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Investing with arvy: The Complete Guide

You want to invest — but where to start? This hub is the map. The Swiss investing structure in 3 minutes, five typical starting situations, the ten articles that build every good investor's foundation, fourteen calculators for your personal numbers — and one very concrete first step that works today.

By Thierry Borgeat · Reviewed by Patrick Rissi, CFA and Florian Jauch, CFA · Last updated May 2026 · 16 min read

Investing isn't a hobby for numbers people. It's a life skill — like cooking, like filing taxes, like your first job interview. And like every skill, the hardest hurdle isn't learning. It's starting. The Swiss financial system is well-structured but complex: three pillars, a dozen product types, a hundred opinions. That can paralyse you. Or it can make you the smartest person in the room — if you read the right ten things instead of a hundred wrong ones.

That's exactly what this hub is for. It's deliberately not a beginner's guide — for the fundamentals we have the Beginner's Guide, which is comprehensive and calibrated for exactly that purpose. This hub is something different: a navigation aid. A map, five typical starting points, a canon of ten core articles (in the right order!), the key calculators, our convictions — and at the very end a clear next step. Regardless of where you start.

The best news: you don't need to know everything to become a good investor. You need to understand ten things correctly and then switch on the autopilot. The ten things are below. The autopilot, we'll build together. Let's go.

01Investing in Switzerland — the map in 3 minutes

Before we talk about "buying stocks" or "setting up a savings plan", we need a shared mental model. Unlike many other countries, Switzerland has a very clearly structured retirement system with exactly four pillars. Each has its own rules, its own logic, its own role in your wealth building.

The first pillar is the foundation. It's redistributive and designed to cover basic needs in old age. For the maximum AHV pension you need 44 contribution years with an average lifetime income of at least CHF 90'720.

The second pillar — the pension fund — is for most Swiss employees the single biggest wealth position in retirement. Bigger than the home, bigger than Pillar 3a, bigger than all free investments combined.

The third pillar — specifically Pillar 3a — is your strongest personal tax lever. Every contributed franc reduces your taxable income immediately, and both contribution and appreciation remain tax-sheltered until retirement. Anyone not maxing out the annual CHF 7'258 limit forgoes up to CHF 2'500 in tax savings each year.

And then there are free assets. Everything not tied up in the first three pillars. Flexible, liquid, unlimited in amount — but without the 3a tax advantage. Here lies the most freedom, and therefore the most responsibility.

02Where to start investing? 5 typical starting situations

Here's the most important part of this hub. Instead of dumping all 100 articles into a list, we describe five very concrete starting situations, and you recognise yourself in one (or two) of them. Each comes with specific article links and a clear first step.

03The 10 articles that build every good investor's foundation

Here's the canon. Not the ten most popular, not the ten newest — the ten that together tell a story: from your first step to long-term wealth. Read them in this order and you'll understand more about investing than 90% of all Swiss bank customers. Best part: you'll need about 2.5 hours total.

04Life phases — which topics matter when

Not every topic is equally important at every stage of life. Here's a rough map of priorities by phase.

05The theme clusters

Our blog is sorted by categories, but readers think in questions. Here are the six theme clusters where you can actually find our content.

06Calculators & tools for Swiss investors — from reading to computing

Reading is the first step. Computing is the second. Between "I know I should use 3a" and "I see I save CHF 2'140 annually in my specific tax situation" lies a cognitive jump — often the difference between postponing and acting.

07How we think at arvy

Now a brief moment about what we believe — because if you read our articles, you should know which frame they come from.

08The first step — what do you do today?

The honest closing is a very concrete, unambiguous next step. Below you see three paths. Choose the one you recognise yourself in.

Whatever you choose — the most important thing is that you do something today, not the perfect something. An incomplete plan activated today beats a perfect plan still in your head six months from now.

09Frequently asked questions

The smartest person in the room

You've just learned more about investing in 16 minutes than most Swiss residents do in ten years. That doesn't make you an expert. But it makes you the smartest person in the room — the one who knows what they don't need to know, who switches on the autopilot, and who starts instead of watching another YouTube video about crypto.

Investing isn't a sacrifice. It's the decision that your future self is worth as much as your present self. An incomplete plan activated today beats the perfect plan still in your head six months from now. The second-best time is in ten years. The best time is now.

Written by Thierry Borgeat, Co-Founder of arvy, and reviewed by Patrick Rissi, CFA and Florian Jauch, CFA. The Swiss retirement figures in this article (BVG entry threshold CHF 22'680, coordination deduction CHF 26'460, AHV maximum pension CHF 2'520/month, 3a maximum CHF 7'258) reflect 2026 values. Last updated May 2026.

Disclaimer: This article is for general educational purposes and does not constitute personal investment, tax, or retirement advice. arvy is a FINMA-supervised asset manager with a CISA licence (Art. 24). Imprint & Legal Information.