Some 37% of Czechs save for old age with state money

Prague, Oct 19 (CTK) - A total of 37 percent of Czechs save for old age with the help of state money and only 3 percent, mostly young people, prefer riskier investments with a high yield, a poll conducted by PPM Factum Reserch for Broker Consulting among 1,000 respondents has found.

One-fifth of those polled said they plan to buy a home in order to cut housing costs in the future.

Ten percent of Czechs save for old age through banking and savings accounts and the same percentage of people consider investing money in real estate and securities.

"Czechs are conservative and therefore they very often have their money long invested in extremely unfavourable financial products," said Broker Consulting analyst Jan Lener.

In the long run, for instance, it does not pay off to have savings accounts as their yields hardly cover inflation, he said.

"We recommend our clients to put aside 10 to 20 percent of their current income and invest (the money) in products with an appropriate rate of profit and risk, for instance, life cycle funds," said Lener.

The survey has revealed that six out of ten people prefer a smaller risk to a higher yield on their savings. Only 3 percent of people opt for a bigger profit even at the expense of possible losses.

Almost a half of people want to have their money available at anytime. One-third of respondents said they prefer withdrawing of money after achieving certain age, the survey has shown.