Best ways to save money right now?

It really all comes down to what you're looking for, and everyone has to decide what makes sense for their own situation. You might be just starting to set money aside, or maybe you've already built up enough capital that you're focused on making it work harder for you.
I haven't looked into those retirement accounts much, nor have I put any money into them, but those kinds of terms seem 👎
To me, nothing beats an annuity setup where you see a little something hit your account every month...😉 though obviously, you need to have that nest egg ready to go first.

Everything you said holds up, but since we’re weighing the pros and cons of this kind of saving, we should probably mention the whole point of the third pillar. It’s designed to work alongside the first two to build a solid retirement foundation. This model has been working globally for decades—it's basically your own private reserve for when you're no longer earning a paycheck. The idea isn't to dip into it at 50, but rather to wait until you're 60 or 65, and instead of pulling it out over five years, you take it as a lifelong payout. That’s where it actually makes sense.

One more thing—that third-pillar income is treated just like any other non-independent income, like a regular salary. It can even serve as collateral for loans, which gives people who might otherwise struggle—like those between jobs or stay-at-home parents—a much better shot at accessing standard banking products.

casualtrucker7 said:Everything you said holds up, but since we’re weighing the pros and cons of this kind of saving, we should probably mention the whole point of the third pillar. It’s designed to work alongside the first two to build a solid retirement foundation. This model has been working globally for decades—it's basically your own private reserve for when you're no longer earning a paycheck. The idea isn't to dip into it at 50, but rather to wait until you're 60 or 65, and instead of pulling it out over five years, you take it as a lifelong payout. That’s where it actually makes sense.

One more thing—that third-pillar income is treated just like any other non-independent income, like a regular salary. It can even serve as collateral for loans, which gives people who might otherwise struggle—like those between jobs or stay-at-home parents—a much better shot at accessing standard banking products.

I think there was a misunderstanding. Charles Ramos7 made a good point that having rental savings later on is better, but you need the cash to make that happen. That's exactly my issue: after putting away money for years, I now have no idea what the payout terms will actually be, yet I'm forced to take 70% of it as an annuity.
I guess who would ever sign a contract today agreeing to save a huge sum of money only to find out later they might not even get their principal back because nobody wants to guarantee anything? And on top of that, the contract forces you to use the money exactly how they dictate instead of how you actually want.

This specific setup for the second and third pillars doesn't really exist in the developed world; it's more like a pilot project. You only see models like this in transition economies, and we basically just copied some South American model and debated whether it was better than the ones used in Eastern Europe. No country in the Western EU uses a system like this.
I'm not saying these terms aren't acceptable for everyone, but maybe we should look at alternatives and consider what each product allows us to do long-term. The choices we make today carry consequences, and those consequences eventually force our hand on future options.

Everything seems fine, I guess, but when the government is cutting you a 25% annual tax incentive, it honestly makes sense to save through this kind of third-pillar setup. My logic—and maybe I’m overthinking this—is that if you trigger your retirement at 50 while you're still actually capable of doing things and opt for life-long payouts: say you start at 40 and set aside $133 monthly, then draw $133 in monthly benefits for the rest of your life (check out the projection tables over at ), well, I'd love for someone to tell me why that wouldn't be worth it. With a bit of luck and a long life—say reaching 85 or 90—you could come out ahead three or four times over.

Even though they don't exactly hand out universal life advice there, it actually did something for me. 😉 I went to one of those personal finance workshops, and honestly, it was enough to nudge me into finally tracking my spending—you know, seeing where all that cash actually vanishes into and identifying those "essential" little expenses that just quietly bleed you dry over time.

I mean, let’s be real: unless you actually sit down and crunch the numbers on what’s coming in versus what’s going out, you're just spinning your wheels. You can't even start thinking about "the future" or having some kind of safety net if you don't know your own math... though, let's face it, you never truly know what kind of curveball life is going to throw at you anyway. 🤷
Regarding the workshops—you can find all the details on the site:

Anyway, catch you all later. Please, drop your thoughts and whatever experiences you've had in the comments.

casualtrucker7 said:Everything seems fine, I guess, but when the government is cutting you a 25% annual tax incentive, it honestly makes sense to save through this kind of third-pillar setup. My logic—and maybe I’m overthinking this—is that if you trigger your retirement at 50 while you're still actually capable of doing things and opt for life-long payouts: say you start at 40 and set aside $133 monthly, then draw $133 in monthly benefits for the rest of your life (check out the projection tables over at ), well, I'd love for someone to tell me why that wouldn't be worth it. With a bit of luck and a long life—say reaching 85 or 90—you could come out ahead three or four times over.

We’re clearly looking at this from totally different angles. I mean, who actually guarantees anything in these contracts? I'll say it again: who is guaranteeing any specific payout? All we know for sure is that you can't even touch 70% of the cash, and all those other projections are just "what-if" scenarios!
CAPISH... it's a contract where I have no clue what I'm actually getting, yet I spend years saving my own money. Then, at the end, someone might just tell me my lifetime annuity is going to be $17, and by then, I'll be too old to start saving again.

We’re heading down the same path through the woods—but let's look at both sides of things. I’ll push the optimistic view, you can stick to your more skeptical take, and I guess we'll eventually meet up, if not sooner, then at the end of the road.

Who’s guaranteeing it? Nobody—just like nobody can give you a hard guarantee on returns with any other fund out there. I guess that's just how it works.
There are no guarantees in life—not even that we’ll still be around tomorrow—so I guess we just keep hoping for the next day.

But you’ve got those perks and benefits—let me list a few of them—there are about ten:
Conservative investing offers a few perks—gives you that sense of security, I guess. Then there’s the oversight from Hanfe ensuring everything stays strictly by the book—and don't forget those 25% government incentives. Plus, you get insurance on your savings up to... $133 Fourth—your heirs actually inherit the funds in the account. Fifth—you can't have your account seized in the third tier if you owe money to, say, big banks like JPMorgan Chase. Sixth—you’re entitled to pension payouts even if you aren't currently employed. Seventh—there's no requirement to make regular deposits while you're in the saving phase. Eighth—you can start those lifetime pension payouts early—maybe as young as 50. Ninth—you get to take advantage of tax breaks up to $12,000 annually. Tenth...

Go ahead—compare that kind of savings to investing in any mutual fund and then come back to me asking about guarantees. I guess we can go down that road if you really want to.

It's all quite relative, really. Personally, I don't think you should just stick to one single solution, but rather embrace several. By combining them, you effectively minimize the drawbacks of one product while amplifying the benefits of another. That seems to be the most ideal approach...

I agree—that formula seems solid. Take whatever you earn and put 10% into savings, set aside 10% for gifts for the people you care about, and then spend the remaining 80% wisely (and hopefully happily).

As for that initial 10%, maybe spread it out—anything from low-risk investments to going all-in on high risk.

casualtrucker7 said:We’re heading down the same path through the woods—but let's look at both sides of things. I’ll push the optimistic view, you can stick to your more skeptical take, and I guess we'll eventually meet up, if not sooner, then at the end of the road.

Who’s guaranteeing it? Nobody—just like nobody can give you a hard guarantee on returns with any other fund out there. I guess that's just how it works.
There are no guarantees in life—not even that we’ll still be around tomorrow—so I guess we just keep hoping for the next day.

But you’ve got those perks and benefits—let me list a few of them—there are about ten:
Conservative investing offers a few perks—gives you that sense of security, I guess. Then there’s the oversight from Hanfe ensuring everything stays strictly by the book—and don't forget those 25% government incentives. Plus, you get insurance on your savings up to... $133 Fourth—your heirs actually inherit the funds in the account. Fifth—you can't have your account seized in the third tier if you owe money to, say, big banks like JPMorgan Chase. Sixth—you’re entitled to pension payouts even if you aren't currently employed. Seventh—there's no requirement to make regular deposits while you're in the saving phase. Eighth—you can start those lifetime pension payouts early—maybe as young as 50. Ninth—you get to take advantage of tax breaks up to $12,000 annually. Tenth...

Go ahead—compare that kind of savings to investing in any mutual fund and then come back to me asking about guarantees. I guess we can go down that road if you really want to.

I guess we aren't actually on the same page, even if it looks that way sometimes. What I was trying to get across more aggressively is that you can't really look at any single financial product in a vacuum; it only makes sense when you view it within the context of an entire life plan.
Regarding the DMF benefits, I think some things are actually the exact opposite, but that's just my take. First off, money put into a DMF isn't covered by the FDIC at all since it's a fund. The FDIC only covers savings accounts at banks.
Look, any savings you have can basically act as your own private pension. I don't see what being employed has to do with it—that sounds like typical sales fluff used to bait people. It’s nonsense. I mean, I can draw from my own money as an annuity regardless of whether I have a job or not. Obviously.
I guess saying you can access a life annuity at age 50 is just complete nonsense. I could probably negotiate a life annuity with any insurance company when I'm 30, provided I actually have the capital to back it up—which, let's face it, requires having savings ready to go. But if I end up on disability retirement at 45—something that happens to maybe 10% of the population—I’d still be stuck waiting five years just to see a single cent. As for the other 70% of that money, who even knows under what conditions they'd actually pay it out?

Let's recap this. When we put money into a DMF, the management company isn't actually the one paying out the funds once we hit retirement age—they aren't even set up for that. Instead, the total accumulated amount, or basically my own savings, gets transferred into a MOD, which is responsible for handling pension payouts from the DMF. Since 70% of that represents the vast majority of my life savings, I'd be forced to follow whatever rules the MOD decides to impose on me. That seems like a disaster, honestly. If the MOD suddenly claims they have massive administrative overhead and tells me they need to take 50% of my money just to cover those costs, I'm pretty much stuck.
If I had gone with an annuity, I guess I’d be the one deciding what to do with 100% of the cash when it comes time to collect. It's my money—unless, of course, I don't actually have control over it, in which case it clearly isn't mine. I could opt for the lifetime payout, but if I'm unhappy with the interest rates on the remaining balance, I'd probably just withdraw everything and move it somewhere with better terms.
The MOD basically doesn't even exist in America yet. Even though Raiffeisen already registered them, they aren't formally doing anything. I guess nobody actually knows what the overhead will be for an institution whose sole job is just paying out accumulated money in the DMF. We might be in for a shock, and I don't think we'll have much of a choice in the matter.
Why would anyone spend years saving up their hard-earned cash, only to miss out on the whole point of compound interest right when they actually need to use it? I guess you’re basically guaranteed to lose money that way. To me, it means I have to plan not just for how much I'll save over the next 20 years, but what kind of moves I can actually make once I get there. You want to be in a position where you finally have the capital to take advantage of the fact that everyone else is short on cash and needs yours.

MOD is handling the payouts, and that transfer from column III directly into MOD—which we should basically view as two branches of the same parent company—is going to cost you 5% of whatever total amount you have sitting in your savings account!!!!!

driftingviper12 said:MOD is handling the payouts, and that transfer from column III directly into MOD—which we should basically view as two branches of the same parent company—is going to cost you 5% of whatever total amount you have sitting in your savings account!!!!!

This is absolute perfection. I’m expected to pay for them moving money from one pocket to another. Paying a fee just to access my own cash. Brilliant.
For the most part, I actually agree with what help1 is saying.
My only question is regarding the tax implications upon withdrawal, considering we use the DMF as a tax deduction while saving.
Are we essentially back at "zero"—meaning whatever we deduct now as a benefit will just be clawed back as income tax when we withdraw?

Lisa Grant6 said:This is absolute perfection. I’m expected to pay for them moving money from one pocket to another. Paying a fee just to access my own cash. Brilliant.
For the most part, I actually agree with what help1 is saying.
My only question is regarding the tax implications upon withdrawal, considering we use the DMF as a tax deduction while saving.
Are we essentially back at "zero"—meaning whatever we deduct now as a benefit will just be clawed back as income tax when we withdraw?

I guess you already answered your own question. As casualtrucker7 pointed out, a withdrawal counts as income. If I get a tax break today but it becomes taxable income tomorrow, then yeah, I'll probably be paying tax on that income down the road.

driftingviper12 said:MOD is handling the payouts, and that transfer from column III directly into MOD—which we should basically view as two branches of the same parent company—is going to cost you 5% of whatever total amount you have sitting in your savings account!!!!!

I guess there isn't actually any contract that defines a transaction fee between the DMF and the MOD, nor was it specified when the DMF agreement was signed. I don't know where you're getting that number, but it doesn't seem to be based on anything real. Besides, the actual fee charged as an entry cost to the MOD isn't the only issue; there’s no guarantee regarding interest rates on those funds, and since you're committing to receiving 70% of the money as rental income, that might actually be where the biggest loss happens.
Maybe the idea of them being two companies under one owner is debatable, too, since every legal entity is its own thing and ownership structures can vary.
For instance, Raiffeisen Bank and Raiffeisen don't have identical ownership, and there's no reason they should.

Honestly, I’d just dump everything into a money market fund. I think I already laid out why those are better earlier on. As for all that other stuff—like housing savings accounts, life insurance, those three retirement accounts, or even standard CDs—I really wouldn't recommend them. I say that because I’ve actually used most of those things myself, and through trial and error, I’m pretty convinced that the money market route is the way to go. You get zero fees, you can pull your cash in or out whenever you feel like it, it's secure, and you're looking at a 4-8% return depending on how the year shakes out, I guess. I stay away from housing savings because, in my opinion, it's basically one big scam, much like those three retirement pillars. All that talk about getting lower interest rates when you buy a house? I don't know who that's supposed to help, and besides, you have to save such a massive amount of cash for it to even be worth the hassle. I once took out a loan through a housing account to renovate my place, and the interest rate was 7% on the dollar, plus they hit me with extra fees on top, so yeah, definitely skip it. And those three retirement accounts? I wouldn't touch them since you can't even touch your own money until you're 55, and even then, you can only grab 30% upfront while the rest gets paid out in installments. Then there's that whole thing about claiming tax refunds, which seems pretty sketchy to me since the government ends up snatching a huge chunk of it anyway. It's the same story with life insurance. Now, a CD isn't necessarily terrible, but when you've got money market funds sitting there earning more than what a CD offers, I don't see why you'd even bother thinking twice about it.

Can someone help me understand why there's so much pushback against life insurance?
I just don't see the downside. Am I missing something that everyone else is seeing?

Daniel Perez13 said:I guess you already answered your own question. As casualtrucker7 pointed out, a withdrawal counts as income. If I get a tax break today but it becomes taxable income tomorrow, then yeah, I'll probably be paying tax on that income down the road.

Maybe casualtrucker7 gets it, but maybe pomoć1 doesn't quite grasp that using a deduction now means getting a refund now and paying later—tomorrow or the day after. Basically, the government lets you skip the deduction if you decide it's not worth it.

To me, getting a tax refund of $X twenty years from now just means paying that same $X back later (minus interest), whereas as an entrepreneur, I could have invested that money and turned it into ($X + N) by then. You didn't mention that—though you probably could have—but I think we both get what I mean.

William Phillips said:Can someone help me understand why there's so much pushback against life insurance?
I just don't see the downside. Am I missing something that everyone else is seeing?

In principle, life insurance is fine if you view it as actual insurance rather than a savings plan—which is how most people try to pitch it. There are a few drawbacks that make it a risky product. For starters, the interest rates on the cash value side are pretty low (maybe 2-3%), so you'd have to index those contracts just to stay ahead of inflation. Plus, during those first couple of years, depending on the term, there’s basically zero cash surrender value if you decide to cancel. You also have to be extremely consistent with your premiums, otherwise, you could lose your coverage entirely.

Rebecca Foster4 said:Honestly, I’d just dump everything into a money market fund. I think I already laid out why those are better earlier on. As for all that other stuff—like housing savings accounts, life insurance, those three retirement accounts, or even standard CDs—I really wouldn't recommend them. I say that because I’ve actually used most of those things myself, and through trial and error, I’m pretty convinced that the money market route is the way to go. You get zero fees, you can pull your cash in or out whenever you feel like it, it's secure, and you're looking at a 4-8% return depending on how the year shakes out, I guess. I stay away from housing savings because, in my opinion, it's basically one big scam, much like those three retirement pillars. All that talk about getting lower interest rates when you buy a house? I don't know who that's supposed to help, and besides, you have to save such a massive amount of cash for it to even be worth the hassle. I once took out a loan through a housing account to renovate my place, and the interest rate was 7% on the dollar, plus they hit me with extra fees on top, so yeah, definitely skip it. And those three retirement accounts? I wouldn't touch them since you can't even touch your own money until you're 55, and even then, you can only grab 30% upfront while the rest gets paid out in installments. Then there's that whole thing about claiming tax refunds, which seems pretty sketchy to me since the government ends up snatching a huge chunk of it anyway. It's the same story with life insurance. Now, a CD isn't necessarily terrible, but when you've got money market funds sitting there earning more than what a CD offers, I don't see why you'd even bother thinking twice about it.

Wow, someone discovered money market funds and suddenly thinks they've unlocked the secrets of the universe. By the way, feel free to mention that returns are actually closer to 2-8% and there's absolutely zero guarantee on those yields—no government backing included. Plus, having instant access to your cash whenever you feel like spending it isn't always the smartest move.

casualtrucker7 said:In principle, life insurance is fine if you view it as actual insurance rather than a savings plan—which is how most people try to pitch it. There are a few drawbacks that make it a risky product. For starters, the interest rates on the cash value side are pretty low (maybe 2-3%), so you'd have to index those contracts just to stay ahead of inflation. Plus, during those first couple of years, depending on the term, there’s basically zero cash surrender value if you decide to cancel. You also have to be extremely consistent with your premiums, otherwise, you could lose your coverage entirely.

Just tell me, what kind of interest rates are we seeing on CDs in the European Union?