Either phils house is really expensive, or his investments are excellent.

Im wondering which

I suspect both

Even when geared at <1% p.a.? You seem mega-confident that you can achieve high stock market returns, surely you'd like to extend those returns to a much larger base at minimal cost?

Whats the point, I stopped working at 52 if I wanted more money I would still work?

Sorry, I hadn't noticed that your obsession with high returns had abated. Although I did notice that you'd committed your own investment cardinal sin: buying a house.

That was because I ignored my solicitors advise & got married. happy wife happy life at least she paid 50%

My wife is very happy not to buy for a bit. Think when I've got to 10% pillar 2 savings we will buy.

I'm looking at a fairly modest property anyway - around 800k-1M, so 10% isn't huge money. It will be house number 3 we own though, so we are definitely breaking the FMF rules.

house is pretty average, but expensive just because it is in switzerland.

main shares I sold were:

AMD: doubled since (after tripling since I bought)
GAW.L: up 50% since (after about doubling since I bought)
STM: up 50% since (after being up 50% since I bought)

STM, I sold the entire holding.
GAW, I sold part of the holding (later sold the remainder at double the price - something I may regret as it is a great company).
AMD: I sold part of my holding so as the remainder wasn't too big a proportion of my portfolio (it was and remains my biggest holding). i bought the bulk at $10 per share and added to it in 2020 averaging up buying at $53 (when further Intel delays confirmed) and then $76 (when new graphics line up appeared well positioned vs Nvidia).

Actually, I requested to pay only 10% deposit and due to a mis-understanding thought the mortgage company agreed. When this was clarified, it was too late to arrange anything else.

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Confirmation that indeed you lost nothing when you sold your shares -- in fact, you made excellent returns. Well done.

You would be extremely hard pressed to find any lender in Switzerland who would accept only 10% deposit, assuming there's no pension pledge or something along those lines. They are bound by government regulations.

Indeed, I asked that the remaining 10% be covered by the pension pledge. I thought they accepted that but later said that they didn't accept pension pledging.

I‘m sure you can pledge your portfolio at a reasonable LTV and put zero cash down, so long as it isn‘t all your pension - at least 10% has to come from non-pension funds.

E.g. 1m property requires 200k deposit. 200k can be 200k cash or it can be 100k cash and 100k pension (either withdrawal or pledge). Or more interestingly if you have a portfolio you can pledge that at say 60% LTV, so with a 300k portfolio that‘s 180k and only 20k cash.

Sounds about right. We had all sorts of terrible advice from our mortgage advisor that left us scrabbling around for a significant amount of extra money days before completion. I also had to correct her maths in the offer stage.

It really pissed us off, as this was our employer and we get a decent discount off public rates, but in hindsight we could have got better rates and probably better terms from a 3rd party, but realised too late in the day. It feels like staff client advisors are ones that we don‘t let loose on real clients!

Thanks for sharing your story about sold shares
We are also looking for the house but rather min 4.5 rooms with more than 100m2:

I keep ( not in particular order):

AMD
STM

and of course:

XLNX
MCHP
AD
FB
SNAP
GPRO
AMAT
ABB
MDT

I always look at the stocks of good companies as a magic pot that will grow over time faster than any other investments. There will be some losers too but thats a risk of magic pot.

“If you ain’t sold it, you ain’t lost anything.” However, I’m losing on paying the rent before we will eventually find our dream house and that sucks either way.

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Pfff, if we count losses that way, in 2000 I was on internship in Briarcliff Manor, 40km north of New York. My roommate told me he bought lots of Aplle shares as he saw the new (black and white) Ipod gain popularity.

I lost millions by not following his advice.

somewhat different from not doing something. if you'd shorted apple and lost a lot of money, then i'd agree it would be equivalent. i'm talking about losses that arise from actions, not inaction.

But snotaloss, as I explained—you actually realised a profit of ca. 100% or so, depending on relative size of the share parcels.

Now 90k with recent stock market improvements.

I just really wanted to highlight the real opportunity cost when it comes to property investment as everybody tends to look only at the income/rental savings in isolation.

I don't regret what I did. I went into it with my eyes open and accepted lower returns (for the benefit of more stable returns).

I can just envisage you posting in 20 years time explaining how your loss exceeds the value of your house.

Or posting after the next market crash, congratulating himself on having dodged a bullet.

Bitcoin hit its all-time high price of nearly USD 20,000 the other day and is hovering just under that, still. I sold some Ethereum at what I thought was a great price just four days ago... that's now up another 3%.

Whenever you take profit, by definition you have not made a loss.

Phil, sure it's worse than that because the house is probably worth less & all the buying fees / selling fees. I suspect the real loos exceeds 200k