I would like to start investing some of the family money in ETF with 2 goals:

1. Put some money aside for my 2 kids for when they are 18
2. Purchase ETFs for us to fight inflation and make some gain from our savings.

I have 2 questions, in case anybody else is in my same situation:

1. I currently have an account at Sparkasse, do you think it’s a good idea to use it for purchasing the ETFs?
2. For saving plans for the kids, on [JustETF](https://www.justetf.com/en/etf-profile.html?isin=IE00BK5BQT80#overview) they market [flatex.at](https://flatex.at), where I think I could automate purchasing every month some ETFs for the kids, with less expenses than manually purchasing on Sparkasse where I would be charged at every transaction.

Does it make sense to do something like this in your opinion? Or which solution would you recommend in Austria?

It would be awesome if taxes were done for me, as I’m not very knowledgeable having been living in Austria for little time.

4 comments

  1. I use my bank99 (ING) account to buy monthly ETF shares.
    I only use flatex for trading shares.

    Both do the taxes for me.

  2. First there is r/finanzenAT which may the more suitable sub for this kind of question.

    bank99 is new on the scene, don’t know yet, just googled a bit, they only offer one ETF with heavy Austria focus? brrrr. nope. Unless you specifically want this, I’d stay away from an Austrian or even Europe focus. And of course lots of very expensive actively managed fonds. As long I didn’t misread it, doesn’t sound too hot for me.

    Flatex.at is the classic go to solution for Austria, still overall the least charges for Austria (but we’re little a desert on this compared to other countries it seems, Austrians generally aren’t very stocks happy)

  3. >I currently have an account at Sparkasse, do you think it’s a good idea to use it for purchasing the ETFs?

    No, Sparkasse / Erste Bank has horrific order fees and they don’t even provide saving plans on the common ETFs. They try to promote their own “sFonds” which come with even more fees (very high [TER](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/ter.asp#)) and don’t compare to a regular All-World index.

    I would recommend Flatex as it handles your taxes (“steuereinfach”) and has quite low order fees for fixed saving plans (1,5€ per order).

  4. 1. Avoid banks because comissions are too high and because they are usually interested in selling their products to you.
    2. Use brokers. Search for the one that will do taxes for you (so called steuereinfacher Broker).
    3. Use saving plan (Sparplan) because of lower comissions.
    4. Also take into account where will you live when you need the money back.

    Flatex is basically a default (and a good one) option in Austria for the scenario you described. I wouldn’t search any longer if you plan to stay in Austria.

Leave a Reply