Well, it IS legal here (though you'll need to register and do periodic health checks)!

You might try hanging out at the Spruengli at ParadePlatz (at the tea-room upstairs).

Tom

Let me tell you a little story:

Once upon a time ( all stories need to start this way), there was a newly married wifey, who needed to have her own "Swiss" ( her Mother was delighted ) bank account.
She proceeded, together with her new hubby to the post office to open an account all in her own name, to manage and take charge of her houshold finances all on her lonesome.

Wifey was so proud the day her card arrived in the mail, she had her first deposit ready and waiting, to fill the yellow plastic, with own "personal identification number" coffer.

Please dear reader, do realise, this occured long before the days of on-line banking ( she couldn't use a computer anyway), as well, long before she had any proper command of the language.

To continue, wifey trotted down to the local Post Office with her first ever deposit, carefully stowed in an envelope, clearly earmarked as "Post Office Account deposit, don't lose"!!

She then proceeded to painstakingly fill out her first ever deposit slip, took it to the counter and paid it in, recieved her first ever, official Post office stamp on the tear off reciept and, full of how important she had just become,went home.

During the next weeks, she went shopping and for the first time in her life, instead of having to produce great wodges of cash at the checkout, could painlessly give Mr Migros her carefully budgeted grocery money, by the push of a few buttons!

She was overjoyed at having at last mastered the electronic finacial world.

Next month, she, "nonchalantly", with only the slightest hint of smugness, proceeded to do the very same as the previous month.

she happily spent her grocery money, taking careful note each time so she would never get to that most embarassing point of "Lack of funds in account" syndrome.

She did of course recieve an account statement inbetween deposits, but as her German was of no consequence, she barely glanced at them, besides, she knew what she had spent, right down to the last rappen.

One fine day, six weeks later, she recieved a surprise letter in the mail, addressed to her specifically, sent from a nearby address.

"Curious", she thought and opened and read, with the help of her much thumbed English/German dictionary, realized, she had recieved a thank you note from "Family xxxx", whose homestead had recently burnt down to the ground and they wanted to personally thank her for her most generous donations to their appeal.

What???

She took out her account statement and after much scrutinizing, discovered her mistake.

The deposit slips on the open counter in the post office were not for personal use, but were to go towards the Family appeal to help get back on their feet again after the fire.

So while wifey had generously helped this Family in their time of need (albeit it unwittingly), she had got herself into the red, from the very first

It took wifey some time to recover from that error, pride didn't allow her to tell hubby.

So anyway, the moral of the story is, open up a Post Office account, if you want to have an overdraft that is.

Fortunately for her, way back then there was no penalty for it as long as they saw money going in regularly, even now it is quite minimal should the worst happen.

Good luck, hope you get out of your slump soon.

I'm with UBS and I seem to be able to dip into the red at the end of the month without penalty.

Its so very civilised isn't it? Last year I got charged 30 GBP by Halifax simply because my account went 4 GBP overdrawn

I have wondered about this as it has happened to me a few times as well, with none of the fees or repercussions involved in the US...

I was a student for 10 years. I could write a book about surviving for a week on AUD$20

Classic story actually: A friend of a friend brought a bag of potatoes for food for the month because he was so poor. After a while he got sick and apparently he got scurvy

You are a day late. Yesterday was the most miserable day of the year

Blue Monday

Don`t worry a bit , you have 11 month to pay it off . Then it starts all over again

And you'd still be self employed....

The only difference is...

You don't have to wait for invoices to get paid by clients...

Best piece of financial advice I ever read ...... from Old Mutual, in Readers Digest in SA, was ...... Always live BELOW the standard of living you believe yourself to be in.

I've learnt many things today.

I'll start with these:

• LIB has a heart of Gold
• 50Rap pieces don't seem like much but they sure do add up
• my 6 year old daughter has 240.- in a little pink purse behind some hair band boxes in her wardrobe (she showed me)
• clients WILL pay an advancedeposit if you tell them you are about to 'switch' sides

There's more...

My (almost) 18 year old just returned from a two week vacation in the US/Canada that she paid for, and still has $300.

Unfortunately, her older sister, owes me a bit more!

Tom

I hope it never comes to that for me. I've had trouble enough giving my body away, without trying to get people to pay for it.

Read the small print. They come and take your first born as soon as he/she is old enough for what PaddyG suggested.

3.80CHF for a loaf of bread?

bag of rice, bag of dried beans, veg oil, 3 cans of tomatoes (80rp each!), salt and pepper. There's ya dinner.

Sorry to hear this Transition but glad you are being proactive and taking steps to resolve it whilst remaining chirpy to boot . It's not a nice position to be in that I know . . .

As a Wentworth Miller lookalike (you said it, sort of - remember!??) then now's the time to put those looks to good use .

I'm relinking these threads which might be very useful:

How to: Save money in Switzerland

tips on eating cheap?

Frugal Food in Switzerland - Link and Discussion

Thanks Ishaka, I really don't think you can make money out of just that can you? If so, how?