4 ms·

TIL EU savings rate is far more than US. 18.79% vs 3.50% Guessing that's somehow counting enforced deductions off paycheques. Would be a wild difference if not

by Havoc 10mo ago

TIL EU savings rate is far more than US. 18.79% vs 3.50% Guessing that's somehow counting enforced deductions off paycheques. Would be a wild difference if not. https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/personal-savings https://tradingeconomics.com/european-union/personal-savings https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-savings https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-savings

coffeebeqn 10mo ago
Retirement accounts are more like social security than 401k. There’s no set amount of euros set aside for me it’s all in the pool paying for older peoples retirement
Hamuko 10mo ago
This doesn't surprise me at all as an European. My mind struggles to understand how so many Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
- pas 10mo ago
  that's true to some extent, but at this point it's mostly a meme (at least the 60% number was) > In 2023, 54 percent of adults said they had set aside money for three months of expenses in an emergency savings or “rainy day” fund—unchanged from 2022 but down from a high of 59 percent of adults in 2021. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2023-report-economic-well-being-us-households-202405.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2023-repor... via https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/paycheck-to-paycheck-and-five-other https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/paycheck-to-paycheck-and-five-...
  - Havoc 10mo ago
    That’s way higher than I’d have guessed. Maybe there is some sort of bimodal distribution happening there. Half the pop is flat broke the other has multiple months of buffer
seszett 10mo ago
There's no "enforced savings" that I know of in Europe. 3.50% in the US sounds extremely low to me. It has fallen a bit recently but the savings rate was about 25% in France in 2020. Common knowledge says to strive to save at the very least 10% of one's revenue around here.
- Hamuko 10mo ago
  According to some sources, 1 in 4 Americans don't/can't save at all. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/13/economy/job-prices-debt-economy https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/13/economy/job-prices-debt-e...
- thatguy0900 10mo ago
  There is a very large and growing portion of the US that maintains no savings at all. In fact it's the opposite and many are slowly spending their way into perpetual credit card debt.
  - direwolf20 10mo ago
    It's essential to the way the system works. One person's money is another person's debt. Normally the government would take on enough debt to ensure everyone had money, but the USA is a weird case.
    - lotsofpulp 10mo ago
      Money and debt are just mechanisms to allocate resources. The government can print infinite money like Zimbabwe and it wouldn’t matter if there aren’t enough resources to allocate.
- Epa095 10mo ago
  It seems like savings include pension ([1], but it is a bit unclear to me) , and that is a kind of forced saving (as in many places in Europe you can't choose to not get pension and get it as cash to spend instead). 1: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Glossary:Household_saving https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...
mrtksn 10mo ago
Even the poorest EU countries are actually surprisingly wealthy. Bulgaria was switching to Euro on the new year’s eve and the easiest way to convert Leva to Euro was to put the money into the bank, so Bulgarian deposits reached 100B+ levas into personal accounts by November which converts to ~50B+ Euros. Which is over 10K Euros per Bulgarian adult. Not bad for the poorest country, considering that home ownership rate is also very high(%86 IIRC). The life is pretty good for a GDP per capita of $18K.
- sgloutnikov 10mo ago
  Those numbers are quite off. The total amount of Leva in circulation at the end of 2024 was round 30B. End of November 2025 in circulation around 23B.
  - mrtksn 10mo ago
    Here’s a source: https://sofiaglobe.com/2025/12/23/on-the-eve-of-the-euro-zone-bulgarian-household-deposits-top-100b-leva/ https://sofiaglobe.com/2025/12/23/on-the-eve-of-the-euro-zon... By the mid January %58 of the leva were removed from circulation BTW.
    - sgloutnikov 10mo ago
      Total deposits in the bank accounts sure. I understood it as they deposited 100B of their cash into their bank accounts by November.
      - mrtksn 10mo ago
        fair, edited for clarification
- torginus 10mo ago
  Home ownership can be a deceptive stat in Eastern Europe - many people don't register their address at the place they rent - in part because they're renting it under the table. Tons of folks also live with their parents into their 30s.
direwolf20 10mo ago
The US can always print more money to fund its institutions, but other countries have to save theirs. Sure, they can print more euro but when so much stuff they need is traded in USD, that's not nearly as effective as when the US prints more USD.
- jacquesm 10mo ago
  > The US can always print more money to fund its institutions, but other countries have to save theirs. That only works if there are takers for US bonds otherwise all this will do is devalue the USD.
  - direwolf20 10mo ago
    That's the US's exorbitant privilege which no other country has.
jochem9 10mo ago
In the US people take on personal debt for something like a car. In the Netherlands (where I live) this is very uncommon: people save up, then buy it.
- thatguy0900 10mo ago
  Our public transportation infrastructure is so badly managed that many jobs will ask you if you have reliable transportation and fire you if you find yourself without it. If your car breaks here it's often not really a option to save up for a bit first.
  - samiv 10mo ago
    Part of "freedom", yes?
microtonal 10mo ago
Also helps that most people don't start with an extremely large student loan when they have finished their education.
- ews 10mo ago
  It helps that Europeans can go to a hospital or take an ambulance without having to open a GoFundMe account.
  - apexalpha 10mo ago
    You would think the chance of this happening would increase the saving rate, no?
skybrian 10mo ago
And yet there's no lack of demand for US investments, because they're attractive to foreign investors. (This is the flip side of trade deficits.) I wonder how much of EU savings is invested in foreign countries?
clickety_clack 10mo ago
The Europeans I know seem to save in actual bank savings accounts, whereas the Americans I know seem to invest their money. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but I can't find a description of "savings" on those charts, so I think it might be ignoring American investments. To me, they are both types of investment, one a super safe option with a low return, and the other a more risky option with a higher return. From that Draghi paper a year ago or so, I believe part of Europe's innovation problem seems to stem from a lack of private investment by individuals in this way, so that would also align with this different philosophy on dealing with savings.
- 4gotunameagain 10mo ago
  When private individuals have their money in savings accounts, aren't the banks investing that money anyway ?
  - clickety_clack 10mo ago
    Practically, yes. But in economics they often classify “savings” only as being in a bank account. So if you “save” money in a 401k, where it’s invested in stocks, bonds or ETFs or whatever, then it’s not recorded as savings because they consider that “investment”. So when someone says EU saving is 18.79% vs US saving of 3.50%, most of the wealth saved by Americans isn’t showing up in that comparison because it’s not in a bank account.
    - 4gotunameagain 10mo ago
      If it is just a matter of classification, then why would part of the problem lie on lack of private investment, when private savings are invested by the banks themselves ? I think a big a part is that a lot of EU money is invested in the US instead, and I am looking forward for that to stop..
      - clickety_clack 10mo ago
        There’s a whole lot of regulation around the types of investment a bank can make with the money. Most of it has to be low risk mortgages, loans and high quality bonds.
torginus 10mo ago
I'd argue accumulating too much wealth compared to your salary can be a bad thing - for example, real estate compared to salary is even more expensive in Europe than the US - so the extra money doesn't go anywhere useful, you just get to pay more for the same stuff. Also, if the US person pays less taxes, but has to pay for a bunch of services that the EU person would get for free, that means the US person has a lower savings rate, even though they're paying for the exact same stuff.
pas 10mo ago
it's true, lot of money is sitting in safe assets in banks https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/inter/date/2024/html/ecb.in241204~20c888bea1.it.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/inter/date/2024/html/ecb.in2... see also https://archive.md/xaiLU https://archive.md/xaiLU "Europe’s AI ambitions are running into a markets plumbing problem The region lacks the depth of long-dated investment capital needed to fund required energy infrastructure"

by Havoc 10mo ago

coffeebeqn 10mo ago

Retirement accounts are more like social security than 401k. There’s no set amount of euros set aside for me it’s all in the pool paying for older peoples retirement

Hamuko 10mo ago

This doesn't surprise me at all as an European. My mind struggles to understand how so many Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

pas 10mo ago
that's true to some extent, but at this point it's mostly a meme (at least the 60% number was) > In 2023, 54 percent of adults said they had set aside money for three months of expenses in an emergency savings or “rainy day” fund—unchanged from 2022 but down from a high of 59 percent of adults in 2021. https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2023-report-economic-well-being-us-households-202405.pdf https://www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2023-repor... via https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/paycheck-to-paycheck-and-five-other https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/paycheck-to-paycheck-and-five-...
- Havoc 10mo ago
  That’s way higher than I’d have guessed. Maybe there is some sort of bimodal distribution happening there. Half the pop is flat broke the other has multiple months of buffer

seszett 10mo ago

There's no "enforced savings" that I know of in Europe. 3.50% in the US sounds extremely low to me. It has fallen a bit recently but the savings rate was about 25% in France in 2020. Common knowledge says to strive to save at the very least 10% of one's revenue around here.

Hamuko 10mo ago
According to some sources, 1 in 4 Americans don't/can't save at all. https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/13/economy/job-prices-debt-economy https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/13/economy/job-prices-debt-e...
thatguy0900 10mo ago
There is a very large and growing portion of the US that maintains no savings at all. In fact it's the opposite and many are slowly spending their way into perpetual credit card debt.
- direwolf20 10mo ago
  It's essential to the way the system works. One person's money is another person's debt. Normally the government would take on enough debt to ensure everyone had money, but the USA is a weird case.
  - lotsofpulp 10mo ago
    Money and debt are just mechanisms to allocate resources. The government can print infinite money like Zimbabwe and it wouldn’t matter if there aren’t enough resources to allocate.
Epa095 10mo ago
It seems like savings include pension ([1], but it is a bit unclear to me) , and that is a kind of forced saving (as in many places in Europe you can't choose to not get pension and get it as cash to spend instead). 1: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=Glossary:Household_saving https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php...

mrtksn 10mo ago

Even the poorest EU countries are actually surprisingly wealthy. Bulgaria was switching to Euro on the new year’s eve and the easiest way to convert Leva to Euro was to put the money into the bank, so Bulgarian deposits reached 100B+ levas into personal accounts by November which converts to ~50B+ Euros. Which is over 10K Euros per Bulgarian adult. Not bad for the poorest country, considering that home ownership rate is also very high(%86 IIRC). The life is pretty good for a GDP per capita of $18K.

sgloutnikov 10mo ago
Those numbers are quite off. The total amount of Leva in circulation at the end of 2024 was round 30B. End of November 2025 in circulation around 23B.
- mrtksn 10mo ago
  Here’s a source: https://sofiaglobe.com/2025/12/23/on-the-eve-of-the-euro-zone-bulgarian-household-deposits-top-100b-leva/ https://sofiaglobe.com/2025/12/23/on-the-eve-of-the-euro-zon... By the mid January %58 of the leva were removed from circulation BTW.
  - sgloutnikov 10mo ago
    Total deposits in the bank accounts sure. I understood it as they deposited 100B of their cash into their bank accounts by November.
    - mrtksn 10mo ago
      fair, edited for clarification
torginus 10mo ago
Home ownership can be a deceptive stat in Eastern Europe - many people don't register their address at the place they rent - in part because they're renting it under the table. Tons of folks also live with their parents into their 30s.

direwolf20 10mo ago

The US can always print more money to fund its institutions, but other countries have to save theirs. Sure, they can print more euro but when so much stuff they need is traded in USD, that's not nearly as effective as when the US prints more USD.

jacquesm 10mo ago
> The US can always print more money to fund its institutions, but other countries have to save theirs. That only works if there are takers for US bonds otherwise all this will do is devalue the USD.
- direwolf20 10mo ago
  That's the US's exorbitant privilege which no other country has.

jochem9 10mo ago

In the US people take on personal debt for something like a car. In the Netherlands (where I live) this is very uncommon: people save up, then buy it.

thatguy0900 10mo ago
Our public transportation infrastructure is so badly managed that many jobs will ask you if you have reliable transportation and fire you if you find yourself without it. If your car breaks here it's often not really a option to save up for a bit first.
- samiv 10mo ago
  Part of "freedom", yes?

microtonal 10mo ago

Also helps that most people don't start with an extremely large student loan when they have finished their education.

ews 10mo ago
It helps that Europeans can go to a hospital or take an ambulance without having to open a GoFundMe account.
- apexalpha 10mo ago
  You would think the chance of this happening would increase the saving rate, no?

skybrian 10mo ago

And yet there's no lack of demand for US investments, because they're attractive to foreign investors. (This is the flip side of trade deficits.) I wonder how much of EU savings is invested in foreign countries?

clickety_clack 10mo ago

The Europeans I know seem to save in actual bank savings accounts, whereas the Americans I know seem to invest their money. Maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but I can't find a description of "savings" on those charts, so I think it might be ignoring American investments. To me, they are both types of investment, one a super safe option with a low return, and the other a more risky option with a higher return. From that Draghi paper a year ago or so, I believe part of Europe's innovation problem seems to stem from a lack of private investment by individuals in this way, so that would also align with this different philosophy on dealing with savings.

4gotunameagain 10mo ago
When private individuals have their money in savings accounts, aren't the banks investing that money anyway ?
- clickety_clack 10mo ago
  Practically, yes. But in economics they often classify “savings” only as being in a bank account. So if you “save” money in a 401k, where it’s invested in stocks, bonds or ETFs or whatever, then it’s not recorded as savings because they consider that “investment”. So when someone says EU saving is 18.79% vs US saving of 3.50%, most of the wealth saved by Americans isn’t showing up in that comparison because it’s not in a bank account.
  - 4gotunameagain 10mo ago
    If it is just a matter of classification, then why would part of the problem lie on lack of private investment, when private savings are invested by the banks themselves ? I think a big a part is that a lot of EU money is invested in the US instead, and I am looking forward for that to stop..
    - clickety_clack 10mo ago
      There’s a whole lot of regulation around the types of investment a bank can make with the money. Most of it has to be low risk mortgages, loans and high quality bonds.

torginus 10mo ago

I'd argue accumulating too much wealth compared to your salary can be a bad thing - for example, real estate compared to salary is even more expensive in Europe than the US - so the extra money doesn't go anywhere useful, you just get to pay more for the same stuff. Also, if the US person pays less taxes, but has to pay for a bunch of services that the EU person would get for free, that means the US person has a lower savings rate, even though they're paying for the exact same stuff.

pas 10mo ago

it's true, lot of money is sitting in safe assets in banks https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/inter/date/2024/html/ecb.in241204~20c888bea1.it.html https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/inter/date/2024/html/ecb.in2... see also https://archive.md/xaiLU https://archive.md/xaiLU "Europe’s AI ambitions are running into a markets plumbing problem The region lacks the depth of long-dated investment capital needed to fund required energy infrastructure"