Servus!
Apologies for writing in English, my german isn't that good yet since I just moved less than 2 months ago (oida).
Previously I was working at a country where investment was really easy. If you opened the right bank account, you got a yearly 3% paid out in monthly portions of everything you had there. Without the need to move stuff to savings accounts. Then there was a setup similar to Bundesschatz that I could get tax free for any duration and that usually made 6-8% per year. And finally if I held onto my ETF portfolio, those were eventually free of taxes after 5 years of holding.
I am 24, earning 90k eur/year currently since I moved here, which puts me to a ~3800 eur/mo roughly net. salary in Austria (if we don't count the 13th and 14th salaries). The 48% income tax hurts, but I am willing to make that sacrifice for reasons.
However what annoys me the most is that investment plans aren't too clear. I don't use more than 1500 eur per month, the rest would just sit on my bank account.
- Long term: So far I found flatex, seems like the best Steuereinfach place to buy ETFs at and set up a monthly 500 eur Sparplan to the Vanguard World ETF flavor that they had listed. That one is running fine, for long term investment, but I expect that money to sit for at least 5 (but most likely even 10) years.
- Mid-term: I always have some amount of money at the end of the month just sitting on my bank account accumulating, which then just loses its value over time thanks to inflation. I would invest that also to ETFs, but the issue with Flatex is that random not Sparplan type transactions are quite expensive. So I figured that I can just buy Bundesschatz, which doesn't make as much, but at least it would balance out the inflation. Then I would keep buying Bundesschatz monthly for 6 months/1 year and eventually transfer the accumulated amount to ETFs long term. One could argue that the fees of Flatex are still lower than the potential gains of ETFs, but I like to think of this 1-2 years of investment as a safety net too in case I have a higher bill to pay.
- Short-term: And finally, I have around 11k eur sitting on my bank account always, because my monthly average spending is 1500, so calculating with 1500 * 6 (+ a little safety net there) makes it 11000. That one bothers me the most. From what I could tell people usually open Tagesgeld accounts for this money, right? From what I can tell that market is pretty divided though and usually one can only make decent returns by bank hopping. So by getting the 1 year Neukunden bonuses. Also, not all are Steuereinfach...
Also looked at Nettopolizze, but that thing has so many sketchy rules to follow (like you can't pay in more than X, you shouldn't change the amount you pay in in the first three years etc) and relies on the fact that the gov. won't decide to put an end to that exploit, that I decided against. Plus I am not sure if I will be staying in Austria for the next 15 years.
Does this sound like a horrible way of thinking? What could I improve? How do you guys do the short term (max 1 year), mid term (1-2 years) and longer (5+ years) investments?
PS: Also, not here to brag. This is really just a 24 yo beginner in life trying to make sense of Austrian portfolio building. So please don't bully me for not being able to spend the money I earn. I value savings for the future more than current luxury life.