Hi folks,

For quick context, I'm a francophone Swiss citizen, grew up in the Geneva area and moved to the US when I was 25. I'll be 40 next month and my wife (American) and I have been thinking of moving to Switzerland.

I've only worked in Switzerland for maybe 1.5 years total, so that's about how long I paid into AVS/AHV. And of course my wife has never worked in Switzerland.

In the US, we're seeing first hand how poorly some senior citizens are treated since even full Social Security benefits only pay a pittance that isn't enough to subsist. I know AVS is also often insufficient but the difference is the cantons typically have measures to help you subsist if your AVS doesn't suffice.

In the US, I know it's always case by case and some people have more success with it than others, depending on how they ran their finances during their lives, but we're surrounded with people who are struggling now that they're retired and we don't want that for ourselves.

Meanwhile I'm looking at my own parents who are living in Switzerland and are pretty well taken care of. For example my dad, who was essentially destitute and living paycheck to paycheck in his retirement, had to move to a senior living facility last year. Between his AVS income, his health insurance (base complementary) and his canton, everything is paid for and he's somewhere nice and clean with medical staff to take care of him. At least it's as nice as these senior living places can be.

Contrasting with my wife's widowed grandmother who's had to move back with her daughter (my mother-in-law) at age 83 because she didn't have any money other than her monthly Social Security checks and couldn't possibly afford any kind of senior living facility. I can't imagine what my MIL and her husband are going to do when they can no longer take care of her, because they also don't have money to pay for the senior care she may need in the future (let alone take care of themselves as they're reaching 70yo).

So we're looking at all of that and thinking we should move to a place that takes better care of its people. But as I was saying, I've basically never worked in Switzerland other than maybe about 18 months total so my wife's worried that it's "too late" and that Switzerland wouldn't take care of us if we needed it.

To be clear (back away from the downvote button!😅), our aim is not at all to mooch off the state if we can avoid it, we plan and want to avoid that, we're in a good financial situation now, I make good money and will presumably continue to make good money, and we'll continue to manage our money as best we can with a view to have a stress-free retirement. We aren't rich, we live frugally and save a lot of money, and while we're working, we're gonna continue growing our assets, but still, there's this "what if" in the back of our minds.

So to summarize... I was curious if it's OK to assume/hope there will be a contingency plan if, 30-40 years from now, we find ourselves in dire financial straits, i.e. will the state take care of us, or will we be screwed because we didn't pay into AHV/AVS for 50 years? I guess at that point we'd consider moving to a country where life is cheaper but let's not go into that discussion.

And yes I also know there's been this ongoing question of whether the AVS will be able to keep funding itself in the future, but for the sake of discussion, let's assume there's no problem.

Then there's all the stuff with US politics being a growing cause for concern and we're sick of that, but we're more worried about the retirement stuff.

I appreciate you reading all of this and sharing your thoughts. For what it's worth, I think it's never "too late" but I may be naive about this since, at this point, I know how the US system works better than I know Switzerland.