When I moved to Switzerland myself, I made a lot of costly mistakes.

You will make them too... unless you are clever and read about my mistakes here.

Free advice is seldom cheap!

Sure, Zürich is nice, but ...

Living in Zürich can be a great start for many young people who don't know anyone in Switzerland yet. You get a lot of infrastructure for a decent price, lots of opportunities to meet new people and a great overall quality of life.

But Zürich is also quite expensive, loud and sometimes just a bit too much. At least, that was the case for me. And your "mileage may vary".

I did the same as many people: I moved to Zürich in the very beginning. But then I realized that I could save a lot of money by moving to the larger area around Zürich and that it would be more peaceful. After a while it was annoying that the neighbors were always partying on week nights and throughout the whole weekend nights. The air quality in the city was OK, but it was going to be even better outside of Zürich.

Not everything is easier in Zürich and Geneva

Another point for me was that I wanted to learn horseback riding. But around Zürich I could not find any schools that had capacity to take new students. They all told me: Sign up for a waiting list and wait 6 months or that I would have to buy my own horse first.

For you this, again, could be wildly different. You might find that your hobbies or sports activities are much easier to follow inside a big city like Zürich (or Geneva, or Basel and so on), but it might be the opposite.

I had more luck outside of Zürich when I moved to the Canton of Zug. So I think in many cases living a bit outside of the biggest cities in Switzerland can help in quite a few ways.

Do your own research or get professional help

In the end, I probably wasted over 10K+ CHF in money and missed out living quality, because I started where everyone else did. And that was after I did quite some research about Switzerland already for the months prior to moving there.

So depending on how much money you make per hour I would actually recommend getting professional help before relocating to Switzerland. It will just save you so much money and pain in the end.

If you don't want to spend the bucks on professional help, at least try to create your own picture of why, how and where you are going to live in Switzerland. Don't just follow anyone's opinion on the Internet.