Saving Vs Investing

Hey guys :wave:

I’m interested to know…

Would you rather save all your money, or invest all your money? :money_with_wings:

Let us know which you’d pick, and why! :point_down:

All in for invest. :slight_smile:

I use Wealthsimple and Freetrade.

I think, with these interest rates, savings is a dead end.

Invest invest invest!

I’ve just got Freetrade - only really downloaded it for the free shares haha

Why would you pick investing over saving @jase ?

The returns. Stick in money and leave it, let it grow.

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Neither are good options.

Save some, invest some. The appropriate blend depends on personal circumstances, mainly how much money you might potentially need in relatively short term (next few years).

Agree with your points - but if there was a rule that said you could either do one or the other, which would you pick?

Invest but use short duration gov bonds for the portion I would have otherwise held in cash savings

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Sounds like a good plan!

I’m hoping 2022 is going to be the year I start investing properly :raised_hands:

I don’t think these are different things: “saving” is just buying a cash deposit - the interest you earn on cash varies according to where you save it. National savings pays a different rate than a bank. Your piggy bank pays no interest. All of these are called “savings” because we don’t perceive that we’re risking our capital. However that’s really not the case: the piggy bank is subject to burglary, money in the bank is subject to the bank or government defaulting, and our capital is always exposed to erosion by inflation.

If you “invest” in government bonds (National Savings Bonds), or if you’re prepared to take more risk, corporate bonds, you may call these these “savings” or “investments”. It doesn’t matter - the difference is just terminology - we say that we save in a bank account because we don’t think we’re “buying” the value of our deposit, and we say that we’re investing in bonds because we think we think we’re buying something that we’ll later sell.

If you “buy” (invest in) Swiss francs - you still hold cash (so why not call it savings?) Obviously you’re exposed you to exchange rate risk if you ever intend change the currency back in the future.

You can buy gold, or stocks/shares, or options. Is that “investing” or “gambling” - perhaps saving and investing are just socially more acceptable words for specific types of gambling?

At the end of the day whatever you do with your money is a choice - even doing nothing is a choice, with risks.

People’s perception of risk varies, so if you’re more risk averse than the market average you’ll probably prefer to choose to “buy” a (generally) lower risk/return “savings” deposit instead of a (generally) higher risk/return “investment”. Or perhaps you would prefer to “gamble” that gold will provide the best/safest return?

I think what @rebekah was asking was referring to a traditional savings account that is just the funds used by the bank for their investments.

Sure you can still technically lose your money but the bank would need to go bust, and at least in the UK where savings are protected, the government scheme would need to default. One of these happening and causing a lose is unlikely, let alone both.

And before anyone mentions the limit of £85,000 per person per bank, I’m assuming most people using a PFM app like Emma to save and control their money, doesn’t have above £85,000 across all their accounts let alone a single institution.

Inflation is probably the biggest risk for most people for savings in a bank.

UK bank savings have been safe throughout "modern’ history but if you lived in Germany in the 1930s you’d have been wiped out by inflation. More recently the same happened in Turkey and some South American countries.

There’s no government guarantee against that happening in future, which is why UK citizens and companies invest some of their money in “inflation-proof” (but potentially more volatile) assets like natural resources (e.g gold, lithium), land, index tracking ETFs, or shares in “safer” companies (e.g. utilities, supermarkets).