World Savings Day: Savings accounts are still popular

More than 40 percent of Austrians still have a savings account, and 15 percent have a savings card, even if this is a money-losing company with an average inflation rate of 2.6 percent. Since the interest on a daily money savings account averages between 0.001 and 0.125 percent, with longer commitments you get 0.5 percent.

savings book alternatives

However, saving does make sense, said Gabriel Semmelrock Werzer of Karentner Sparks. But you should not expect any growth in the savings book: “We advise customers and offer them alternatives to the savings book, which I find useful as a liquidity reserve, but you should not leave any money in the savings book at the moment.”

If you want to invest more money in the long run, banks and savings banks offer alternatives: “I can’t bring a long-term product to a 60-year-old, but I can bring a young person closer to it. And if you look at the investment cycles, you can see that Investing in stocks over 20 years, sometimes shorter or longer over 30 to 40 years, has always been a good form of investing.”

High overdraft rates, low savings rates

Tips are becoming more and more important for clients and financial institutions, even for those who don’t have money to save. Every sixth Austrian draws their account, every tenth is Carinthian permanently and pays extremely high interest in overdrafts, often in excess of ten percent.

Asked if this was justified in light of the low savings interest rates, Similrock Werzer said, “You have to distinguish two things: an overdraft facility account is meant to be exposed for a day or two or a week, maybe until the end of the month, when you’re there. Unexpected problem. But if you notice that now I need more money, even if it is only a small amount, for a longer period, then there are so-called consumer loans, which have very low interest rates and are related to very low interest rates.”

The interest on this is often one third of the interest on an overdraft. What has not changed over the decades are the small gifts that banks and thrift banks give their customers on World Savings Day.