Investment Path Your money, in perspective

Worked example

€10,000 invested once, left for 30 years

One payment, nothing added afterwards, thirty years of compounding. The figure below is the balance before tax; the cards under it show what it is worth once inflation and an eventual sale are counted.

The answer

Value after 30 years

€76,123

From a single €10,000 payment, with nothing contributed afterwards.

Portfolio at year 30 · inflation-adjusted · before estimated tax
€36,291
Full-sale value at year 30 · inflation-adjusted · after estimated tax
€30,597
10th-percentile portfolio at year 30 · inflation-adjusted · before estimated tax
€9,778
Assumed yearly return
7 %
Assumed inflation
2.5 %
Assumed tax rate
18.4625 %

Tax basis: 18.4625 % on realised gains, which is the German 26.375 % less the 30 percent Teilfreistellung an equity fund receives. The standard rate applies to individual shares and bonds; a fund holding at least 51 percent equities receives the exemption. The yearly Sparer-Pauschbetrag of €1,000 is applied as well.

Stress basis: percentile 10 of 1,000 simulated paths, using the same assumed average return of 7 % and 15 % annual volatility.

Open this plan and change the assumptions

Opens with these numbers, ready to change. Nothing you enter there is saved.

A single payment is mostly a bet on the horizon

Nothing is added after the first day, so every euro of the result comes from time rather than later contributions. That makes the horizon a central lever: the same €10,000 over 20 years instead of 30 produces roughly half as much, because the years removed are the ones working on the largest balance.

What the stressed figure is saying

The tenth-percentile outcome above is lower than the €10,000 that went in, inflation-adjusted. A broad fund can diversify across many securities while a one-off purchase is still concentrated in one entry date. Phasing money in spreads that timing risk, but also leaves part of it out of the market; historical research has usually favoured investing an available lump sum immediately.

Nothing here is added, including your salary

This page deliberately models the €10,000 alone. Most people who invest a lump sum also keep saving, and the two together behave very differently from either one: open the planner and add a monthly amount on top of the starting balance to see the combined shape.

What this page is not

It is an illustration under stated assumptions, not advice and not a forecast. The return is an assumption you can disagree with, the tax is an estimate of one common German case, and no page on this site knows anything about your circumstances. How it works sets out the arithmetic and the full list of what the model leaves out.

How it works

Other questions worked through