Discussion
Anyone know anything about savings in the Euro zone?
My Dutch current account pays 0.05% and savings accounts aren't a lot better. Companies like Raisin would allow me to put money in other European banks, but 1 year fixed looks to pay about 0.5% with easy access about 0.25%. I'm a bit reluctant to transfer it to the UK as then I'm at the mercy of exchange rates, and I'm probably going to buy a house in Euros in the next year or so, hence would rather have it in a savings account than invested.
Presumably I can't just open an account in a country I'm not resident in if I could find one with a decent rate can I? Although even if I could the best I've seen so far is 1% on the first €10k, which still isn't great.
My Dutch current account pays 0.05% and savings accounts aren't a lot better. Companies like Raisin would allow me to put money in other European banks, but 1 year fixed looks to pay about 0.5% with easy access about 0.25%. I'm a bit reluctant to transfer it to the UK as then I'm at the mercy of exchange rates, and I'm probably going to buy a house in Euros in the next year or so, hence would rather have it in a savings account than invested.
Presumably I can't just open an account in a country I'm not resident in if I could find one with a decent rate can I? Although even if I could the best I've seen so far is 1% on the first €10k, which still isn't great.
Yeah, I'm going to be renting out my UK house and still have accounts there, but would like to keep some savings in Euros too. I've set my work pension AVCs to the maximum as one way of trying to get some interest on long term savings, but I can't find any sensible short term savings options.
ECB rates are officially negative / zero depending on which ones you are looking at (12 month libor is about -0.1%) so the only way you will get anything more than that is by taking risk - most likely credit risk. You could get about 1% from one of the smaller Eurozone banks but am not sure the risk reward stacks up (certainly anyone investing in Italian government bonds at basically zero for 12 months needs their head examining in my view). ECB has bought pretty much all the corporate bonds too under QE so not much joy there either. If you've got your big boy pants on you could look at tier 2 capital / sub debt but that seems very risky if you are looking at an imminent house purchase and you'd need to meet various professional / sophisticated investor tests. Sorry but I think if you expect to need the cash in the short term you there's no risk free way round a sub-inflation return.
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