{"id":218663,"date":"2025-12-06T14:30:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T14:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/218663\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T14:30:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T14:30:18","slug":"cash-is-king-in-ireland-but-sweden-shows-investors-a-better-way-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/218663\/","title":{"rendered":"Cash is king in Ireland, but Sweden shows investors a better way \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">The Irish are a reluctant bunch when it comes to stock market investing. Irish households keep 38 per cent of their financial assets parked in cash and deposits, according to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/central-bank\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/central-bank\/\">Central Bank<\/a> report, well above the EU average of 30 per cent. <\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Europeans themselves are hardly a benchmark of boldness: in the equity-friendly US, households hold just 11 per cent in cash.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">In other words, Ireland is an outlier among outliers. Why? Reasons include fear of losses, a perception that investing is exclusive and the belief it is all overly complicated.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Irish households do have equity exposure through pensions but, overall, there is a missing sense of the risk of doing nothing. Inflation, low deposit rates and long time horizons mean sitting in cash is the one strategy that can almost guarantee a loss in real terms. However, it remains the default.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Meanwhile, the notion that investing is exclusive only entrenches existing inequalities: those who need their money to work hardest are the least likely to benefit from it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/sweden\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.irishtimes.com\/tags\/sweden\/\">Sweden<\/a> is a useful counter-example. Swedes are not inherently more daring, but they have high levels of financial literacy and their system has long made investing feel routine.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Beginning in the late 1970s, the report notes, Sweden rolled out tax-incentivised savings funds, followed in the 1980s by allemansfonder: mass-market equity funds designed to make investing a normal household activity.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Later pension reforms followed, while the arrival of the ISK account in 2012 stripped out friction and paperwork, offering a simple, low-tax wrapper for investing in shares and funds. Today, more than a third of the population uses it. As a result, Swedish households hold only 13 per cent of assets in cash.<\/p>\n<p class=\"c-paragraph paywall \">Sweden deliberately built an investing culture. The Central Bank\u2019s report implies Irish policymakers should take note. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Irish are a reluctant bunch when it comes to stock market investing. Irish households keep 38 per&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[79,632,18,19,2003,17,9312],"class_list":{"0":"post-218663","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-central-bank","10":"tag-eire","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-investment","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-sweden"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115673106047803690","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}