You're not comparing the same things. The US stock market that returns 6.5% is much more volatile than European government bonds that return 1.5%. You need to c

You're not comparing the same things. The US stock market that returns 6.5% is much more volatile than European government bonds that return 1.5%. You need to compare either bonds or stocks for both. It's difficult to compare the long-term performance of American/European because different starting points and the world wars confound things but European stocks certainly don't outperform American ones by as much as you're suggesting. But in any case, there's no reason why you can only invest in European things (and in fact that would be stupid). The starting strategy for most people should be a mixture of index funds covering the whole world (weighted by market size) and bonds. The proportion of stocks/bonds is determined by your tolerance for risk. You can fiddle with this (for instance as a European it might make sense to overweight European markets because of exchange risk, on the other hand you might prefer to overweight American markets because you already have exposure to the European economy from living there) but you almost certainly want to invest somewhat internationally.