisely how the mechanism perpetuates itself.

Reread the sentence before it, too. It’s not the bill that destroys relationships. It’s everything left unsaid around it.

The Swiss detail no one notices

There is a geography of the bill, and it’s fascinating.

In the 2000s, sociologist Claude Fischler and social psychologist Estelle Masson ran a large international comparative survey on people’s relationship to food. One of their findings concerns precisely this moment. To the statement “when there are several of us, we split the bill equally,” the answers draw a clear cultural map: 68% in Italy, 58% in Switzerland, 56% in France, but only 20% in Germany. Conversely, “one person pays for everyone”: 25% in France, 13% in Switzerland, 13% in Italy.

Translation: in Switzerland, the dominant norm is the equal split. That is, statistically, the scenario that generates the most silent resentment according to the economic research. The country most willing to pay “in equal shares” is also the one where the unspoken mental calculation runs most often.

And there’s one more layer, a very Swiss one: discretion. Here, money is not discussed at the table. You don’t renegotiate a bill among well-mannered adults. Which means the mechanism, paying for other people’s bottle with a smile, is culturally protected. The very politeness that prevents the discomfort also prevents it from being resolved.

What your behavior at the bill says about you

Watch yourself next time. Without judgment, just observe. There are four roles at that table, and you play one of them.

The one who draws. Their card is out before the bill even touches the tablecloth. It’s almost never about money. It’s a need for control, or visible generosity, or the fear of being seen as the one who doesn’t give. Paying, for them, buys an inner state, not a meal.

The one who calculates in silence. They know exactly what they had. They tally it under the table. They’ll pay their exact share with studied nonchalance. Underneath: an acute sense of fairness, and often a story where they once paid for something that wasn’t theirs.

The one who disappears. They look at their phone at precisely the right moment. They let the silence do the work. Not out of stinginess necessarily, often out of an inability to handle discomfort. Not seeing is not feeling.

The one who overpays so as not to look like they’re counting. They leave more than their share, on purpose, to buy social peace. The price of not being “that person.” It is, paradoxically, often the one resentment gnaws at most, because they pay twice: in money, and in silence.

Don’t look for the one you resemble most. Look for the one you just defended internally while reading. That’s often yours.

What you do with this (and it’s not “suggest splitting by item”)

I’m not going to give you a trick for splitting the bill. You don’t need one, and that’s not the point.

The point is that none of these four roles is a flaw. Each is a strategy that made sense one day, to protect against a lack, a humiliation, a sense of illegitimacy. The research is clear on one thing: the tension doesn’t arise from money, it arises from the unspoken rules no one ever set. The only real lever isn’t a calculation technique. It’s a sentence, said before the meal, never after: “how do we want to do this tonight: each their own, or do we split?”

Five seconds. At the start. It defuses years of compounded resentment. And yet almost no one says it, because saying it means admitting the moment matters. That, precisely, is the work.

You have nothing to fix this week. Just to notice, once, which of the four you are. To see a mechanism is already to strip it of half its power.

I smiled through that whole late evening at 340 francs. Today I know exactly which role I was playing at that table, and why.

That is the whole point of this letter: to give you the same mirror, in five minutes.

See you next week.

Marion Fogli

Finance Made Human is an educational newsletter. It offers no personalized financial, tax, or investment advice. For any decision, consult a qualified professional.

Sources · Gneezy, U., Haruvy, E. & Yafe, H. “The Inefficiency of Splitting the Bill.” The Economic Journal, vol. 114, 2004 · Fischler, C. & Masson, E. International comparative survey on food representations, 2000s · Social-psychology research on fairness and group sharing (2024–2025 syntheses).

In 2025, the annual results of Switzerland’s major private banks tell two very different stories.

Pictet generated CHF 19 billion in net new money , its highest level in three years , reaching a record CHF 757 billion in assets under management. Julius Baer reported an underlying cost/income ratio of 67.6% (an improvement of 3.3 points versus 2024) , even if the adjusted ratio, which includes CHF 213 million in credit losses, comes out at 71.3%. The group reached CHF 521 billion in AuM with CHF 14.4 billion in net new money. EFG International recorded organic growth of 6.8% with CHF 11.3 billion in net new assets , above its target range of 4–6%.

Same sector. Same financial centre. Same markets.

Other institutions are stagnating or retreating.

The difference is not size. It is not technology. It is not portfolio performance.

The banks generating the highest net flows in 2025 are not the largest. They are the ones with the clearest investment proposition. In volatile markets, conviction beats diversification as a client acquisition strategy.

This is something most banks do not yet measure formally.

The quality of the trust relationship with their clients.

Not as a concept. As a strategic asset.

A sector that performs on numbers. And underperforms on relationships.

According to the annual KPMG/University of St. Gallen study published in June 2025, covering 71 private banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, sector revenues grew from CHF 20.5 billion to CHF 21.4 billion in 2024, with assets under management reaching a record CHF 3.4 trillion. The 2025 annual results published in February 2026 , Pictet, Julius Baer, EFG , confirm that the momentum continues.

And yet, something is grinding.

The Capgemini World Wealth Report 2025, based on responses from 6,472 HNWI investors, 141 wealth management executives and 1,306 relationship managers, reveals a structural tension that few banks truly measure: relationship managers , the living heart of private banking , are expressing growing dissatisfaction. Their role is evolving from operational to advisor centred on client loyalty. But banks have not equipped them for this transition.

Banks are making money. But they are losing the connection.

The first counter-intuitive finding: your best clients trust you the least

According to Bain & Company, in the banking sector, a loyal affluent client , typically a household with more than $100,000 in income , is worth nearly three and a half times more than an average client. A dissatisfied client is outright unprofitable once the negative word-of-mouth effect is factored in.

Three and a half times. In the affluent segment. And the economic logic strengthens mechanically as you move up towards HNWI and UHNWI , where asset concentration per relationship makes every departure exponentially more costly.

But here is what makes this statistic truly explosive: according to Bain’s banking loyalty studies, the wealthiest clients , those with the most investable assets , are systematically the least satisfied. Loyalty declines as assets increase. Detractors outnumber promoters in the wealthiest segments.

Private banks concentrate their resources on the clients who trust them the least. And those same clients are the ones with the highest economic value.

This is the central paradox of modern private banking.

And here is what behavioural psychology explains , what sector reports never say.

The higher the wealth, the more expectations become existential , not merely financial. These clients are not simply looking for a performance manager. They are looking for someone who understands what this money means to them. What it cost to build. What it symbolises. What silent anxiety it generates. And that conversation , the conversation about the meaning of money, not just its management , is one that most banks do not yet know how to have.

The second counter-intuitive finding: your relationship managers are not doing their job

Here is what McKinsey documented in its December 2025 survey on RM productivity.

In many commercial banks, relationship managers devote only 25 to 30% of their time to client conversations , well below first-quartile productivity institutions. McKinsey estimates that 10 to 12 hours per week could be returned to each banker by freeing up administrative and compliance tasks , a 40% improvement in client coverage ratios.

The economic stakes have been documented for years in McKinsey’s European reports: private banks in the first quartile of RM productivity see their assets under management grow by 12% annually , more than double the sector average. Banks that simply increased their RM headcount without productivity gains saw their profits decline by 3% per year.

This operational inefficiency has a documented cost. When a relationship manager spends the majority of their time on non-client tasks, two phenomena occur simultaneously: the bank under-utilises its most expensive asset to recruit, and HNWI clients , the most demanding, the most volatile, the most valuable , experience a degraded quality of attention. Neither is visible in quarterly accounts. Both weigh on long-term value.

The third counter-intuitive finding: trust belongs to the banker, not the bank

Here is the dynamic that few boards formally integrate into their risk analyses.

A study published in the Journal of Financial Economics, examining the US financial advisor market under Broker Protocol, shows that when an advisor changes institution, approximately 40% of their clients’ assets follow. The Swiss legal context is different , non-solicitation clauses, the duration of multigenerational relationships, the framework of banking secrecy. But the relational dynamic crosses jurisdictions: financial trust is attached to the individual as much as to the institution.

40% of assets. Gone. Not because the bank underperformed. Because their banker left.

And here is what behavioural psychology explains: financial trust is a trust of vulnerability. You do not simply entrust your money to a private banker. You entrust them with your fears, your ambitions, your family conflicts, your doubts about your own worth. This trust was built in intimate moments, often over years. It does not transfer automatically to an institution when the banker leaves. It is rebuilt elsewhere. Or it leaves with them.

This is a risk analysis question, not an HR question: if a senior relationship manager were to leave, what percentage of their assets under management would remain in the institution? If the answer is not measured regularly, trust has not yet been institutionalised. It is personalised. And therefore fragile.

What Credit Suisse really taught us

The Credit Suisse lesson is not a regulatory lesson. It is a lesson in organisational psychology.

According to the official FINMA report, Credit Suisse met all regulatory requirements for capital and liquidity at the time of its collapse.

Let that sink in for a moment.

A 167-year-old bank. CHF 500 billion in assets. Every ratio in the green. Destroyed in 72 hours.

Regulation protects the system. Trust protects the bank.

The fall of Credit Suisse is a textbook case of collective psychology applied to finance. Institutional trust works like interpersonal trust , it builds slowly, through the accumulation of consistent evidence over years. It is destroyed quickly, through a few moments of rupture perceived as betrayals. And once broken at this level, it does not rebuild. It is replaced , by an institution that has not yet disappointed.

Credit Suisse lost the trust of its clients over ten years. Every time, the ratios were in the green. Boards received capital dashboards. Nobody was measuring the trust capital.

Because there is not yet a line in annual reports for that.

Trust as a measurable competitive advantage

A study published in November 2025 in PLOS ONE by researchers from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, examining 1,370 Swiss consumers across five financial institutions, confirms that trust is the most powerful predictor of client loyalty (NPS) , far more so than performance or fees. The authors measure a gap of more than 100 NPS points between high-trust and low-trust segments.

The study covers Swiss banking broadly, not specifically private banking. But the mechanism it documents , trust as a measurable and predictive economic variable , is amplified where the relationship is most intimate, most enduring, and most personally significant. That is, in private banking.

EY confirms this in its NextWave Research 2025: trust has become the most precious currency in the banking sector. Institutions that invest in hyper-personalised, human-centred experiences create a durable competitive advantage in client retention and wallet share.

The EY report Winning affluent banking clients in the great wealth transfer (2025) cites an affluent loyalty programme at a major US bank that achieved an annual retention rate of 99% in Q4 2024 , against a sector average of 75%. 24 additional retention points. On an HNWI portfolio, that represents billions in preserved assets under management.

What the best institutions do differently

After more than 15 years in private banking and co-founding a digital bank in Switzerland, I have observed something that the data confirms but does not fully explain: clients never really talk about trust with their banker. They talk about returns, allocation, succession. But underneath , always , there is an unspoken question: “Do you really understand me?”

The banks that have learned to answer that question without it being asked are the ones that keep their clients. The others watch their RMs leave with a substantial share of their portfolio.

Institutions that build lasting trust share several observable characteristics.

They measure trust with the same rigour as financial performance. NPS by segment, wallet share per client, retention rates following the departure of an RM , these metrics are tracked at the same level as revenues.

They invest in the relational training of their bankers , not just product expertise. According to Bain & Company, the best institutions offer continuous development programmes focused on relational competencies and personal development , not only product information.

They think multigenerational from day one. Citi Private Bank developed its Citi Latitude programme, which engages next-generation heirs through networking events, serving more than 1,500 family offices. The objective is explicit: to transform the relationship with the current generation into a relationship with the family , not with an individual.

And they free their relationship managers from back-office work. Because client time productivity has become a primary economic indicator, on a par with the interest margin or the cost-income ratio.

Three indicators that leading institutions now measure formally

Indicator 1 - NPS by wealth segment. Aggregate NPS masks the dynamic. Measured by HNWI segment and tracked over three years, it reveals whether the most valuable client base is becoming more loyal or more fragile. Without this measure, trust capital is not managed , it is simply assumed.

Indicator 2 - The client time ratio of relationship managers. What percentage of RM time is devoted to direct client interactions? First-quartile productivity institutions reach 50% and above. The sector average is significantly lower. The gap is a direct, measurable and actionable economic lever.

Indicator 3 - The asset retention rate following the departure of a senior RM. This is the most revealing indicator of the degree to which trust has been institutionalised. If retention is low, the concentration risk is not financial , it is relational. And it appears in no prudential ratio.

These are three metrics that the best boards have begun to integrate into their quarterly dashboards. Not as satellite indicators. As strategic management indicators on a par with capital ratios.

The number of private banks in Switzerland fell from 156 to fewer than 80 over fifteen years. Consolidation is accelerating. The institutions that survive will not necessarily be the largest. They will be those whose institutional trust is the deepest , and the best measured.

In a consolidating market, trust is not a “nice to have” advantage.

It is the only defensible long-term advantage.

💙

Marion Fogli

This newsletter is educational and does not constitute investment or wealth management advice. The views expressed are personal.

Sources · Pictet Group, Full-Year Results 2025, press release 10 February 2026 · Julius Baer Group, Full-Year Results 2025, press release 2 February 2026 · EFG International, Full-Year Results 2025, press release 18 February 2026 · KPMG / University of St. Gallen HSG, Clarity on Swiss Private Banks 2025, June 2025, 71 private banks in Switzerland and Liechtenstein · Capgemini Research Institute, World Wealth Report 2025 · FINMA, Report on the Credit Suisse Crisis, December 2023 · Yarza Navarro-Schär V., Eller E., Schulz M., Lermer E., “The trust–NPS correlation: The role of trust in promoting customer loyalty in Swiss financial institutions”, PLOS ONE, November 2025, LMU München · Bain & Company, “Foster customer loyalty to offset lost fees” and “Winning in Wealth Management” · McKinsey & Company, “Agentic AI in banking: Boosting frontline sales automation”, December 2025 · McKinsey & Company, “The future of private banking in Europe: Preparing for accelerated change”, 2020 · EY, “Winning affluent banking clients in the great wealth transfer”, 2025 NextWave Consumer Banking Insights · EY, “Strategies for Success in Building Consumer Trust in Banks”, NextWave Research · Journal of Financial Economics, “Unlocking Clients: The Importance of Relationships in the Financial Advisory Industry”, 2021

For the first time since we began measuring this phenomenon.

EY Zurich states this in its Global Wealth Management Industry Report 2024. In Switzerland, those over 65 hold more than 30% of their assets in financial institutions. With a mortality rate of just over 4%, this implies a transfer of wealth from today’s bank customers to their heirs of over CHF 18 billion year after year, with a rising trend.

CHF 18 billion. Every year. In Switzerland alone.

And yet, in the boardrooms of Geneva and Zurich’s private banks, the conversation about succession remains the most avoided of all.

The largest wealth transfer in human history

A total of $83.5 trillion in assets is expected to be transferred to Generations X, Millennials and Z by 2048, according to the Capgemini Research Institute World Wealth Report 2025, based on the perspectives of 6,472 high-net-worth investors across four regions of the world.

Between April 2024 and April 2025, 91 heirs collectively received $297.8 billion from billionaire fortunes approximately 36% more than the previous year. UBS estimates that billionaire families could pass $5.9 trillion to their children over the next 15 years.

And the statistic that should keep private bankers awake at night: at the 2025 Wealth Management Summit in Zurich, at the Zunfthaus zur Meisen, Patrik Spiller warned that up to 70% of heirs will switch their bank after receiving their inheritance.

70%. Seven clients out of ten. Gone.

Not because of fees. Not because of performance. Because of something banks generally never see coming.

The 2023 Swiss inheritance law reform: a window most families haven’t opened yet

Here is the regulatory angle that few HNWI families have fully integrated and which fundamentally changes the possibilities of wealth transmission.

In 2020, the Swiss Parliament decided to revise inheritance law, which was over a century old. It came into force on 1 January 2023. The main change concerns the reduction of compulsory shares: children are now entitled to half of their legal inheritance share, compared to three quarters previously. The compulsory share for parents has been completely abolished.

In concrete terms: it is now possible to freely dispose of at least half of one’s estate a significantly larger discretionary portion than before. This makes it possible to favour a specific heir, a partner, stepchildren, or any third party, with unprecedented flexibility in succession planning, particularly to facilitate the transfer of family businesses.

This reform is a concrete opportunity. But it requires reviewing existing wills and inheritance agreements. And above all, having the conversations that most families have never had.

Why fortunes disappear and it’s not what you think

There is an old belief in the private banking world: family fortunes erode due to poor asset allocation, mismanaged taxation, insufficient diversification.

This is a misconception. A 20-year study by the Williams Group of 3,200 families found that 70% of wealthy families lose their wealth by the second generation, and 90% by the third.

The cause? 60% of wealth transfer failures have as their primary cause a breakdown in communication and trust within the family. 25% are due to inadequate preparation of heirs. Financial and fiscal causes account for only 3%.

The “third-generation curse” has created an entire industry built on fear: fear of spoiling children, fear of losing control, fear of family failure. This fear-based approach creates secretive, controlling family dynamics that actually increase the likelihood of the very problems it seeks to prevent. Families that successfully transfer wealth operate from abundance and trust rather than scarcity and control.

It is not money that destroys dynasties. It is the silence around money.

The Swiss paradox: so much wealth, so little conversation

Switzerland manages more private wealth than any other country in the world. It is also one of the countries where money is the most taboo subject within families.

According to a representative study by ZHAW School of Management and Law, conducted with 1,050 people in German-speaking Switzerland in spring 2023, only 26% of respondents were willing to discuss their financial situation even with those they know very well.

Now imagine what this means in an HNWI family, where the amounts at stake are exponentially higher, where power dynamics are real, where legal structures are complex. Silence is not discretion. It is a time bomb.

A UBS Investor Watch study of more than 2,800 wealthy investors reveals that 46% of benefactors have not discussed their succession plans with their children. The three main reasons: “it doesn’t feel like a pressing issue” (43%), “I don’t want my children to count on the inheritance” (32%), “I don’t want them to feel entitled to wealth” (27%).

And from the heirs’ side: 46% say their families simply don’t talk openly about financial matters. 23% don’t want to appear greedy.

Two generations. The same silence. Opposite reasons. And a fortune waiting, suspended between two worlds that don’t speak to each other.

What behavioural psychology says that bankers don’t

After 22 years in private finance and co-founding a Swiss digital bank, I have observed a pattern that repeats itself with troubling precision.

The first generation built the fortune through hardship, deprivation, uncertainty. Money is for them a tool of survival and freedom. They don’t relinquish control because relinquishing control means dying symbolically.

The second generation grew up in the shadow of that success. They received the comfort but not the training. They inherited the result but not the journey.

The third generation arrives in a world where wealth is a given, not a conquest. Without deliberate design, abundance becomes a developmental anaesthetic, numbing the instincts required to lead, compete, or stand independently. Dynasties collapse for predictable reasons: hunger fades, identity softens, capability is assumed rather than earned, and no one says out loud what everyone feels.

What nobody says in succession planning meetings: the real risk is not fiscal. It is psychological. It is not the legal structure that fails. It is the relationship the family has with money, passed down from generation to generation, without ever being named.

The rise of female heirs: the structural shift private banking hasn’t fully integrated

There is a silent transformation underway in the portfolios of every major Swiss private bank. And it is massively underestimated.

In 2025, inheritance was the primary route to billionaire status for women: 27 of the 43 new female billionaires acquired their wealth through inheritance. Female billionaires have outpaced men in wealth growth for four consecutive years, with an average increase of 8.4% in 2025 more than double the men’s 3.2% increase.

EY Zurich states it explicitly in its 2024 report: the importance of female heirs is increasing all the time.

A UBS Own Your Worth 2025 study, conducted with 2,000 women investors with at least $1M in investable assets, reveals that nearly one third of women who inherited assets from parents had no prior conversations with them about the wealth transfer. Four in ten women inherited from parents without any succession plan in place. This lack of communication resulted in 80% of women inheritors facing challenges in navigating the process.

80%. Four women heirs out of five facing difficulties. Not because they lack competence. Because nobody spoke to them.

Swiss private banks that do not develop specific strategies for female heirs today will miss the greatest opportunity of the next decade on their own doorstep.

Tomorrow’s heirs think differently

Next-generation HNWIs are looking for more than just returns. They expect meaning, service and smart technologies. As of January 2025, HNWIs held around 15% of their portfolios in alternative investments such as private equity or cryptocurrencies. Among younger generations, 61% are willing to actively invest in high-growth niche markets.

Where older investors hold around 74% in traditional stocks and bonds, younger investors allocate only 47%. Nearly 75% of Gen Z millionaires are willing to accept lower financial returns if it means investing in causes they believe in.

These allocation differences are not simply investment preferences. They are identity statements. The NextGen who puts 28% of their portfolio in crypto is not necessarily seeking performance. They are seeking to exist outside the shadow of their parents.

And according to a survey reported in the Financial Times, 50% of Millennial HNWIs moved their principal tax residence in 2024, or said they intended to do so the following year. Among Gen Z, half had recently relocated to a new market or planned to do so imminently.

The geography of wealth is being rewritten in real time

According to the Henley Private Wealth Migration Report 2025, approximately 142,000 millionaires migrated to a new country this year an absolute record. The global ranking of destinations: UAE first with +9,800 HNWIs and $63 billion in assets, United States second with +7,500, Italy third with +3,600. Switzerland ranks 4th with +3,000 new wealthy residents, ahead of Singapore and Portugal.

These are 2025 figures. The 2026 ranking is already telling a different story.

The UAE at the top of the world rankings that was yesterday. Following recent Iranian attacks on Dubai, wealthy Asian investors are transferring assets to regional financial hubs such as Singapore and Hong Kong. Applications for the UAE residence programme fell 13% in Q1 2026 compared to Q4 2025. More than 40,000 American residents left the Middle East.

For European and Western HNWIs based in the Gulf, the movement points towards Switzerland. In search of a haven from conflict in the Gulf, Dubai’s expatriates are homing in on Zug a picturesque Swiss canton of 135,000 people better known for commodity traders and cryptocurrency firms. Heinz Tännler, Zug’s finance director, confirms: “We are seeing increased inquiries. Of course, we regret the circumstances but the reality is Zug is benefiting.”

Pierre Gabris, founder of Alpen Partners, confirms: “Everyone knows Zug, even if they haven’t been there.” A Swiss-based private banker whose bank has a Zug office said the number of CVs from relationship managers at US banks landing on his desk had “quadrupled” since the war began. Another described attending an open house for a rental apartment in Zug: “The queue was around the block the person behind me had flown in from Dubai that morning.”

Industry experts estimate that tens of billions of dollars could flow into Switzerland from the Gulf in the coming months, depending on the duration and intensity of the conflict.

The United States, second global destination in 2025? One third of American millionaires now say they are more likely to leave the United States since Donald Trump’s return to the presidency. Applications for international residency from US citizens surged 98.3% in 2025.

And while the world searches for somewhere to go, Switzerland remains. Neutral. Stable. Predictable.

Geneva, Zurich, Zug, Lugano are not departure points. They are arrival points. These new wealthy residents coming from the Gulf, from the United Kingdom, tomorrow perhaps from the United States do not have the same relational reflexes as families established for three generations on the Swiss financial centre. They are mobile by nature, comparative by habit, digital by default. They will not stay out of loyalty. They will stay because of perceived value.

What private banks do well. And what they avoid.

Swiss private banks excel in legal and fiscal structuring. They are rigorous on compliance, sophisticated in asset allocation, precise in succession planning.

What they avoid: the psychological conversation. The one that asks the 68-year-old client to talk about their own death. The one that compels the heir to articulate their relationship with a fortune they did not create. The one that forces the family to define together what money means to them beyond the numbers.

The Williams Group study is unequivocal: 60% of transmission failures are caused by a breakdown in communication and trust. 25% by inadequate preparation of heirs. Poor financial management accounts for only 3%.

Private banks devote most of their resources to what represents 3% of the problem. And avoid what represents 85%.

According to PwC Switzerland Wealth Management Insights 2025, based on a survey of more than 500 wealth management advisors worldwide, intergenerational wealth transfers are cited by 54% of respondents as one of their major challenges. But with the right approach, they can be an opportunity to expand the client base and strengthen long-term trust.

The right approach is not only digital. It is not only ESG. It is the conversation.

Three questions HNWI families never ask and should

Question 1 · What does this money represent for our family beyond its financial value? What is the story behind this fortune and does every family member truly know it?

Question 2 · Have our heirs been prepared to manage this wealth, or only to receive it? The difference between the two is often the difference between the second and the third generation.

Question 3 · Since the revision of Swiss inheritance law in January 2023, have you updated your will to take advantage of the new discretionary portion? And if you have done so technically have you explained it to your heirs?

An open conversation about the size of the estate and how it will be distributed can reduce the likelihood of a disagreement among beneficiaries after death by 44%, according to UBS.

44% fewer conflicts. For the price of a conversation.

💙

Marion Fogli

This newsletter is educational and does not constitute investment, legal or tax advice. Please consult qualified professionals before making any wealth planning decisions.

Sources · EY Switzerland. Global Wealth Management Industry Report 2024, Zurich, May 2024 · Capgemini Research Institute. World Wealth Report 2025, 6,472 HNWI investors · UBS Billionaire Ambitions Report 2025, via Spear’s Magazine · Finews.ch. Wealth Management Summit 2025, Zurich, November 2025 · Williams Group. Preparing Heirs: Five Steps to a Successful Transition of Family Wealth and Values. Roy Williams & Vic Preisser, 2003. Study of 3,250 families · ZHAW School of Management and Law. Financial WellBeing in Switzerland, 1,050 respondents, spring 2023 · UBS Investor Watch. Inheritance Survey, 2,800 wealthy investors · UBS Own Your Worth Report 2025. Heir Dynamics: Money in Motion, 2,000 women investors · Finews.com. NextGen HNWIs: Redefining the Future of Wealth Management, August 2025 · Standard Chartered / Financial Times. Investing for the Next Generation, 2025 · Henley & Partners. Private Wealth Migration Report 2025 · Financial Times / SWI Swissinfo.ch. “Switzerland’s Zug becomes bolthole for Gulfbased wealth”, April 2026 · Asian Wealth Management. “Wealthy Asians Shift Assets from Dubai”, 2026 · EnterpriseAM. “UAE braces for HNWI outflows”, April 2026 · Outbound Investment Group. “Rising Numbers of U.S. Millionaires Say They Are More Likely to Leave”, 2026 · PwC Switzerland. Wealth Management Insights 2025, 500+ advisors · UBS Wealth Planning. Inheritance Survey, 2,800 HNWIs · Revision of Swiss inheritance law. Swiss Civil Code, entry into force 1 January 2023

The European Central Bank oversees the financial stability of 340 million Europeans.

In 2024, an internal survey revealed that 4 in 10 of its own employees suffer from burnout.

Economists. People whose job is to manage other people’s money.

If they can’t escape it, why would you?

The paradox that took science 50 years to explain

In 1974, economist Richard Easterlin published a finding that unsettled everyone: in wealthy countries, happiness doesn’t follow the income curve. Countries get richer. People don’t get happier.

It became known as the Easterlin Paradox. And for decades, economists argued over how to explain it.

A study published in 2025 in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology confirms this for Europe: countries like Norway and Switzerland, despite having some of the world’s highest GDPs, show diminishing returns in terms of happiness.

Switzerland. The country with the highest salaries in Europe. The country where banking executives earn between CHF 10,000 and 16,800 per month. The country where 75% of the population says it feels financially comfortable.

And yet. The UBS Worry Barometer 2024, conducted among 2,250 Swiss voters, reveals that financial concerns increased more than any other indicator compared to the previous year.

How is that possible? Because the problem isn’t income. It’s the psychology of income.

The treadmill nobody sees

It took me years to understand why some of the most financially successful people I encountered were also the most anxious. Then I found the answer in a research paper from 1971.

There’s a mechanism that behavioral researchers call the hedonic treadmill. Formalized by Brickman and Campbell, it is brutal in its simplicity.

Every time your standard of living increases, your brain recalibrates. What was extraordinary becomes ordinary. What was a dream becomes a given. And your level of satisfaction returns to its starting point.

You wanted to earn CHF 15,000 a month. You do. Six months later, that’s your new “normal.” You’re already looking toward CHF 20,000.

The level rises. The anxiety doesn’t fall.

In developed countries, reported happiness levels do not increase in line with income. People feel increasing time pressure despite rising salaries.

That’s the paradox of the European executive in 2025. More income. More responsibility. Less time. The same underlying level of satisfaction. And a financial anxiety that no one around you allows you to express, because you earn too well to have the right to complain.

Lifestyle creep, the silent mechanism

This isn’t poor management. It isn’t a lack of discipline. I’ve seen this in brilliant, rigorous people who could have given you a lecture on saving in the morning and spent their bonus before receiving it in the afternoon.

Every time the salary goes up a floor, spending goes up with it. Often before the transfer even arrives.

The bigger apartment, because you can afford it. Private school, because that’s what colleagues do. A CHF 12,000 holiday, because the CHF 5,000 one no longer satisfies the way it used to. The watch, because it goes with the role.

Households in the top income quintile are saving proportionally less of their income than they did a decade ago, according to the Federal Reserve (2024).

That’s not a coincidence. That’s the elevator in motion. And it has no emergency stop button, unless you name it.

The statistic that should sting: 36% of people earning over $100,000 a year live paycheck to paycheck. Credit card debt among high earners has increased 23% since 2020.

Compare that with Switzerland. The country where people earn the most in Europe is also the country where 81% of the population says it wants to save, but where a significant proportion doesn’t understand what’s actually blocking their financial behavior.

What’s blocking it is the elevator. Silent. Automatic. Completely invisible to those it carries away.

Three mechanisms I see in executives, that nobody names

I’ve worked alongside enough senior leaders in Switzerland and Europe to recognize the patterns. Here are the three that come up, week after week, regardless of salary size.

The financial impostor syndrome.

You’ve succeeded. Intellectually, you know it. But part of you is waiting for it to collapse. Not professionally. Financially. The fear that markets will crash, that the position will disappear, that the lifestyle will become impossible to maintain.

This fear is all the more paralyzing because it feels illegitimate. “I have everything I need to be happy. I don’t have the right to complain.” So you don’t say it. You manage alone. And the silence amplifies everything.

I’ve heard this phrase dozens of times, phrased differently but with exactly the same tone: “I don’t have the right to complain.” Said by people earning CHF 250,000. CHF 400,000. More.

The problem isn’t the income. The problem is that the shame of being stressed when you earn well is just as paralyzing as the stress itself.

A Credit Karma survey (2024, 1,000 adults) reveals that 43% of Gen Z and 41% of Millennials experience “money dysmorphia”, a distortion between their objective financial reality and how they perceive it.

This phenomenon doesn’t stop at younger generations. It reaches the 48-year-old Partner managing a team of 80 people who hasn’t slept properly in six months. And it reaches senior leaders who don’t dare admit it, because at their level, it’s even less acceptable.

In Switzerland, the cultural silence around money amplifies this mechanism. Only 26% of Swiss people are willing to discuss their financial situation, even with those closest to them. If you can’t talk about it, you can’t verify it. And if you can’t verify it, anxiety thrives in the void.

Identity indexed to income.

This is the hardest one to see. And the most devastating. When your sense of personal worth is indexed to your salary, every financial fluctuation becomes an existential threat.

A smaller bonus. A disappointing year. A difficult market. These are no longer financial events. They are verdicts on who you are.

I’ve seen leaders go through burnout not because of workload, but because of the fear of no longer deserving their salary.

In 2024, 66% of French executives reported suffering from professional burnout, up from 40% in 2023. A jump of 26 percentage points in one year. This rate exceeds the global average of 56% by ten points.

France is an extreme case. But the pattern is pan-European. 88% of SME leaders live with chronic stress. 38% are in the red zone for burnout. 31% develop a dependency on alcohol or anxiolytics.

These figures don’t just concern France. They concern Geneva, Zurich, London, Amsterdam. Everywhere the role and the money have become the same thing.

The cobbler’s paradox.

And now the sentence you’ve never read in a financial newsletter.

Finance professionals are among the least psychologically equipped to manage their own money. Not because they lack knowledge. Because they spend their days managing everyone else’s, and no longer have the energy or the emotional distance to look at their own.

That’s the cobbler’s paradox, applied to finance. The CIO optimizing multi-billion portfolios hasn’t opened his personal bank statement in three months. The CFO building complex valuation models has been postponing a review of his own life insurance for two years. The wealth manager structuring retirement plans for others has no coherent pension plan for himself.

This isn’t hypocrisy. It’s cognitive exhaustion. Employees spend an average of 8.2 hours per week stressing about their finances during working hours. One third says that financial stress inhibits their ability to focus on their work.

Imagine what that represents for someone who analyzes financial structures all day long.

What the international comparison reveals

Switzerland is the country with the highest salaries in Europe. It’s also the country where the culture of financial discretion is among the strongest in the world. This combination creates a unique psychological pressure: a lot, but don’t talk about it.

Compare with the Nordic countries, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, where salaries are published and accessible to all. Studies show that salary transparency reduces financial anxiety. Not because it eliminates inequalities. Because it eliminates comparison in the void.

In Switzerland, Germany, France, salary is secret. People compare themselves to ghosts. And ghosts always earn more than you.

Neuroscience confirms it: chronic stress leads to excess cortisol production, which impairs memory and decision-making capacity. This isn’t just a wellbeing problem. It’s a performance problem. The financially stressed executive makes worse professional decisions. The cycle is vicious and invisible.

What you can do, concretely

A few years ago, I did something unusual for someone who co-founded a bank. I took a sheet of paper, a real one, not a spreadsheet, and wrote at the top: “What do I actually need to feel good?”

Not what I thought I should have. Not what my peers had. What I actually needed.

The list was much shorter than my spending level. It was uncomfortable to look at. And it was the most useful thing I did that year.

Here’s what that experience taught me.

Name the treadmill. The next time you feel financial anxiety, ask yourself one question: has my situation objectively changed, or has my reference level just gone up? Naming the mechanism doesn’t stop it immediately. But it loses its power the moment it has a name.

Define your “enough” in writing, before the next pay rise. Not after. The decision has to be made with a clear head, when you’re still able to distinguish what genuinely makes you happy from what you think you should be displaying. Because once the transfer arrives, the brain recalibrates within six months. And the window is closed.

If you work in finance, look at your own numbers. Not the market analyses. Not the models. Yours. Your personal savings. Your pension. Your plan B. It took me too long to understand that spending my days co-founding a bank, building financial systems from scratch, thinking strategy and growth at scale was an unconscious way of avoiding looking at my own numbers. Expertise can become the best of all screens. The cobbler needs shoes too.

Talk to one person. Not a financial advisor. A person. A friend, a partner, a mentor. Silence is the most powerful amplifier of financial stress. One honest conversation is worth more than ten years of managing alone.

Your exercise for this week

Question 1 · If your income dropped by 30% tomorrow, what would actually change in your daily life? And what wouldn’t?

Question 2 · Have you ever said out loud, to someone you trust, that you were stressed about money despite your income? If not, why not?

Question 3 · Your current spending level: does it reflect what makes you happy, or what you think you need to show?

Financial stress among high earners is real. It is widespread. It is documented. And it deserves to be taken seriously, even when no one around you gives you permission to express it.

💙

Marion Fogli

This newsletter is for educational purposes and does not constitute personal financial or investment advice. Please consult a qualified professional before making any financial decisions.

Sources · Easterlin, R. “Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?” 1974 · Matusiewicz, M. “Endless Growth Does Not Bring Joy.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 2025 · Binswanger, M. “Why does income growth fail to make us happier?” Journal of Socio-Economics, 2006 · UBS/gfs.bern. Worry Barometer 2024, 2,250 Swiss voters · ZHAW SML. “Financial Well-Being in Switzerland”, 2023 · LHH ICEO. Executive burnout report, 2024 · APESA / WILLA / Harmonie Mutuelle. SME leader stress, France, 2025 · Federal Reserve. Survey of Consumer Finances, 2024 · Credit Karma. Money Dysmorphia Survey, 1,000 adults, 2024 · SoFi. The Future of the Workplace Report, 750 employees, 2024 · Harvard Health / ADP. Chronic stress and cortisol, 2024 · Brickman, P. & Campbell, D. “Hedonic relativism.” 1971

Ok, I’m exaggerating slightly. He had a rough idea.

But when I asked him directly during a meeting that was supposed to last 45 minutes and stretched to two hours here’s what he said:

“I know what I earn. I know roughly what I spend. But somewhere in between... I can’t figure out why nothing’s left.”

He was 47. A surgeon. 25 years of training and practice. The kind of man who makes life-or-death decisions in an operating room, twice a week, with the calm most people reserve for ordering a sandwich.

And faced with his bank statement, he felt like a failure.

It’s not him. It’s all of us.

In the moment, I almost smiled. A man of that caliber, lost with his personal finances. But since writing this newsletter, since thinking about it again and again, I don’t smile anymore.

Because I’ve met that surgeon hundreds of times. Under different names, different titles, different salaries. Female partners at law firms. Fund directors. Family office partners managing hundreds of millions for their clients, who couldn’t tell you exactly what was in their own personal account.

This isn’t hypocrisy. It isn’t negligence.

It’s psychology.

And Swiss data confirms it, coldly. Caroline Henchoz’s study, published in the Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics across 1,390 people representative of all three linguistic regions, found that 88% of Swiss people grew up hearing you must never spend more than you have. 81% were raised to save. 75% to never go into debt.

We are the country of financial discipline passed down from childhood.

And yet the 2024 SSR survey shows that 35% of the Swiss population finds their financial situation burdensome. BlackRock reveals that 55% of Swiss people cite money as their number one concern, ahead of health, ahead of work.

We were given the rules. Nobody ever explained why we can’t follow them.

“Financial problems are rarely mathematical.

They are psychological. And as long as we don’t make the right diagnosis, we keep applying the wrong remedies. Indefinitely.”

Marion Fogli

What’s really happening inside the surgeon’s head. And inside mine.

This surgeon knew the concepts. He could explain the difference between an active fund and an ETF in three sentences. But every Friday evening, after an exhausting week, he’d come home and spend. Not extravagantly. Regularly. Systematically. Like releasing a valve.

And every Sunday evening, he’d look at his account and feel guilty.

What nobody had ever taught him what nobody teaches anyone is that the Friday evening spending wasn’t a budget problem.

It was an emotional regulation problem.

Here’s what was actually happening: a week of high responsibility, critical decisions, contained emotions to stay professional and by Friday, the brain arrives depleted, out of cognitive resources. In that state, it seeks immediate relief. Not discipline. Relief. And spending delivers exactly that: a micro-dose of dopamine, a recovered sense of control, a reward after the effort.

This isn’t weakness. It’s neurobiology.

The problem is that Sunday’s guilt generates its own stress. Which calls for relief the following Friday. The loop closes. And no budgeting app can break it, because no budgeting app asks the right question: why am I spending this, here, now?

I’ll be honest. I read everything there was to read on this subject. Years of behavioral finance, psychology, neuroscience. I knew more than most people in any given room. And yet some of my own behaviors certain ones didn’t change.

Because knowing isn’t enough. You have to go one level deeper. Understand where it actually comes from. Not just name the symptom.

That’s what put me on this path.

So what’s the right question?

Not “how much am I spending?” Not “am I saving enough?” Those questions look at the result. They don’t look at the cause.

The right question the one nobody ever asks is: what does money actually mean to me?

Not in theory. In concrete moments. When you hesitate to negotiate your salary, what’s happening in your body exactly? When you look at a wealthier friend’s lifestyle, what’s the emotion that arrives first, before rational thought? When you make a donation, do you feel free or do you feel poorer?

Those reactions, small, automatic, are your real relationship with money. Not your intentions. Not your declared values. Not what you say at dinner parties.

And they all have an origin. A scene. A phrase overheard. A silence misread. Something that happened long before your first paycheck.

That’s where everything begins. And that’s the only place something can genuinely change.

The Swiss paradox nobody mentions.

Behavioral finance has been documenting this for thirty years. Kahneman proved it with his Nobel in 2002. Thaler confirmed it with his in 2017. And yet in private banking meeting rooms, in advisory appointments, we keep answering emotional questions with technical solutions. We optimize the tax structure of a client who hasn’t yet resolved the relationship with money he inherited from his father. We build sophisticated portfolios for people making trading decisions at 3am from their phones, under stress.

The tool is excellent. The diagnosis is incomplete.

And the Henchoz study reveals something I’ve rarely heard cited at finance conferences: money attitudes vary profoundly across Swiss linguistic regions at strictly equivalent income and education levels.

French-speaking Swiss attribute more social dimensions to money prestige, power, freedom than German-speaking Swiss, who have a more instrumental, more detached relationship with it. The concrete result: French-speaking Swiss are 1.62 times more likely to take on debt than German-speaking Swiss. Not because they earn less. Because money doesn’t mean the same thing on either side of the Sarine river.

This isn’t a discipline question. It’s a question of what money carries symbolically. What it was taught to represent.

For someone who works with clients across both linguistic regions: this data changes everything about how you read a financial behavior. What looks like recklessness in a French-speaking client might be a cultural expression of their relationship with freedom. What looks like rigidity in a German-speaking client might be an expression of their relationship with security.

Same portfolio. Different psychologies. Different conversations needed.

What I’m working on.

I’ve spent years in finance. Private banking, wealth management, fintech. I co-founded Switzerland’s first digital private bank.

And for several months now, I’ve been building something that doesn’t exist yet, at least not in this form.

Something that answers the real question the surgeon never knew how to articulate: why do I do what I do with money?

Not a theoretical answer. A concrete tool. One that starts in the right place, psychology rather than symptoms.

It isn’t ready yet. But if you’re reading this letter, you’ll be among the first to discover it.

What I can tell you today: it’s coming. Soon.

This week’s question.

The real one. Not the one about your balance.

What’s the emotion you feel most often just before an unplanned purchase?

Stress? Boredom? Euphoria? The feeling of having earned something?

Write it down. Just once. You’ll see what it reveals about you, far more than any bank statement ever could.

💙

Marion Fogli

Disclaimer: This letter is educational and does not constitute personalized financial advice.

Sources: Henchoz, C., Coste, T. & Wernli, B. “Culture, money attitudes and economic outcomes.” Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, 2019, 1,390 people. Klontz, B. et al., “Money Beliefs and Financial Behaviors”, Journal of Financial Therapy, 422 people. SSR/RTS financial situation survey 2024. BlackRock Global Investor Pulse. Kahneman, D. & Thaler, R., behavioral economics, Nobel Prize in Economics 2002 and 2017.

I could. Easily. But my brain hadn’t received the update.

Today, let’s talk about what your parents passed on to you about money. Without knowing it. Without meaning to. And why it still controls your financial decisions 20, 30, 40 years later.

The scene everyone recognises.

You’re 8 years old. You’re at the supermarket. You point at a toy. And the answer comes, automatic, final: “We can’t afford it.” Or: “Do you think money falls from the sky?” Or the classic: “Money doesn’t grow on trees.”

You didn’t understand the sentence. You understood the emotion. The tired face. The sigh. The tension in the voice. And you internalised a message far deeper than the sentence itself: wanting things is dangerous. Asking is wrong. Money is stress.

You were 8 years old. And your relationship with money had just been programmed. For the next 40 years.

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What science says (and it’s staggering)

A TIAA study reveals that over 60% of adults say their childhood experiences still influence their current financial habits. Not a little. Directly.

And Fidelity confirms: nearly 50% of adults feel financial anxiety, and those who suffer from it the most often trace it back to their early life experiences.

Dr Brad Klontz, financial psychologist (Journal of Financial Therapy, on 422 people), gave this phenomenon a name: “money scripts.” These are unconscious beliefs about money that form in childhood, are passed down from generation to generation, and drive our financial behaviours in adulthood, often without us having the slightest awareness.

Klontz goes further. He identified what he calls “financial flashpoints”, emotionally charged events linked to money in our childhood. A parent crying over a bill. An argument at dinner about spending. A forced move. These moments leave a lasting cognitive imprint. And that imprint becomes the filter through which we make ALL our adult financial decisions.

The most striking finding? Shim et al. showed that young adults remember learning “substantially” more about money from their parents than from their work experience and school-based financial education combined. Your parents taught you more about money than your MBA. Except what they taught you wasn’t necessarily right.

The 7 phrases that programme a lifetime

Every family has its phrases. Here are the ones I hear most often, and what research tells us about their impact:

“Money doesn’t grow on trees.” Message received by the child: money is always scarce. Wanting something is unreasonable. Financial security is one bad decision away from collapse. The phrase was meant to build responsibility. What it built is anxiety.

“We’re not made of money.” Message received: we’re not the kind of people who have money. It’s not meant for us. Even 30 years later, with a good salary, the voice persists: “Who do you think you are?”

“You have to save for a rainy day.” Message received: bad days are inevitable. Money is a shield, not a tool. The result: adults who save compulsively but can never enjoy what they’ve accumulated.

“We don’t talk about money.” Message received: money is shameful. Talking about it is vulgar. The result: a total inability to negotiate your salary, discuss finances as a couple, or ask for help when things go wrong. A study by Furnham (on 512 adults) showed that secrecy around money in childhood is directly associated with financial pathologies in adulthood: compulsive spending, excessive hoarding, chronic anxiety. In women, the effect is even more pronounced.

“Rich people are thieves.” Message received: having money is immoral. Financial success = bad person. The result: adults who unconsciously sabotage their own success because earning more would bring them closer to “those people.”

“You should be happy with what you have.” Message received: ambition is ingratitude. Comparative suffering (”others have less”) prevents you from recognising your own legitimate problems.

“When I was your age...” Message received: your difficulties aren’t real. Your generation doesn’t know real life. The result: adults who systematically minimise their own financial stress because “it’s not that bad.”

The Swiss trap

In Switzerland, this mechanism is amplified by two powerful cultural forces.

The first: the taboo. A ZHAW study (on 1,050 people in German-speaking Switzerland) confirms that personal finance remains a taboo subject in Switzerland. We save among the most in the world, we plan, we manage, but we don’t talk about it. The Baloise/YouGov study (on 2,032 people) adds that 60% of Swiss people rate their own financial knowledge as “mediocre at best.”

The second: the paradox of silent competence. A PostFinance/Sotomo study (on 1,429 parents) reveals that 95% of Swiss parents today believe money should be discussed openly with their children. And 92% say they already talk about it with their children from age 5-8.

But what exactly do they talk about? Budgeting. Saving. The value of things. They pass on technical skills.

What they don’t talk about: how they feel about money. Their fears. Their mistakes. The time they were afraid they couldn’t pay the rent. The stress of bills. The shame of earning less than the neighbour.

The result: a generation of Swiss children who know how to budget but carry within them the same silent anxieties as their parents. Because emotions are transmitted without words.

An interesting fact: German-speaking Swiss start their children’s financial education earlier than French-speaking Swiss. And give more pocket money. Proof that even within a small country, cultural scripts vary.

Why your parents’ phrases still control you

1. The emotional imprint is stronger than information

A child doesn’t hear “money doesn’t grow on trees” as an economics lesson. They see their parent’s face. They feel the tension. And they encode: money = danger. As Klontz explains, these “financial flashpoints” are emotional memories, not factual ones. That’s why an adult earning CHF 250,000 a year can still feel a knot in their stomach when paying the bill at a restaurant.

2. The financial comfort zone is set early

Klontz identified what he calls the “financial comfort zone”, the socio-economic class in which a person feels most comfortable. It is typically established in childhood and anchored by cultural assumptions about money and wealth that are often wrong.

If you grew up in a household where CHF 5,000 per month was the visible ceiling, your comfort zone is calibrated there. Earning CHF 15,000 puts you in a psychologically uncomfortable space, even if financially everything is fine. And your brain will try to bring you back to the familiar zone. Through self-sabotage, guilt, or impulsive spending that brings the balance back to a “normal” level.

3. Your parents passed on what they had received

Money scripts are intergenerational. Your parents didn’t invent “we don’t talk about money.” They received it from their own parents. Who received it from theirs. It’s a chain of transmission that often goes back generations of real economic survival, wars, migrations, crises, where these phrases were protection strategies.

The problem? These survival strategies remain active long after the circumstances that created them have disappeared.

The 4 inherited money scripts

Brad Klontz identified four categories of unconscious beliefs. Each one is passed down within families:

Money Avoidance (”Money is bad”): The child who grows up hearing that “rich people are selfish” develops the belief that wealth is immoral. As an adult, they under-earn, avoid planning their finances, and feel guilty when they succeed. This is the typical script behind the phrase “there are people who have less than you.”

Money Worship (”Money would fix everything”): The child who sees their parents stressed about money internalises that more money = fewer problems. As an adult, they overwork, take excessive risks, or overspend pursuing the idea that the next salary level will finally bring peace. Except research shows that beyond $75,000 per year, the link between income and emotional wellbeing weakens considerably.

Money Status (”My worth = my bank account”): The child who hears “when I was your age, we had nothing” may develop an obsession with proving they’ve made it. As an adult, they buy to show, not to live. The car, the watch, the kitchen renovation. Klontz showed that this script is more common among people who grew up in modest socio-economic backgrounds.

Money Vigilance (”You must be careful with money”): This is the most socially valued script, especially in Switzerland. The child who hears “put money aside” and “be careful” becomes a cautious adult who saves and doesn’t go into debt. But taken to the extreme, this script creates permanent anxiety, an inability to enjoy your money, and an obsession with financial control that can poison relationships.

What nobody tells you

You can break the chain

The good news, hidden in the data: a study (on 4,182 young American adults) identified a fascinating group they call “Financial Phoenixes.” These are people who received a negative financial model from their parents but became good managers of their finances. They represent 21.6% of the sample.

In other words: more than 1 in 5 people who grew up with bad financial scripts manage to overcome them. The transmission is not a fate.

But there are also the “Socialization Squanderers” (15.9%): people who received a good financial model from their parents but manage their own finances poorly. Proof that even “good” phrases can go wrong if accompanied by the wrong emotions.

Family secrecy is toxic

Furnham’s study (on 512 adults) isolated a single factor among all childhood memories related to money: secrecy. Family “money secrecy”, finances that are never discussed, hidden salaries, unspoken debts, is the strongest predictor of financial pathologies in adulthood.

It’s not what your parents said that marked you the most. It’s what they didn’t say.

Financial anxiety is transmitted physically

Studies show that children who see their parents stressed about money develop physiological responses to financial stress. Junior Achievement (on 1,000 teenagers) found that 78% of teenagers are currently stressed about money. And 50% have been stressed about their parents’ ability to pay bills over the past year.

Your children aren’t stressed because they understand your budget. They’re stressed because they feel your stress.

What to do in practice

I’m not a therapist. I’m someone who lived with these phrases, studied them, and had to learn to question them. Here’s what I’ve learned.

1. Identify THE phrase

Every person has a dominant phrase. A phrase that comes back automatically in moments of financial decision-making. Mine was “are you sure you can afford it?” even when the answer was objectively yes.

What’s yours? “We can’t afford it”? “Money has to be earned”? “You always have to prepare for the worst”?

Identify it. Name it. That’s the first step.

2. Separate the phrase from reality

Your mother’s phrase may have been true when you were 8 years old. It’s probably no longer true today. But your brain hasn’t done the update.

Klontz recommends a simple exercise: when the phrase comes back, ask yourself “is this true today, or is it a memory speaking?”

3. Talk about money differently

Research shows that parents who discuss finances openly with their children, not just the rules but also the emotions, produce adults with less financial anxiety and better habits.

If you have children, don’t just teach them to save. Also tell them when it’s difficult. Tell them when you’ve made a mistake. Tell them that money can be stressful AND manageable. Because it’s silence that creates pathologies, not difficulty.

4. Rewrite your script

You can’t erase your parents’ phrase. But you can write the next one.

“Money doesn’t grow on trees” can become “Money is earned, and I’ve learned how to do it.” “We’re not made of money” can become “I’m building my own security, at my own pace.” “We don’t talk about money” can become “I talk about it, because silence does more damage than conversation.”

5. Accept that your parents did their best

Your parents didn’t choose to pass on financial anxiety. They passed on what they had received, with the tools they had. Their phrases were survival strategies in their context. The problem isn’t that they said them to you. The problem is that nobody teaches us to question them.

My personal experience

My mother told me that money doesn’t grow on trees. She was right. But what she didn’t tell me is that I had the right to have it. That I could enjoy it without guilt. That spending on myself wasn’t selfish.

It took me over 20 years in the workforce to understand that my relationship with money wasn’t mine. It was my mother’s. My grandmother’s. That of an entire line of women who had learned to make do with little, because that’s what they had been told.

I don’t blame my mother for anything. And by the way, she’s an absolutely amazing mother. She gave me everything she had. Including her fears. And now it’s up to me to choose which ones I keep and which ones I let go.

💙

Your exercise for the week

This week, ask yourself these three questions. Not to act. Just to observe.

Question 1: What is THE phrase about money you heard most in your childhood? Who did it come from?

Question 2: Does this phrase still influence your financial decisions today? Give a concrete example.

Question 3: If you have children, what financial phrase are you passing on to them without meaning to?

No judgment. No right or wrong answer. Just the awareness of what happens inside you when you hear your parents’ voice talking about money in your head.

If this newsletter made you think of someone, send it to them.

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Disclaimer: This newsletter is educational and does not constitute personal financial advice. Consult a qualified professional before any investment decision.

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Sources:

• TIAA. Survey on childhood experiences and adult financial habits, 2024.

• Fidelity. Study on financial wellness, 2025.

• Klontz, B., Britt, S.L., Mentzer, J. & Klontz, T. “Money Beliefs and Financial Behaviors: Development of the Klontz Money Script Inventory.” Journal of Financial Therapy, on 422 people.

• Klontz, B. & Klontz, T. Mind Over Money.

• Shim, S. et al. “Financial Socialization of First-Year College Students.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 2010.

• LeBaron-Black, A.B. et al. “Intergenerational Financial Socialization.” Study on 4,182 US emerging adults.

• Furnham, A. “Moneygrams: Recalled Childhood Memories about Money and Adult Money Pathology.” On 512 adults.

• PostFinance / Sotomo. Study “Children, money and the path to independence”, on 1,429 Swiss parents, 2025.

• ZHAW School of Management and Law. Study on financial wellbeing in Switzerland, on 1,050 people, 2023.

• Pro Familia / Pax. Family Barometer 2025, on 2,200 Swiss families.

• Baloise / YouGov. Savings survey in Switzerland, on 2,032 people, 2025.

• Bankrate. Money and Mental Health Survey, on 2,000+ adults, March 2025.

• Motley Fool Money. Financial Stress, Anxiety, and Mental Health Survey, on 2,000 people, 2024.

• Junior Achievement / Citizens / Wakefield Research. Financial Wellness Survey, on 1,000 teenagers, 2024.

• Charles Schwab. Study on teens and financial guidance from parents.

• Henchoz, C. Research on young people and money in Switzerland, University of Fribourg / REISO.

• Kim, J. & Chatterjee, S. “Childhood Financial Socialization and Young Adults’ Financial Management.” Journal of Financial Counseling and Planning, 2013.

• Kahneman, D. & Deaton, A. “High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being.” Proceedings of National Academy of Science, 2010.

The scene is universal.

A family dinner. Coffee has just been served. Your brother, your sister, your best friend hesitates, beats around the bush, then drops it: “I could use a hand… financially.”

Your stomach tightens.

Not because you don’t have the money. But because your brain just launched three calculations at once: the financial one (”can I afford it?”), the relational one (”what happens if I say no?”) and the emotional one (”what does it say about me if I refuse?”).

And in 90% of cases, emotion wins.

What the numbers say (and it’s brutal)

In Switzerland, 41% of the population has received a private loan from a family member or someone close to them (Moneyland). It’s the most common form of borrowing in the country ahead of bank loans, leasing or credit cards.

We’re the land of private banks, wealth managers and banking secrecy. And when we need money, we call our brother or our sister.

Internationally, the data is even more striking.

A JG Wentworth study (on 1,267 people) reveals the scale of the phenomenon: Americans have lent each other roughly $52 billion between loved ones. It’s a massive shadow economy. And the consequences are devastating:

• 75% of people who lent or borrowed from a loved one say they are no longer as close as before

• 71% report a temporary break in communication

• 71% say the relationship was permanently broken in extreme cases

• 47% experienced serious conflicts or arguments

• 54% of lenders had to ask more than once to be repaid

• 50% of lenders lost money, partially or entirely

Bankrate (on 2,490 adults) confirms: 46% of people who lent money to a loved one suffered negative consequences. As Ted Rossman, analyst at Bankrate, puts it: “Basically half the time, something goes wrong.”

And LendingTree (on 2,051 people) adds a number that struck me: 1 in 6 people say money has destroyed one of their relationships. Not “strained.” Destroyed.

Why we say yes (when we know we shouldn’t)

Here’s what psychology teaches us about the moment someone asks us for money.

1. Financial survivor’s guilt

You’ve made it. You earn well. And someone you love, who shares your history, your childhood, your memories, didn’t follow the same path.

Dr Brad Klontz, financial psychologist and creator of the “money scripts” concept (Journal of Financial Therapy, on 422 people), explains that our deep beliefs about money are formed in childhood and passed down from generation to generation. Among the four categories he identified, “money avoidance”, the belief that money is bad or that you don’t deserve it, is directly linked to the guilt of those who succeed.

If you grew up in an environment where money was scarce, or if your family passed on the idea that “rich people are selfish,” saying no to a loved one who asks for help becomes psychologically impossible. Because saying no would confirm that you’ve become that selfish person.

In Switzerland, this mechanism is amplified by our culture of discretion. As researcher Caroline Henchoz (University of Fribourg) points out: money remains a taboo subject in Swiss families. Some people don’t even know their spouse’s income. In this environment of silence, a request for money becomes all the more emotionally charged, because we never learned to talk about it.

2. The impossible equation: love = money

In many families, financial support has become the language of love. Refusing to lend means refusing to love.

Klontz’s research on “financial enabling” shows this pattern is particularly powerful among parents toward their adult children. The signs: sacrificing your own financial wellbeing, struggling to say no, lending without a clear repayment agreement, feeling resentment after giving.

The paradox? This behaviour destroys exactly what it seeks to protect: the relationship.

The Bread Financial study (on 1,670 people) confirms it: 30% of borrowers never repaid their friends. And 33% of respondents say that repeated borrowing without repayment is the number one driver of tension in their relationships.

3. The “no” that’s impossible to say

A qualitative study published in Social Forces (Oxford Academic) followed families to understand how they handle money requests between loved ones. The conclusion is fascinating: people almost never say “no” directly.

Instead, they invent avoidance strategies: pretending not to have the money, lending a smaller amount, delaying the answer, dropping hints so the other person understands without having to explicitly refuse.

Why? Because as one participant puts it: “You can’t just say no. Not like that.” A direct refusal is perceived as a relational rupture, not a financial decision.

4. The biased emotional calculation

When a loved one asks for CHF 35,000, your brain doesn’t do a rational calculation.

It calculates: “What costs more, losing CHF 35,000 or losing this relationship?”

And the answer seems obvious: the relationship is worth more. So you lend.

Except the real calculation should be: “What’s the probability that this loan destroys the relationship anyway?” And there, the statistics are clear: it’s roughly 50-50.

You’re not choosing between money and the relationship. You’re risking both.

The Swiss trap

Switzerland adds a unique layer of complexity to this phenomenon.

The Family Barometer 2025 (Pro Familia, Pax, on 2,200 families) reveals that money remains the number one concern of Swiss families. 47% of middle-income families say their income is “just enough” to cover their needs. And two thirds can’t put aside more than CHF 500 per month.

In this context, when a family member asks for help, you’re potentially in a situation where you’re not financially comfortable yourself but where the cultural pressure of silence around money prevents you from saying so.

The Baloise, YouGov study (2025, 2,032 people) adds: 60% of Swiss people rate their own financial knowledge as “mediocre at best.” How do you negotiate a family loan when you don’t even dare to look at your own finances?

And there’s the TWINT factor. Before, lending money to a loved one meant a trip to the ATM, a physical banknote, a concrete gesture. Today? “Send it to me on TWINT.” In three seconds, it’s done. The friction is gone. So is the time to think.

What nobody tells you

The loan changes the power dynamic

As soon as money flows, the horizontal relationship (siblings, friends, equals) becomes vertical (creditor/debtor). You can no longer have dinner together without the loan being the elephant in the room.

The JG Wentworth study shows it: 48% of lenders considered legal action to recover their money but ultimately backed down. Imagine the tension: you’re thinking about taking your own family to court, but you don’t even dare bring it up.

The borrower suffers too

We often forget that the person asking isn’t comfortable either. LendingTree reveals that 65% of borrowers feel guilty about having asked. And yet, 67% wouldn’t hesitate to ask again.

Guilt doesn’t prevent repetition. Because the underlying mechanism, the need, the shame, the lack of perceived alternatives, hasn’t changed.

The silence that kills

The worst part isn’t open conflict. It’s silence. The Money and Mental Health Policy Institute study shows that informal borrowing between loved ones is associated with deteriorating mental health: shame, guilt, self-criticism, anxiety, and in extreme cases, suicidal thoughts.

Not because of the amount. Because of what’s left unsaid.

Family “money scripts” in action

Brad Klontz identified four categories of unconscious beliefs about money. Each one influences our behaviour differently when facing a family loan:

Money Avoidance (”Money is bad”): You lend out of guilt for having succeeded. Refusing feels selfish. You give beyond your means to avoid feeling “rich.”

Money Worship (”Money would fix everything”): You lend genuinely believing that money will solve the other person’s problem. But the problem is rarely financial. And the loan creates dependency.

Money Status (”My worth = my bank account”): You lend to maintain your image as someone who’s made it, who can afford it, who’s generous. Saying no would threaten your identity.

Money Vigilance (”You must be careful with money”): You’re the most likely to say no but also the most likely to suffer in silence from the guilt that follows.

Most of us carry a mix of these scripts. And they activate differently depending on who’s asking: a parent, a child, a sibling, a friend.

What to do in practice

I’m not a financial advisor. I’m someone who has lived through these situations and studied the psychology behind them. Here’s what I’ve learned.

1. The gift rule

The best recommendation I’ve found comes from Ted Rossman (Bankrate): “Don’t lend any amount of money that you’re not prepared to lose. In your mind, assume it’s a gift.”

If you can’t give CHF 35,000 away without it affecting your own stability, the answer is no. Full stop.

And if you can? Give it. With no expectation of repayment. If the money comes back, it’s a bonus. If it doesn’t, the relationship is intact.

2. Separate love from the transaction

You can deeply love someone AND refuse to lend them money. These two things are not contradictory. Dr Klontz recommends this wording: “I love you. I think you’re a wonderful person. If it were about recommending you professionally, I’d do it without hesitation. But lending money is different.”

It’s not a rejection of the person. It’s a boundary on a specific type of help.

3. Offer an alternative form of help

NPR reports the experience of a woman who, instead of lending money to a family member, helped them build a budget, list their debts, and create an action plan. “They saw I was there with them. And they really appreciated it.”

The most valuable financial help is often not the money itself. It’s time, attention, expertise. Helping someone understand their situation is worth more than plugging a hole.

4. If you lend, structure it

FinanceBuzz confirms that only 56% of family loans are fully repaid. And 31% of lenders didn’t even expect to see their money back.

If you decide to lend anyway: put the terms in writing. Amount, schedule, what happens in case of delay. In Switzerland, a verbal agreement is legally valid, but Moneyland recommends a written contract with the amount, interest rate and repayment schedule clearly defined.

It’s not distrust. It’s respect. For you AND for them.

5. Create your personal policy

Financial therapist Aja Evans (CNBC) recommends defining your boundaries in advance, not in the moment of the request, when emotion takes over.

Decide now: who would you lend to? What’s the maximum amount? Under what conditions? Write it down. When the request comes (and it will), you won’t have to decide under pressure.

It’s exactly like an emergency fund: you set it up when you’re calm, not when you’re in crisis.

My personal experience

I’ve been on both sides. I’ve lent. I’ve been lent to.

And here’s what I’ve understood after 20+ years of being in the workforce and a few complicated family dinners: the problem is never the money. The problem is everything we’ve never said about money.

Families that handle loans between loved ones well aren’t the ones with more money. They’re the ones who talk about it. Before the crisis hits. Without shame. Without judgment.

And if you’re in a situation where you don’t know how to say no, or how to ask without feeling ashamed, know that 65% of borrowers feel the same guilt. You’re not alone. It’s not a character flaw. It’s a conversation flaw.

💙

Your exercise for the week

This week, ask yourself these three questions. Not to act. Just to observe.

Question 1: If a loved one asked me for CHF 35,000 tomorrow, what would be my first reaction: financial or emotional?

Question 2: In my family, what is the dominant “money script”? Is money a taboo, a tool, a symbol of success, a source of shame?

Question 3: Have I ever said yes to a money request knowing I shouldn’t have? If so, what stopped me from saying no?

No judgment. No right or wrong answer. Just the awareness of what happens inside you when money and love get mixed up.

Disclaimer: This newsletter is educational and does not constitute personal financial advice. Consult a qualified professional before any investment decision.

Sources:

• Moneyland. Representative survey on borrowing in Switzerland, 2019.

• JG Wentworth. Shadow Debt Survey, on 1,267 people, June 2025.

• Bankrate. Lending Money Survey, on 2,490 adults, 2024.

• LendingTree. Friends & Family Lending Survey, on 2,051 people, 2021.

• Bread Financial. Financial Incompatibility Study, on 1,670 people, May 2024.

• FinanceBuzz. Family Lending Study, on 1,000 adults, updated January 2025.

• LendingTree. Lending Between Family or Friends Study, on 1,000+ people, 2019/2025.

• Klontz, B., Britt, S.L., Mentzer, J. & Klontz, T. “Money Beliefs and Financial Behaviors: Development of the Klontz Money Script Inventory.” Journal of Financial Therapy, 2011.

• Klontz, B. & Klontz, T. Mind Over Money. 2009.

• Wherry, F. et al. “To Lend or Not to Lend to Friends and Kin.” Social Forces, Oxford Academic, 2019.

• Money and Mental Health Policy Institute. Informal Borrowing and Mental Health.

• Pro Familia / Pax. Family Barometer 2025, on 2,200 Swiss families.

• Baloise / YouGov. Savings survey in Switzerland, on 2,032 people, 2025.

• Henchoz, C. Research on young people and money in Switzerland, University of Fribourg / REISO.

• Blick. “Les jeunes Suisses gèrent mal leur argent.” July 2024.

• Evans, A. Financial Therapy. Cited by CNBC, November 2024.

• Rossman, T. Bankrate / CreditCards.com. Cited by CNBC and Fox Business.

• Kahler Financial. “When Parents Can’t Say No: Financial Enabling.”

Every year, it’s the same movie.

December 31st. Midnight. Bubbles. And that solemn promise:

“This year, I’m making a budget.” “This year, I’m starting to invest.” “This year, I’m stopping impulse purchases.”

Sound familiar?

On January 1st, 2026, I opened a beautiful Excel spreadsheet. Perfect columns. Coordinated colors. Spending categories detailed down to the centime.

On January 3rd, I logged my first purchases. On January 8th, I “forgot” to fill in a day. On January 12th, I was three days behind. On January 17th, the file was sleeping in a folder I never opened again.

Sixteen days. My perfect budget survived sixteen days.

And what if I told you that’s exactly what science predicts?

The numbers including Switzerland

Brace yourself. The statistics on resolutions are brutal.

Starting with Switzerland. According to a representative Civey, SnusMarkt study (December 2025, on 500 people), the resolution #1 of the Swiss for 2026 is: “Spend less money on unnecessary things.” Ahead of exercise and “living more consciously.” Money comes first.

But here’s the problem: 59% of 18-29 year-olds admit that their resolutions don’t hold, or one month maximum. Young people are the most enthusiastic on January 1st and the first to drop out.

Conversely, the 40-49 year-olds do better: 51% of them keep their resolutions six months or more. The reason, according to motivation psychologist Frank Wieber (ZHAW Zurich): they set more realistic goals and create routines.

The Strava app, analyzing over 800 million activities, even identified a specific day: the “Quitter’s Day”, the second Friday of January when 80% of resolutions collapse. In 2026, that was January 9th. Watson.ch reports the same phenomenon in Switzerland.

And the Galaxus Intervista data (2023) confirms: nearly 60% of the Swiss make resolutions or challenges at the start of the year. But according to Statista, only one Swiss person in five actually keeps them.

One in five.

Financially, the picture is similar. Switzerland has an exceptionally high savings rate: 26.1% of gross disposable income according to Destatis OECD (2024), compared to 20% in Germany, 17.9% in France and 10.8% in the United States. We should be the champions of financial discipline.

And yet: according to Comparis (June 2025, representative Innofact survey, on 1’034 people), nearly one in three people in Switzerland struggles to cover all their expenses. And 27% of the Swiss anticipate a deterioration of their financial situation. Women are more affected: 30% of them worry, compared to 23% of men.

According to the Moneyland 2025 survey (Ipsos, 1’500 people), the Swiss remain very conservative: 82% keep their money in a current account, 79% in a savings account. Despite the rise of ETFs (from 17% to 38% in 5 years), the majority lets their money sleep.

In other words: we save a lot in Switzerland, but we don’t do much with that money. And resolutions to “invest better” or “make a budget” end up in the same drawer as the January 1st Excel file.

The 21-day myth (and why it sabotages you)

You’ve probably heard this phrase: “It takes 21 days to create a habit.”

It’s wrong. And this belief makes you give up.

The origin? An American plastic surgeon, Dr. Maxwell Maltz, observed in the 1960s that his patients took about 21 days to get used to their new face after surgery. He wrote: careful, “a minimum of about 21 days.” Minimum. Not “exactly.” But the book sold 30 million copies. And the “minimum” disappeared from the quote.

What real science says:

The reference study, conducted by Phillippa Lally at University College London and published in the European Journal of Social Psychology (2010), followed 96 people trying to integrate new habits.

Result: it takes on average 66 days for a behavior to become automatic. Not 21. Sixty-six.

And the range? From 18 to 254 days, depending on the behavior and the person. Drinking a glass of water every morning? ~59 days. Doing 50 sit-ups daily? More like 91 days. An exercise habit takes 1.5 times longer than a dietary habit.

A 2024 meta-analysis (University of South Australia, on 2’601 participants, published in Healthcare) confirms: habit formation takes between 59 and 335 days.

Frank Wieber, from ZHAW, sums up: “We often underestimate how difficult it is to change habits. There are often reasons why we cling to old ones, they are simpler or more pleasant in the short term.”

Why this is crucial for your finances:

If you believe that 21 days is enough, you give up on day 22 thinking “it didn’t work.” When in reality, you were barely a third of the way there.

The 4 real reasons why your financial resolutions fail

It’s not a lack of willpower. It’s pure psychology.

1. The “fresh start effect” evaporates

Our brain loves new beginnings. January 1st, the 1st of the month, a Monday morning... These “temporal reference points” create a motivation spike. The problem? This spike is a flash in the pan.

The Civey SnusMarkt study confirms it for Switzerland: it’s the 18-39 year-olds who most want to make resolutions but they are also the ones who most often declare “lack of motivation” (55%), “lack of time” (31%) and “distractions from social media” (34%) as reasons for failure.

Researcher John Norcross, a pioneer in resolution research, showed that after six months, only 40% of people still hold on. After two years? 19%.

My experience: On January 1st, I’m a financial productivity machine. On January 15th, I’m the same person as before, but with a feeling of failure as a bonus.

2. The goal is too vague (or too ambitious)

“Manage my money better.”

That’s an intention, not a goal. Your brain doesn’t know what to do with it.

The Civey study confirms: among the 65+, 49% say they fail because their expectations were too high. Even the most experienced trap themselves by aiming too high.

“Spend less on unnecessary things”: the resolution #1 in Switzerland doesn’t say how much, when, or how. Your brain interprets that as “someday, maybe.”

My experience: The year I said “I’m going to manage my money better”, I lasted 3 weeks. The year I said “on the 1st of each month, I automatically transfer CHF 500 to my investment account”, it’s been running for years. Without thinking about it.

3. The “what-the-hell effect”

That’s the scientific name. Seriously.

You’ve kept your budget for 12 days. Then you crack. And your brain says: “Well, it’s ruined anyway. Might as well enjoy it.”

One slip becomes an avalanche.

Yet, habit science shows that missing one day does not significantly affect the habit formation process. Lally’s study is clear: automaticity resumes quickly after a slip.

The problem is not the slip. It’s your reaction to the slip.

My experience: I “cracked” in February for a pair of shoes at CHF 380. Instead of restarting my budget, I abandoned the whole system. Total cost: not CHF 380. Thousands in untracked spending over the following 10 months.

4. You change the behavior without changing the system

Your financial environment, your apps, your cards, your payment habits, is optimized for spending. Not for saving.

In Switzerland, Comparis observes: when savings are needed, 64% give up tech purchases, 61% clothing, 57% restaurant outings. We cut the pleasures instead of changing the system.

And the most revealing data point: the willingness to negotiate one’s salary dropped from 9% to 6% between December 2024 and June 2025. As Comparis expert Michael Kuhn summarizes: “The Swiss seem to be increasingly avoiding risks regarding their employment.”

We don’t change the system. We deprive ourselves. Until the deprivation becomes unbearable.

What science really recommends

1. Start ridiculously small

Not “make a complete budget.” Rather: “Every evening, note ONE expense.”

Simple habits become automatic faster (59 days) than complex ones (91+ days). ZHAW confirms: “An important and often underestimated factor is the conscious design of one’s environment.”

James Clear calls this the “2-minute rule”: any new habit should take less than 2 minutes at the start.

2. Attach yourself to an existing anchor

“Habit stacking”: hooking a new habit onto an existing one.

“After my morning coffee, I check my bank balance.” “After putting my bag down when I get home, I note my spending for the day.”

Lally’s study shows that morning-linked habits have a better success rate.

3. Automate everything you can

On payday, an amount goes automatically. You don’t see it. You don’t decide.

In Switzerland, with our 3rd pillar, it’s even simpler: set up an automatic monthly transfer into your 3a. CHF 100, CHF 200, whatever you can. The important thing is the automatism.

This is the “pay yourself first” principle: the most effective resolution that exists, because it only requires willpower ONE single time.

4. Plan your failures

Create an “if-then” plan: “If I make an impulse purchase, THEN I note it and continue normally the next day.”

People who track their habits daily are 84% more likely to maintain them long-term (American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine).

5. Aim for 66 days, not 21

Mark day 66 in your calendar. That’s your real finish line.

The first repetitions have the greatest impact. After that, it becomes progressively easier. You don’t need eternal motivation. You need motivation for 66 days.

The Swiss paradox

Switzerland has one of the highest savings rates in the world. We earn well. We put money aside. And yet, one in three struggles to make ends meet, and we barely give 6 out of 10 to our financial satisfaction (Moneyland 2021).

People who succeed financially are not those who make the best resolutions on January 1st.

They are those who have the best systems the other 364 days.

My system today

I no longer make financial resolutions on January 1st. Instead, I have:

An automatic transfer on payday (savings)

An automatic monthly transfer into an index fund (investing)

An automatic transfer into my 3rd pillar (retirement planning)

A notification on Monday evening to review my spending (tracking)

A pre-set “fun budget” that I spend guilt-free (no deprivation)

Total daily mental effort: zero.

The best time to make a financial resolution is not January 1st.

It’s now. With a system. Not a promise.

💙

Your exercise for the week

Do NOT make a financial resolution.

Choose ONE micro-action and attach it to an existing moment:

“After my morning coffee → I open my banking app for 30 seconds”

“On payday → CHF (amount) goes automatically”

“Monday evening → I review the week’s spending”

Do it for 66 days. Check off each day. And watch the magic happen.

Disclaimer: This newsletter is educational and does not constitute personalized financial advice. Consult a qualified professional before any investment decision.

Sources:

• Civey, SnusMarkt. Representative survey on 2026 resolutions in Switzerland, on 500 people

• Watson.ch “Die häufigsten Neujahrsvorsätze in der Schweiz.”

• Galaxus, Intervista. Representative Swiss study

• Statista. Swiss resolutions survey

• Comparis, Innofact. on 1’034 people, all regions in Switzerland

• Moneyland, Ipsos. Swiss Investment Survey, on 1’500 people

• Moneyland. Swiss Satisfaction Survey, on 1’500 people

• Destatis, OECD. Gross savings rate

• OFS

• Frank Wieber, ZHAW Zurich, cited by Tages-Anzeiger

• Strava. 800+ million activities

• Lally, P. et al. European Journal of Social Psychology, UCL

• Singh, B. et al. Healthcare. UniSA, on 2’601 participants

• Norcross, J.C. et al. University of Scranton

• Maltz, M. Psycho-Cybernetics

• Clear, J. Atomic Habits

Monday morning. 7:12 AM. Before coffee.

I unlock my phone. Open my banking app. Check the balance. Close the app.

8:34 AM. Meeting. I discreetly check under the table. Same balance.

12:15 PM. Lunch break. Again.

And so on. 14 times. Sometimes more.

The worst part? Nothing changed between each check.

THE REALITY

If you recognize yourself, welcome to the club.

Or maybe you’re the exact opposite: you haven’t opened your banking app in three weeks. Notifications pile up. You’d rather not know.

Both behaviors have the same root: financial anxiety.

And in Switzerland, it’s a silent epidemic. According to BlackRock Global Investor Pulse, 55% of Swiss people cite money as their #1 concern — before health (49%) and work (47%).¹

More striking: according to the 2024 SRG survey, 35% of the Swiss population considers their financial situation burdensome: 4 points higher than the previous year.²

THE TWO PROFILES

Profile 1: The “Compulsive Checker”

You check your balance multiple times a day. Every notification makes you jump. You know your balance down to the centime.

What it hides: Hypervigilance. Your nervous system is on permanent alert, as if a financial catastrophe could happen at any moment.

Psychologists call it “financial hypervigilance” — your brain desperately seeking a sense of control in an uncertain world.

Profile 2: The “Total Avoider”

You never open your app. Statements pile up (or get deleted unread). You prefer ignorance to the anxiety of knowing.

What it hides: A protection mechanism. Looking at your accounts triggers so much anxiety that your brain prefers... not to look at all.

A 2023 French survey revealed that one-third of respondents practiced the ostrich policy by never looking at their accounts.³

WHY YOUR BANKING APP TRIGGERS SO MANY EMOTIONS

1. Permanent access = permanent anxiety

Before apps, we checked our accounts once a month at the bank. Today? Mobile payment has become the #1 payment method in Switzerland with 30.7% of all transactions.⁴

Our banking app is a thumb-swipe away, 24/7. And each check can trigger a micro-dose of anxiety... or temporary relief.

2. Your balance as a measure of your worth

Unconsciously, many of us associate our bank balance with our personal value.

High balance = “I’m doing well” Low balance = “I’m a failure”

It’s false, obviously. But try telling that to your reptilian brain.

3. Family legacy

Psychology research shows that our money behaviors are often inherited from childhood. If you grew up in a home where money was a source of tension, your nervous system learned to associate “finances” with “danger.”⁵

THE SWISS PARADOX

Here’s what fascinates me:

Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world. The average disposable household income is CHF 7,186 per month.⁶

And yet, Swiss people stress more than the global average about money (55% vs. 49% worldwide).¹

Money isn’t the problem. Our relationship with money is the problem.

Swiss women are particularly affected: 51% worry about their financial situation, compared to 39% of men. And French-speaking Swiss worry more than German-speaking Swiss (60% vs. 39%).⁷

3 STRATEGIES FOR A HEALTHIER RELATIONSHIP

Strategy 1: The “money date”

Instead of checking compulsively (or avoiding completely), schedule ONE fixed time per week to review your accounts.

Sunday evening. 15 minutes. With a coffee.

No judgment. Just observation.

Psychologist Dr. Joseph Trunzo recommends: ”Check your accounts at a scheduled time rather than impulsively.”⁸

Strategy 2: Turn off notifications (yes, really)

Each notification = a micro-interruption + a potential micro-dose of anxiety.

Keep only truly important alerts (fraud, overdraft). The rest? Silence.

You won’t miss anything. Your money will still be there when you decide to look.

Strategy 3: The question before checking

Before opening your app, ask yourself:

“Am I checking because I need specific information, or because I’m feeling anxious?”

If it’s anxiety: close the app. Breathe. The information will be the same in 5 minutes.

THE TAKEAWAY

Your banking app is a tool. Not a therapist. Not a judge. Not a measure of your worth.

14 checks a day won’t make you richer. Totally avoiding your accounts won’t make your debts disappear.

The real question isn’t “how much do I have in my account?”

It’s: “What relationship do I want with my money?”

A relationship based on fear and hypervigilance? Or a relationship based on awareness and calm?

The choice is yours. And yes, it’s work. But it’s worth every effort.

What about you? Compulsive checker or total avoider? (Or maybe a mix of both depending on the day?) 😅

💙

These observations are purely educational and do not constitute financial advice.

SOURCES

1. https://www.allnews.ch/content/points-de-vue/l’argent-est-le-premier-facteur-de-stress-pour-les-suisses

2. https://www.rts.ch/info/dialogue/2024/article/un-tiers-des-suissesses-et-des-suisses-trouvent-leur-situation-financiere-difficile-28672638.html

3. https://www.land.lu/page/article/514/341514/FRE/index.html

4. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/banking-fintech/mobile-payment-expands-its-leading-position-in-payment-methods/88896522

5. https://geediting.com/s-psychology-says-people-who-check-their-bank-balance-obsessively-typically-share-these-8-childhood-wounds/

6. https://www.blick.ch/fr/suisse/salaire-le-revenu-moyen-des-menages-etait-de-7186-francs-en-2023-id21428782.html

7. https://www.moneyland.ch/fr/preoccupations-etude-suisse-2023

8. https://news.bryant.edu/stressed-about-economy-bryant-psychologist-provides-tips-how-lessen-money-anxiety

I needed to buy milk. ONE liter of milk.

I walked out with:

• Milk (yes, at least that)

• Raspberries “on sale”

• A magazine I’ll never read

• Three scented candles

• Hummus even though I already have some in the fridge

• A bag of chips “for tonight’s apéro” (there was no apéro)

CHF 127. For milk.

And the worst part? I didn’t even realize it until I reached the checkout.

THE REALITY

If you recognize yourself, welcome to the club.

You’re not alone. A Swiss study conducted during the 2023 holiday season reveals that 48% of Swiss people make impulse purchases regularly (half the time or more). Only 2% claim they never do.¹

Even more surprising: 47% of Swiss consumers feel like victims of marketing strategies when they shop, with no notable difference between French-speaking and German-speaking regions.¹

And these little “extras” add up: according to data from the Federal Statistical Office, the average Swiss household spends CHF 5,048 per month on consumption.² A significant portion of that goes to unplanned purchases. (I triple-checked this statistic because it’s insane!)

But what interests me isn’t the statistic.

It’s the why.

THE 3 MECHANISMS THAT TRAP YOU

1. Decision fatigue

You know why the chocolate aisle is always at the checkout?

Because after 47 micro-decisions (which yogurt? which brand of pasta? organic or not?), your brain is exhausted.

Willpower works like a muscle. It gets tired.

Psychologist Roy Baumeister demonstrated that our decision-making capacity depletes throughout the day. Every choice, even trivial ones, consumes mental energy.

And a tired brain says “yes” to everything.

The chocolate at checkout? Your brain no longer has the energy to say no.

2. The “Treat yourself” trap

“I work hard. I deserve this.”

This phrase has cost most of us thousands of francs.

The supermarket has become the place for accessible rewards.

And the Swiss are particularly sensitive to deals: according to Bring!’s 2023 Shopper Guide, 46% of Swiss people choose their products and brands based on current promotions, compared to only 36% in 2022.³

The problem: we “reward” ourselves 4-5 times a week. Small pleasure × 5 × 52 weeks = CHF 1,500-2,000/year.

It’s no longer a reward. It’s an expensive habit disguised as self-care.

3. The promo illusion

“But it was on SALE!”

The promotion is modern commerce’s most elegant trap.

The Swiss numbers are revealing: 80% of Swiss people now pay attention to prices when shopping. And 42% even choose which store to shop at based on available deals.³

Your brain hears: “I’m getting a good deal.” The reality: “I’m spending money on something I wouldn’t have bought.”

Saving 30% on a useless purchase = losing 70%.

I once bought 3 kg of mangoes because of “buy 2, get 1 free.” I threw away 2 kg. Great deal.

THE REAL PROBLEM (it’s not the supermarket)

Here’s what nobody says:

The supermarket is just the symptom.

The Swiss feel this deeply. According to the 2024 SRG survey, 35% of the Swiss population considers their financial situation burdensome: 4 points higher than the previous year.⁴

And 55% of Swiss people cite money as their primary concern, even before health (49%) or work (47%).⁵

Notable fact: Swiss women are more affected: 51% worry about their financial situation, compared to 39% of men. And French-speaking Swiss worry more than German-speaking Swiss (60% versus 39%).⁶

That CHF 127 isn’t about food.

It’s about:

• Stress we compensate for through shopping

• Emotional fatigue at the end of the week

• A need for control (paradoxically, through impulsive buying)

• Avoidance of something deeper

My biggest slip-ups = my most stressful weeks.

The supermarket had become my therapy. CHF 40-50 per session.

3 STRATEGIES (that actually work)

Strategy 1: The photographed list

The data confirms it: 31% of Swiss people consider thoroughly studying flyers and planning as an integral part of their weekly routine.³

Make your list. Photograph it.

Before going to checkout, pull out the photo.

Anything not in the photo → you put it back.

Simple. Brutal. Effective.

(I saved ~CHF 200/month with this single technique.)

Strategy 2: The “ghost cart”

Buy what you want mentally.

“Oh, those candles are pretty. I WANT them.”

Then keep walking without taking them.

The pleasure of shopping is often in the desire, not the possession. By “buying mentally,” you get 80% of the dopamine without spending.

Try it. It’s strangely satisfying.

Strategy 3: The magic question

Revealing fact: 64% of Swiss people would like to see prevention measures to help them reduce their impulse purchases.¹

Before each unplanned purchase, ask yourself:

“Am I buying this because I need it, or because I’m feeling something right now?”

If the answer is emotional (tiredness, stress, boredom, reward), put the item back.

It’s not deprivation. It’s awareness.

THE TAKEAWAY

Your receipt is a diary.

It tells the story of your week better than you could.

Impulse purchases aren’t “mistakes” to correct.

They’re messages to listen to.

The next time you walk out with CHF 127 instead of CHF 3.20, don’t judge yourself.

Simply ask: “What was I trying to fill?”

The answer is worth more than the CHF 123 “lost.”

What about you? What’s your recurring impulse buy at the supermarket? (Mine is hummus. Always hummus.)

💙

These observations are purely educational and do not constitute financial advice.

SOURCES

1. https://www.monde-economique.ch/achats-impulsifs-pendant-les-fetes-de-fin-dannee

2. https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/fr/home/statistiques/situation-economique-sociale-population/revenus-consommation-et-fortune/budget-des-menages.html

3. https://handelsverband.swiss/fr/news/bring-shopper-guide-2023/

4. https://www.rts.ch/info/dialogue/2024/article/un-tiers-des-suissesses-et-des-suisses-trouvent-leur-situation-financiere-difficile-28672638.html

5. https://www.bilan.ch/economie/largent-stresse-les-suisses-plus-que-tout

6. https://www.moneyland.ch/fr/preoccupations-etude-suisse-2023

“Mom, why don’t you just take more money from the machine?”

This question from an 11-year-old summarizes one of modern parenting’s greatest challenges: our children grow up in a world where 64% of payments are cashless (Swiss National Bank 2023)².

For them, money comes out of the wall. Period.

My friend Sophie, a marketing director in Geneva, experienced this exact moment last August in Italy. Three blocks later, her 14-year-old daughter refused to buy shoes for CHF 120 (”that’s robbery!”) but had just spent CHF 350 on Vinted* in one week. “I’m doing responsible consumption, Mom.”

Gen Z’s paradox? They understand crypto but not budgets. They question the impact of our investments while living in complete financial abstraction.

After 22 years working, including 15 in finance and several years in banking strategy and innovation, I observe a fascinating evolution: the industry creates increasingly accessible interfaces while the basics of financial education are being lost.

Financial education can no longer wait until age 18. It starts at 6, at home.

Here’s what Sophie tested for six months with her children - and what it reveals about the intergenerational transformation of our relationship with money.

*Transparency note: Vinted isn’t currently accessible in Switzerland. For this story’s purposes, I use this name as it’s universally recognized. Sophie and her daughter actually use Swiss second-hand platforms like Ricardo, Tutti, or local Facebook groups. The principle remains identical.

September 2024: The Brutal diagnosis

Back from vacation, Sophie decides to understand where she stands. She discovers the fresh PostFinance 2025 study¹: 94% of Swiss parents consider financial education an absolute priority - on par with perseverance or resilience.

She recognizes herself. Of course it’s important!

But the study also reveals that most parents remain concerned: fear that children spend too much, are influenced by social media, or fall into the debt trap.

Sophie understands the paradox: we all want children “responsible with money”... but we don’t know how.

She then conducts her own family diagnosis:

Her son (11 years old):

• Thinks the ATM manufactures money

• Never had to choose between two wants with a limited budget

• Receives CHF 10 (~$11) “from time to time” depending on mom’s mood

Her daughter (14 years old):

• Develops a strange anxiety: refuses necessary purchases but spends impulsively online

• Doesn’t understand the link between her parents’ work and their lifestyle

• Starts asking difficult questions: “Mom, what do you invest in? Because if it’s oil...”

Sophie herself:

• Oscillates between strict deprivation (”No, you can’t!”) and guilty indulgence (”Okay fine, just this once...”)

• Never talked about real amounts with her children

• Systematically avoids conversations about family money

The assessment is clear: she reproduces exactly what she experienced as a child - total financial silence. Her own parents never talked about money. Result: at 25, she didn’t know how to negotiate her first salary.

October 2024: The game-changing discovery

Sophie comes across recommendations from Pro Juventute⁴ (Swiss youth organization) and Budget-conseil Suisse⁵ (Swiss Budget Advisory). She discovers a concept she didn’t know: the youth salary.

Invented in 1977 by Swiss psychologist Urs Abt⁶, the principle is simple but radical: from about age 12, you give teens a larger monthly amount, but they become responsible for entire categories of expenses.

Recommended amounts by Budget-conseil Suisse:

• 11-12 years: CHF 25-30/month (~$28-33)

• 12-14 years: CHF 30-50/month (~$33-56)

• 15+ years: CHF 50-80/month (~$56-89)

These amounts are indicative - what matters is regularity and adaptation to your family context.

The rule that terrifies her: Never bail them out before the scheduled date.

Sophie hesitates. She discusses it with a psychologist friend: “Don’t you think that’s harsh? Letting them fail?”

Response: “Better they fail with CHF 30 at 11 than with CHF 30,000 at 25.”

That phrase decided her.

November 2024: Protocol launch

First Monday of November, Sophie announces the new system at dinner:

Son (11 years old): CHF 30/month (~$33). Covers school snacks, movie outings with friends, personal purchases.

Daughter (14 years old): CHF 80/month (~$89). Covers all that PLUS part of her clothing (excluding uniforms and basics).

Absolute rule: “You manage it. If you have nothing left on the 20th, you wait until the 1st of next month. No bailouts.”

The children are enthusiastic. “Cool! We can buy what we want!”

Sophie smiles. She knows the lesson is coming.

Day 8: The son spent CHF 22. He has CHF 8 left for 22 days.

Day 12: The daughter splurged on a sweater for CHF 45. She realizes she won’t be able to go out with her friends next weekend.

Day 15: The son asks for CHF 15 to go to the movies with his soccer team. Sophie says no.

Tears. Anger. “You’re mean! All my friends are going!”

Sophie holds firm. It’s one of those difficult moments as a parent. She calls her psychologist friend: “I feel cruel.”

Response: “You’re not cruel. You’re teaching him reality: choices have consequences. It’s the best gift you can give him.”

December 2024: First adjustments

The son pulls out a piece of paper that he tapes to his bedroom wall. Basic: date, purchase, amount, remaining balance.

He writes down everything. Every snack, every outing. He realizes that CHF 3.50 from the school vending machine, five times a week, equals CHF 70 per month. More than his total budget.

He starts bringing his own snack from home. Savings: CHF 15/month.

The daughter discovers Vinted... but differently. Instead of spending impulsively, she waits. Compares. Negotiates. According to the Harris Interactive (2023) study³, 78% of children in her generation wait for sales, influenced by the current inflationary context.

She joins this generation developing savings strategies out of necessity.

One evening, she confides to Sophie: “Before, I bought without thinking because it was ‘your’ money. Now that it’s ‘my’ money, I think.”

Sophie realizes something profound: as long as money comes from “mom,” it’s abstract. When it’s theirs, it becomes real.

January 2025: The transformative conversation

One evening, the daughter enters the kitchen while Sophie prepares dinner.

“Mom, can I ask you something? Where do you invest your money? Because I read an article about pension funds and climate impact...”

Sophie’s first reflex: irritation. “You’re 14, you’re just discovering these topics, and you’re already questioning my choices?”

But she remembers her own parents who refused any dialogue. She breathes.

“You know what? Explain to me what you read. I’m listening.”

The conversation lasts two hours.

The daughter shares her concerns. She saw a TikTok video explaining that pension funds indirectly finance oil projects. She wonders if “their” family money contributes to the problem.

Sophie is tempted to brush it aside. But she decides to be honest.

“I’ve never really asked myself that question. My 2nd pillar is standard, I’ve never looked at what it invests in exactly. But you raise a real point.”

They search together online. Sophie discovers that yes, her pension fund has significant exposure to fossil fuels. But also that more sustainable options now exist.

The daughter: “Could you change?”

Sophie: “Maybe. But I need to understand the trade-offs. Does it change the return? The security? It’s not as simple as choosing between two products at the supermarket.”

The daughter: “I know. But at least you’re looking. That’s already something.”

Sophie realizes at that moment that her daughter wasn’t judging her. She just wanted to understand. And she wanted family values to be consistent with financial decisions.

February 2025: Understanding the new generation

This conversation pushes Sophie to research. She discovers the Deloitte 2024 study⁷ on 22,841 young people in 44 countries:

• 62% of Gen Z felt anxious about climate change the previous month

• 9 out of 10 young people say “purpose” (meaning) is important for their job satisfaction

• 20% have already changed jobs for environmental reasons

Sophie understands: her daughter isn’t a militant exception. She’s the norm for her generation.

A 2024 study⁸ confirms: 79% of young people have addressed ecological transition at school (versus only 56% in families). They’ve been immersed in these questions since kindergarten.

Her children have never known a world where money was primarily tangible. For them, it’s abstract by default.

Sophie then makes the connection: her children grow up with two simultaneous paradoxes.

Paradox 1: Money is abstract (no cash) so seems magical.

Paradox 2: Their consumption choices must have meaning (impact), so money is never “just” money.

She can no longer educate them financially the way she was educated. She must integrate this new dimension.

WHAT THE BANKING INDUSTRY OBSERVES (digital transformation perspective)

After 22 years working, including 15 in finance and several years in banking innovation and strategy, I’ve observed three major mutations in our relationship with money:

2002-2010: The opacity era

Clients accepted not understanding. “My bank handles it.”

2010-2020: The forced transparency era

Financial crisis, regulation, fintech. Clients demand to understand.

2020-2025: The values-finance alignment era

Clients seek more coherence. “I’d like to better understand how my financial choices align with my values.”

According to recent public studies (Deloitte 2024)⁷, 62% of Gen Z feel anxious about climate change, and 9 out of 10 consider “purpose” essential to their job satisfaction.

This change isn’t generational - it’s structural.

The banking industry develops increasingly accessible interfaces, with progressive democratization of investment and accelerated digitalization. But these tools don’t replace basic education.

According to 2024 research⁹ on Gen Z’s sustainability orientation, subjective norms and contextual realities play a significant role in how this generation forms their personal attitudes toward sustainability.

The risk? Training a generation that’s ultra-connected financially but disconnected from fundamentals. Who can use an app but doesn’t understand compound interest. Who wants to invest “responsibly” but struggles to distinguish substance from greenwashing.

The opportunity? Combining technological sophistication AND early human education. Tools facilitate. But parents educate.

These observations reflect my personal experience and publicly documented trends - each institution evolves at its own pace and with its own priorities.

That’s our generation’s challenge.

March 2025: Sophie’s (imperfect) transformation

I meet Sophie for coffee in early March. Six months after the protocol began.

Her son (11 years old):

“You know what he told me yesterday? ‘Mom, I understand now why you compare prices at the supermarket. Before, I thought it was weird.’ He saved CHF 95 (~$106) to buy himself a video game instead of asking for it at Christmas. He was PROUD.”

But: “He still cracked twice. He found himself broke for 10 days. It was hard. But he learned.”

Her daughter (14 years old):

“She launched an Instagram second-hand shop with two friends. They made CHF 450 (~$500) in revenue over three months. She told me: ‘Mom, now I understand that earning money is work. Before, I didn’t see it.’”

But: “She still pays CHF 30/month (~$33) for streaming subscriptions she doesn’t use. We’re working on that.”

The moment of truth came in mid-February.

The grandparents offered CHF 180 (~$200) to the daughter for her birthday. She refused.

“Grandma, can you put that money in my savings account instead? I’m saving for later. And I’d like to understand what it’s invested in.”

Sophie broke down in tears. Not because her daughter was “perfect.” But because she had understood something fundamental: money is a tool with consequences beyond immediate satisfaction.

What Sophie really learned

“I’m not training financial geniuses,” Sophie tells me. “My son still has his piece of paper taped up, not a sophisticated system. My daughter still makes mistakes. But three things changed:”

1. We TALK about money naturally

“It’s become as normal as talking about sports or school. They ask questions, I answer honestly. Even when I don’t know.”

2. They understand trade-offs

“My daughter no longer says ‘why don’t you buy that?’ She says ‘I understand you have to choose between this and that.’ She’s 14 and she grasps trade-offs.”

3. They connect values and money

“My son asked the other day if our bananas were fair trade. Not from activism - just curiosity. He’s starting to understand that his consumption choices have impact.”

“The strangest thing?” Sophie continues. “I learned more about my own relationship with money educating them than in 20 years of my career.”

“I realized I’d never really asked where my 2nd pillar was invested. That I bought compulsively when I was stressed. That I used money to avoid difficult conversations with them.”

“By forcing them to become conscious, I became conscious too.“

The three principles Sophie now applies

Principle 1: Adapted transparency, not total secrecy

Sophie doesn’t tell her children exactly how much she earns. But she explains the structure: “Mom works, part goes to taxes, part to rent, part to savings, the rest is for living.”

According to the PostFinance 2025 study¹, serene families practice this progressive communication: we adapt the level of detail to age, but don’t hide the existence of constraints.

Principle 2: Fixed budget, not “case by case”

No more CHF 10 “from time to time.” Fixed amount, fixed date, clear rules.

Pro Juventute⁴ and Budget-conseil Suisse⁵ insist: regularity matters more than absolute amount. That’s what enables learning.

Principle 3: Integrated values, not separated

Sophie didn’t create separate courses on “responsible investment.” She naturally integrates these questions into daily discussions.

“Why do I choose this brand? Because it’s locally produced, it costs CHF 2 more but it’s a choice I make. See, it’s a compromise - not perfect, but conscious.”

Traps to avoid (According to Sophie’s experience)

Trap 1: Excessive gamification

Sophie tested a “finance for kids” app the first month. Result? Her son played with it like a video game, disconnected from reality.

She returned to basics: paper sheet, cash when possible. Digital will come later, when the foundations are solid.

Trap 2: Paralyzing perfectionism

“I almost quit when my son spent everything in 8 days the second month. I thought ‘it’s not working.’ But my psychologist friend reminded me: that’s EXACTLY the learning.“

Trap 3: Idealism without compromise

“My daughter wanted us to become 100% eco overnight. I had to explain: we can’t change everything immediately. But we can progress. That’s the responsible adult - not perfect, progressive.”

The realistic goal: Training humans, not robots

Sophie isn’t training financial experts. She’s training:

• A son who understands that money comes from work and there are limits

• A daughter who thinks about the impact of her choices (while having contradictions)

• Future adults who will know how to discuss money with their partners without shame or judgment

Training adults who understand that money is a tool, neither magical nor diabolical. Who can balance present and future, pleasure and responsibility, ideal and reality. Who can have difficult conversations without accusations.

Sophie’s real victory? Her children lost magical innocence... but gained enlightened awareness.

And honestly? That’s a better deal for their future.

For the financially experienced

What Sophie experienced on a small scale, I’ve observed on a large scale for 22 years: sustainable family wealth is no longer built on the sophistication of legal structures, but on the capacity for intergenerational dialogue.

Families that integrate the next generation in family councils, that explain the origin and criteria of their investments, that accept to evolve with new priorities... these are the ones whose wealth crosses generations.

Not because everyone agrees. But because mutual respect and compromise replace silence or confrontation.

Subscribe now

These observations are purely educational and do not constitute financial advice. Consult a qualified professional for your specific situation.

And you, where do you stand?

Do you oscillate between saying everything and saying nothing? Do your children (or nephews, godchildren) ask difficult questions about the impact of your financial choices?

Tell me - I love reading your stories of dialogues (successful or complicated!).

P.S. If someone has a teen who refuses 180 CHF cash to prioritize savings, SEND ME their secret. Sophie is still in shock. 😊

Sources

1. PostFinance & Sotomo (2025). “Swiss Pocket Money Study 2025” - Study commissioned by PostFinance on Swiss parents’ financial education. 94% of parents consider financial competence a major educational task.
https://sotomo.ch/site/fr/projekte/letude-sur-largent-de-poche-en-suisse/
https://www.postfinance.ch/en/blog/money-in-simple-terms/pocket-money-from-what-age-how-much-and-what-for.html

2. Swiss National Bank (SNB) - Allnews (2023). “Payment apps gaining ground in Switzerland” - SNB survey of 2,000 people on payment methods. Details: 36% cash, 33% debit cards, 13% credit cards, 11% apps.
https://www.allnews.ch/content/news/les-applications-de-paiement-ont-le-vent-en-poupe-en-suisse

3. Harris Interactive (2023). “Children’s Financial and Budget Education 2023” - Study on 8-14 year-olds’ budget management practices. 71% aware of inflation, 48% need explanations about bank accounts, 78% wait for sales.
https://www.selexium.com/actualites/education-financiere-2023-rapport-enfants-argent/

4. Pro Juventute (2025). “Pocket Money Recommendations” - Official Swiss organization for child protection and financial education.
https://www.projuventute.ch/fr/parents/famille-et-societe/argent-de-poche

5. Swiss Budget Advisory Association. “Pocket money indicative values” - Official recommendations by age.

https://www.budgetberatung.ch

6. Jugendlohn Association (Youth Salary). Concept developed in 1977 by Swiss psychologist Urs Abt.

https://www.salairejeunesse.ch

7. Deloitte Global (2024). “Gen Z and Millennial Survey 2024” - Global survey of 22,841 young people in 44 countries. 62% of Gen Z anxious about climate change, 9/10 consider “purpose” important.
https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/issues/work/genz-millennial-survey.html

8. Profession CGP (2024). “Generation Z’s attraction to sustainable finance” - Study on financial education and sustainability. 79% of young people have addressed ecological transition at school.
https://www.professioncgp.com/article/etudes/economie/lattrait-de-la-generation-z-pour-la-finance-durable.html

9. MDPI Administrative Sciences (2024). “Sustainability Orientation of Generation Z and Its Role in Their Choice of Employer” - Comparative research on 30 Gen Z participants (19-26 years).
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-3387/14/10/249

Additional contextual sources:

• Credit Suisse & Pro Juventute (2017): Historical study on 14,000 parents (reference data)

• Baloise (2024): “Pocket money in Switzerland: at what age, how much and for what?”

• BSR (2024): “Millennials, Gen Z, and the Future of Sustainability”

© 2025 Finance Made Human - Educational newsletter on financial psychology

According to the Federal Statistical Office (2023), money is cited as the main cause of conflict in 73% of Swiss divorces, surpassing infidelity (41%) and incompatibility of character (38%).

Yet, a survey by Raiffeisen Bank (2022) reveals that only 23% of Swiss couples openly discuss their finances before marriage. We meticulously plan our vacations, but dodge conversations about our fundamental financial values.

Fifteen years in private banking have taught me an uncomfortable truth: money conflicts are never really about money.

Field observations my friends share with me

In my circle, I regularly hear the same tensions. A friend tells me: “He wants to save to buy an apartment, I prefer to invest in experiences and travel. We argue over CHF 600 monthly allowance, but actually we don’t have the same definition of happiness.”

Another, an executive at a multinational: “We both earn good money, but we can’t agree on how much to spend renovating the kitchen. CHF 15,000 or CHF 45,000? He says I think too big, I find he lacks ambition.”

These conversations reveal that behind every financial conflict lies a deeper disagreement about life priorities.

The three hidden conflicts behind money

The conflict of invisible values

Money crystallizes our deep values: security versus freedom, present versus future, individualism versus collective.

A study by the University of Zurich (2021) on 1,200 couples reveals that 84% of financial conflicts actually mask a disagreement about life priorities. The couple arguing about buying a new car is actually confronting “prudence versus pleasure” or “social status versus simplicity”.

A doctor friend recently confided: “My husband prioritizes security - savings account, multiple insurances. I want to grow our money in the stock market. Neither of us is wrong, but we’re talking about two different worlds.”

The conflict of financial languages

We never learn to talk about money. School teaches us Roman history, but not how to negotiate a salary or plan for retirement.

Result according to a Credit Suisse survey (2022): 67% of Swiss couples use different financial terms to describe the same concepts. “Investing” for one means “placing prudently”, for the other “taking risks”.

An architect acquaintance explained: “When I tell my partner ‘we should be more careful’, he hears ‘spend less’. I mean ‘diversify our investments’. This confusion creates constant misunderstandings.”

The conflict of family legacies

We inherit financial attitudes from our parents, often unconsciously. The child from a family where “we don’t talk about money at the table” develops financial modesty. One raised in abundance normalizes certain expenses that their partner finds extravagant.

Research from EPFL in economic psychology (2020) demonstrates that our financial behaviors form before age 12 and remain remarkably stable in adulthood.

An entrepreneur friend told me: “Our vacation disputes reflect our childhoods. Him, accustomed to simple but long vacations at his grandparents’. Me, raised with short getaways but in nice hotels. Same budget, opposite philosophies.”

The solutions I observe among serene couples

Progressive transparency

The financially harmonious couples in my circle practice what I call “transparency by stages”. They don’t spill everything in the first few months, but progressively establish open communication.

According to the Swiss Association of Financial Planners (2023), couples who hold a monthly 30-minute “finance meeting” report 54% less financial stress than those who avoid the subject.

The three-account rule

My most financially serene friends practice the “mine-yours-ours” formula: personal account for each + joint account for shared projects.

This organization respects individual autonomy while building common goals. Typical proportion I observe: 70% joint, 30% personal, but each couple finds their balance.

Defining financial roles

Contrary to the cliché, the one best at math doesn’t necessarily manage family finances better. The effective couples I know distribute according to affinities: one follows investments, the other optimizes current expenses. One plans long-term, the other manages daily.

The essential: regular communication and important decisions made together.

What European data reveals

A comparative study by the European Central Bank (2021) on household finances reveals that Nordic couples (Sweden, Denmark) show the lowest rates of marital financial stress. Their secret? Mandatory financial education in high school and a culture of economic transparency.

Conversely, Mediterranean countries, despite strong family ties, show more marital financial tensions, correlated with cultural taboos around money.

The lesson from fifteen years of observation

Couples who last financially aren’t those who agree on everything, but those who know how to negotiate their differences.

They accept that money is as emotional as it is rational. They create spaces for their divergences (personal accounts) and common goals (shared projects).

Above all, they understand that behind every financial conflict lies a deeper conversation about their dreams, their fears, and their values.

For the financially experienced

In private banking, I observe that lasting family wealth rests on structures that integrate psychological dynamics: family holdings with clear governance, separate mandates respecting individual risk profiles, explicitly defined generational objectives.

Technical sophistication without relational harmony invariably leads to value destruction during transfers.

These observations are purely educational and do not constitute financial advice. Consult a qualified professional for your specific situation.

And you, how do you observe financial dynamics in your circle? What patterns do you recognize?

Sources:

• Federal Statistical Office: Causes of Divorce 2023

• Raiffeisen Switzerland: Marital Finance Survey 2022

• University of Zurich: Behavioral Economics Lab 2021

• Credit Suisse: Swiss Household Survey 2022

• EPFL: Economic Psychology Laboratory 2020

• Swiss Association of Financial Planners 2023

• European Central Bank: Household Finance Survey 2021

The revealing experiment: physical vs digital money

MIT 2021: A groundbreaking study by Professor Drazen Prelec using fMRI shows that participants spend on average 32% more when paying by card rather than cash². Same amount, same purchase, radically different perception.

In my own family, we tested this theory. One month with cash envelopes for variable expenses. Result: CHF 340 in “automatic” savings compared to our card habits, without any conscious restriction.

The explanation? Our prefrontal cortex processes physical money (concrete, immediate) and digital money (abstract, deferred) differently. Credit cards specifically activate the brain’s reward centers (striatum) - the same regions exploited by cocaine and amphetamines³.

The three costly cognitive illusions

The invisible accumulation illusion

CHF 5.50 for a daily coffee: our brain encodes “small recurring expense”. CHF 1,430 presented annually: our brain encodes “significant sum requiring reflection”. Mathematically identical, psychologically opposite.

I practice the same bias with my digital subscriptions: Spotify Family (CHF 22.95/month) seems negligible. CHF 275.40 paid annually would make me think twice.

The asymmetry of visible vs invisible losses

According to foundational work by Kahneman and Tversky⁴, we feel a loss 2 times more intensely than an equivalent gain. But this rule only applies to “visible” losses.

An American acquaintance kept USD 80,000 in cash for three years due to stock market risk aversion. Cumulative inflation loss: USD 11,200 in purchasing power. In their subjective evaluation? “I lost nothing.” Since inflation is invisible, its psychological impact remains zero.

The perceived complexity paradox

We master objectively complex choices (car insurance with 47 variables, smartphone with 156 specifications) but freeze on basic financial decisions. This inconsistency reveals that financial “complexity” is often a mental construction rather than objective reality.

The workarounds I observe

Making the invisible visible

The most financially serene households practice “tangible accounting”: annual calculations displayed, inflation impacts quantified, investment performance tracked monthly. This approach transforms abstract into concrete, restoring our natural judgment capacity.

Automating the uncomfortable

Automation bypasses our cognitive resistances. A scheduled transfer “disappears” from our mental radar, avoiding repeated decisional friction.

Limiting choice inflation

The most successful investors voluntarily constrain themselves to 3-5 maximum options. This artificial limitation restores their capacity for action.

International research findings

The European Household Finance and Consumption Survey⁵, covering over 91,000 households in 19 European countries, reveals that households using “concretization interfaces” (visualizations, alerts, segmentation) achieve significantly superior results in financial satisfaction and savings performance.

A Journal of Financial Therapy⁶ study demonstrates that individuals using financial visualization are 1.4 times more likely to achieve their financial goals than those not using these techniques.

These results are independent of income level or financial education.

Reconciling with our cognitive nature

We will never choose financial optimality permanently. Our brain didn’t evolve to grasp post-modern concepts like discounting or diversification.

The solution? Accept these limitations and design systems that compensate rather than fight them.

For professionals

These mechanisms amplify with amounts. In private banking, a CHF or EUR 1,000 bias becomes catastrophic at CHF or EUR 100,000. Institutional tools (visual reporting, automatic alerts, choice architecture) systematically compensate for these cognitive weaknesses. Their adaptation to the personal level represents an under-exploited optimization lever.

These observations are purely educational and do not constitute financial advice. Consult a qualified professional for your specific situation.

What about you - in which situations does your brain play tricks on you with money?

Sources & References

1. Miendlarzewska, E. A., Kometer, M., & Preuschoff, K. (2019). “Neurofinance.” Current Opinion in Psychology, Sage Publications.

2. Prelec, D. & Banker, S. (2021). “Neural mechanisms of credit card spending.” Scientific Reports, Nature Research. fMRI study showing reward center activation.

3. MIT Sloan School of Management (2021). “Credit cards activate the reward center of our brains and drive spending.” Research on striatum activation.

4. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1991). “Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106(4), 1039-1061.

5. European Central Bank (2019). “Household Finance and Consumption Survey.” Harmonized survey covering 91,000+ European households, 2017-2019 data.

6. Journal of Financial Therapy (2023). Study on the effectiveness of visualization in achieving financial goals.

Complementary sources:

• Dun & Bradstreet Study: Consumers spend 12-18% more with credit cards

• Prelec, D. & Simester, D. (2001): MIT study on auctions (100% difference card vs cash)

• Federal Reserve Economic Data (2024): Statistics on payment method usage

• Eurostat (2025): “Are you satisfied with your financial situation?” EU average financial satisfaction: 6.6/10