Your money did not sit still. It shrank quietly.

A balance that does not change is not a balance that holds. Enter what you have kept in a deposit account and for how long — the arithmetic takes about a minute and it is not comfortable.

↓ Calculate

The two numbers that move apart

A deposit pays whatever the bank decides. Prices rise at whatever rate the economy sets. For most of the last few years the second has been larger than the first, and the gap does not appear on any statement.

Nothing dramatic happens. The balance is intact. It simply buys less than it did.

Your figures

Amount held in a deposit account€25,000

1,000250,000

Years it has been sitting there5 years

115

Interest your account pays1.5%

0%6%

Average price rises over that period4.0%

0%10%

What the account shows today—

What that amount buys, in original terms—

Purchasing power lost—

—of what you started with

Per year, on average—

Per month—

What this number does not tell you

How much of it was avoidableSome of that gap could not have been closed by anything. Some of it could. Those are different figures, and only one of them is worth acting on.

What the alternatives actually riskEvery option that outpaces a deposit account carries risk, and the honest ones say so plainly. What matters is which risks are understandable and which are not.

Whether any of it suits youCircumstances, timescale and temperament decide this far more than the size of the number above. For plenty of people the correct answer is to change nothing.

The figure is the easy part

Twelve minutes with somebody who does this daily

You already know the calculation above. Everybody does — the phrase about money needing to work is not new to anyone.

What is harder is the next part: which of those three unknowns applies to your situation, and what the realistic options are once the marketing language is stripped out of them.

That is a conversation, not a brochure. An analyst looks at your figures, tells you what is realistic and what is not, and answers direct questions directly.

You will leave knowing more than you arrived with. That is the whole promise, and it holds whatever you do afterwards.

You choose when

So you know what to expect. Nobody will ask you to transfer money on this call, and nobody will ask for card or account details. There is nothing to sign and nothing to pay. If a conversation with anyone ever goes that way, end it — you will be right to.