Set Up Eini's Four New Modules in 20 Minutes

Eini's four new modules — Career, Taxes, Housing and Insurance — are in the app today, and all four take about twenty minutes to set up. Each asks for a handful of things you know and returns one figure you can act on: your salary position, your net pay, the town that leaves more at month-end, and your next insurance deadline.

The average Swiss household spends about CHF 636 a month on food and non-alcoholic drinks, according to the Federal Statistical Office (BFS); rent, tax and the health premium each move more than that, and the four modules exist to put those larger lines next to the grocery one.

What do you need before you start

Ten minutes of gathering saves twenty of guessing. Have your latest payslip, your current rent, the name of your municipality (not just the canton), and your insurance policies — the basic health policy at minimum. A CV is optional.

The four modules are included in Eini Premium; the app is free to download. They sit alongside the grocery planner, and we described the order they were built in Beyond Groceries.

How do you set up the Career module

Start with Career because everything downstream uses the salary. The module asks for five things: your current role, your industry, your years of experience, your canton, and the skills you actually use. A CV is optional — add it and our algorithm reads skills and experience from it so you type less.

Your salary is placed against official Swiss wage statistics for that combination of role, industry, experience and canton, so you see whether you sit below, within or above that range. Below that, the module names a realistic next step and lists the skills gap between where you are and that role.

The last output: whether a course pays back. Enter a course you are considering with its cost and duration, and the module sets that against the salary movement the skills gap suggests. It says whether the course pays for itself, on the numbers you gave it.

How do you set up the Taxes module

Five inputs: gross annual income, your exact municipality, civil status, number of children, and any deductions you already know about. Swiss tax is three layers — federal, cantonal, municipal — and the municipal multiplier sits on top of the cantonal rate, so two towns in the same canton on the same salary owe different amounts.

The first view is your net salary, line by line. From gross, the payslip takes 5.3% for AHV/IV/EO on the whole amount, 1.1% for unemployment insurance on salary up to CHF 148,200, typically around 1.3% for non-occupational accident cover, and an occupational pension contribution charged on the coordinated salary — gross minus a coordination deduction — at a rate that rises with age and is typically around 7–8% in the middle bands. Then tax. Then what reaches your account.

The second view is the deduction check. The module reads your spending by category and flags the deductions that spending points to: commuting, work meals, further education, pillar 3a, childcare, health costs above a threshold, donations, debt interest. Whether you qualify, and for how much, depends on your canton and situation. This is general information about how the Swiss system works, not individual advice — your canton, municipality and situation change the numbers.

How do you set up the Housing module

Enter your current city and rent, your income, your work location, who lives with you, and how many days a week each person goes to the office.

The module ranks Swiss towns on four costs together — rent, tax, health premium and commute — rather than on rent alone. Commutes are routed as real public-transport and car journeys, so they appear as francs and minutes, not kilometres. The ranking answers one question: where is more left at the end of the month?

A town with a higher rent can rank above a cheaper one because its municipality taxes less, its canton's premium is lower, or the commute is shorter — the "higher rent but more left" cases. On our own working figures, a 3.5-room flat runs around CHF 2,800 in Zurich against CHF 1,800 in Winterthur; whether that CHF 1,000 gap survives two people commuting four days a week is exactly what the ranking calculates.

The last switch is rent alerts. Name the towns and flat size you would consider, and the module watches listings and notifies you on a match. Typical Swiss practice is a deposit of up to three months' rent and a three-month notice period to the next official termination date.

How do you set up the Insurance module

Enter each policy you hold: the insurer, the type of cover, the premium, the renewal date and the cancellation deadline. Each policy feeds a dashboard that shows total spend, warns before each deadline and points out gaps in cover.

The franchise calculator needs one estimate: what you expect to spend on medical care in a year. Adults choose a franchise of CHF 300, 500, 1,000, 1,500, 2,000 or 2,500; above it you pay a 10% retention on treatment costs, capped at CHF 700 a year. The calculator returns the level where the premium saved and the extra franchise you carry balance for your estimate.

The premium comparison takes your canton, age, franchise and model — standard, family-doctor, HMO or Telmed — and shows what basic cover costs across insurers. Basic cover is identical by law at every insurer; only the price and service differ. How the switch works is in Switching Health Insurer.

How do the four modules fit with the grocery planner

The grocery module works on the cost you decide every week; the four new modules work on the costs you decide a few times a year. Both use the same approach, described in the Eini method: plan first, then let our algorithm match the plan against what is actually available.

Put the numbers side by side and the shape of a Swiss household budget appears. Food is about CHF 636 a month for the average household on the BFS figure; rent, tax and the health premium are each larger, and the premium lands on top of the payslip, not inside it. The modules exist because the larger lines are decided in a job offer, a tax return, a lease and a November letter, and each of those windows closes for twelve months if you miss it.

The modules also feed each other: the salary from Career is the gross income Taxes starts from, and the net figure from Taxes is what Housing spreads across rent and commute.

What should you check first if you only have five minutes

If you have five minutes rather than twenty, do these in order; each takes about a minute.

1. Insurance: enter your basic health policy with its cancellation deadline. One policy, two dates, and the November window cannot pass unnoticed.
2. Taxes: type your gross salary and your municipality. The net figure and the health premium beneath it are the two numbers every other decision uses.
3. Career: pick your role, industry, experience and canton. The salary position alone tells you whether the ceiling on your budget is where it should be.
4. Housing: enter your rent, work location and office days. Whether your current town tops the ranking is the fastest test of whether a move is worth considering.
5. Come back for the rest. Skills and CV, the spending-based deduction check, rent alerts and the franchise calculator each add precision.

None of this replaces the official sources. For your exact tax, the Federal Tax Administration's calculator is authoritative; for premiums, the Federal Office of Public Health's comparison; for wages, the BFS.