Holistic advice Invest your money and achieve your financial goals

To achieve your financial goals you need a strategy. UBS supports you with its financial check and practical tips.

by UBS Insights 28 Sep 2021 5 min read
Picture: Pia Bublies

Low interest rates and inflation make it difficult for savers to achieve their financial goals. That’s why it’s more important than ever to develop a successful strategy that you stick to and regularly review.

A question of investment horizon …

There are all kinds of different financial goals. They vary, for example, depending on the amount of time available to achieve them:

  • Short-term goals: A short-term goal might be to save more, i.e., to increase the proportion of your income that you can effectively save, so that you still have money left over after contributing to your private retirement savings.
  • Medium-term goals: Saving enough money to be able to make an expensive purchase. For example, to buy a car, take a long vacation, study a language abroad, for continuing education, or to start your own business.
  • Long-term goals: For many, buying a home is a big dream and the biggest investment of their lives. You’ll need to have enough saved to afford both the deposit and the costs of ownership (maintenance, interest payments, amortization). Long-term goals also include making the most of your opportunities to save for your retirement, so that you can maintain your standard of living after you stop working.

… and prioritization

With our free, comprehensive UBS Financial Check, savers can meet with our experts and systematically analyze their goals from the following perspectives:

  • Ensuring flexibility thanks to smart liquidity planning
  • Securing your future with private pension solutions
  • Realizing your dreams with your remaining savings

Liquidity planning

To save, you must first have spare cash that you won’t be needing any time soon. With sufficient liquid funds, in the form of cash and your bank balance, you have enough money to live on plus a solid reserve for unforeseen expenses. However, many Swiss households today have excess liquidity: they hold large amounts of money in their accounts that they don’t need any time soon, which generate hardly any returns, and which will even lose value in real terms if inflation takes off.

The purpose of saving is to achieve your financial goals in the most efficient way, by making regular deposits and through returns achieved by following a disciplined investment strategy.

Private retirement solutions

As soon as the required liquidity has been built up, UBS recommends that the funds be prioritized for private pension provision (pillar 3a). An investment fund is ideal, i.e., investing in stocks, bonds, money market securities and real estate, instead of a traditional retirement account. With a combination of private pension provision and UBS Vitainvest Investment Funds, you can benefit in three ways:

  1. Payments into pillar 3a are tax-deductible in the year in which they are deposited; you’ll maximize your tax relief by paying in the full statutory maximum amount annually.
  2. With pillar 3 investment fund solutions, such as sustainable UBS Vitainvest Investment Funds, you benefit from growth on the financial markets. You decide what proportion of the fund is invested in equities.
    What’s more: Of the common forms of investment, stocks offer the highest chances of a return on assets that can remain invested for 10 or 20 years or more.
  3. And last but not least, you ensure that you can continue to afford your current lifestyle after retirement: as is well known, pillar 1 and pillar 2 savings are not usually enough.

Fulfilling your dreams

All remaining liquid funds that exceed the maximum amount in pillar 3a can be saved to fulfill small or large wishes: a high-quality e-bike, a car, a residential property. The longer you need to save the capital for your goal, the more important the investment strategy, so that you can achieve your goal directly and, ideally, without any loss of returns.

Damit Ihre Finanzen im Einklang stehen mit Ihren Zielen

So your finances match your goals

The free Financial Check shows you ways to improve your financial situation over the short, medium and long term.

Have a meeting in the comfort of your own home or at your local UBS branch. 

What you can expect from your consultation

In a one-on-one meeting, we’ll analyze your financial situation based on your assets, income and expenses and help you prioritize your goals. We will develop custom solutions tailored to your specific situation that illustrate how you might optimize your private and retirement savings.

After the consultation, you can indicate which of the tips you like and have them implemented by UBS experts. You can check how your savings are doing directly in UBS Digital Banking, allowing you to see at any time how soon you’ll be able to realize your dream.

Saving today: 4 tips at a glance

  • Start as early as possible so that your savings are there when you need them or to create the necessary financial flexibility.
  • Put money aside regularly, ideally monthly and preferably automatically with a standing order in UBS E-Banking.
  • Prioritize savings into pillar 3a because the tax breaks of this pension solution are in themselves a form of return. Investment funds offer better potential returns than account solutions.
  • Invest your savings regularly in order to compensate for fluctuations on the investment markets.

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