Am I rich in Germany, if you don't count the house?
Type what your household holds in savings and investments. Property and state pension entitlements stay out of it.
My household holds € in savings and investments.
Count bank and savings deposits, mutual funds, bonds, listed shares, voluntary pension plans and whole life insurance, and money owed to you. Leave out the home, other property, vehicles, business equity, and entitlements from state or workplace pension schemes.
Households in Germany you hold more than
50%
Above the middle
Past the €27,600 median. Worth remembering how low that bar sits: half of all holders are below it.
€27,600 is right at the €27,600 median for Germany. Half of the households that hold any financial assets sit below that line, and half above it.
The published ladder
Where savings and investments actually sit in Germany.
Among the 99.9% of households in Germany that hold any financial asset, the median total is €27,600 and the mean is €87,400. The gap between them is the story: a small number of large portfolios pull the average far above the middle. Across the euro area the median is €16,600.
Tenth percentile
€800
Lowest published threshold
A tenth of the households with any financial assets in Germany hold no more than this.
Median
€28K
Euro area: €17K
Half hold less than this. The mean is €87K, which is what a handful of large portfolios does to an average.
Ninetieth percentile
€218K
Highest published threshold
The top tenth in Germany starts here. The survey publishes nothing above it, so there is no top 1% number.
€27,600 places you above 50% of the households in Germany that hold any financial asset.
Against the euro area as a whole you would be above 60% rather than 50%.
Who owns what
Almost every household in Germany has a bank account. After that it thins out fast.
23.7% of households in Germany hold mutual funds and 17.6% own listed shares directly, against 14.2% and 11.4% across the euro area. Deposits are close to universal everywhere. Everything below them is a minority position, and that is what makes the medians in the next column so much larger than the median for the whole country.
Asset
Households owning
Median among owners
Vs euro area
Deposits
99.9%
€12,000Euro area: 99.1% own it
Mutual funds
23.7%
€20,000Euro area: 14.2% own it
Bonds
4.4%
€14,000Euro area: 3.5% own it
Listed shares
17.6%
€15,000Euro area: 11.4% own it
Money owed to the household
9.8%
€2,800Euro area: 6.6% own it
Voluntary pension and life insurance
38.7%
€20,300Euro area: 27.5% own it
Other financial assets
20.2%
€4,900Euro area: 11.2% own it
Ownership is compared with the euro-area rate on every row. Medians are among the households that own that asset, so a large median tells you nothing about how common the asset is.
Where the money sits
What financial wealth in Germany is actually made of.
41.2% of financial wealth in Germany sits in deposits, against 44.1% across the euro area, and 19.7% sits in voluntary pension plans and life insurance. The mix decides how much of it is invested at all, which over a decade matters more than the total.
Deposits41.2% · EA 44.1%
Mutual funds15.8% · EA 13.3%
Bonds3.4% · EA 3.0%
Listed shares12.6% · EA 9.7%
Money owed to the household1.9% · EA 1.8%
Voluntary pension and life insurance19.7% · EA 18.3%
Other financial assets5.3% · EA 9.8%
Shares of the total financial assets held by households in Germany. Where the survey published no figure, the item is left out rather than drawn as zero.
The other half
What happens when you put the house back in.
Financial assets are 24.5% of everything households in Germany own. The other 75.5% is real: property above all, plus vehicles, valuables and business equity. Across the euro area the financial share is 20.7%. This is the number behind the question in the title, and for most households it means the majority of their wealth cannot be spent without selling where they live.
Financial
24.5%
Everything on this page, as a share of total household assets in Germany.
Real
75.5%
Property, vehicles, valuables and business equity in Germany, none of which a monthly statement tracks.
Euro area, financial
20.7%
The euro-area financial share is 20.7%, against 24.5% in Germany.
Three numbers and an outlier
What these numbers look like from the outside.
Households owning listed shares
17.6%, among the highest of the 10 countries here
17.6% of households in Germany hold listed shares directly. Direct share ownership is a minority position in all 10 countries here, which is exactly why the gaps between them are worth noticing.
Households with any financial assets
99.9%
Every percentile on this page is measured among these households. The remaining 0.1% in Germany hold nothing at all, and the survey publishes no distribution for them.
Financial wealth held in deposits
41.2%
Against 44.1% across the euro area. Deposits are the safest place to keep money and the surest way to lose its purchasing power slowly.
Hold a voluntary pension or life insurance
38.7%
Against 27.5% across the euro area. These sit on top of the state and workplace schemes, which the survey does not count as assets at all.
41.2% of financial wealth in Germany sits in deposits, against 44.1% across the euro area. Deposits keep their number and lose purchasing power slowly; funds and shares are where the larger balances on this page come from. Capital at risk.
Being above the €27,600 median in this data is a lower bar than it sounds. The number that matters now is your own, tracked over time.
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Among the 99.9% of households in Germany that hold any financial asset, the median is €27,600 and the mean is €87,400, 3.2 times higher (ECB HFCS Wave 2023, Table C3). The mean is the wrong number to measure yourself against: a small number of large portfolios lifts it, while the median describes the household in the middle. The euro-area median is €16,600. That median is the third highest of the ten euro-area countries covered here, behind Luxembourg and Belgium.
€218,300 (ECB HFCS Wave 2023, Table C3). That is the ninetieth percentile among households holding any financial asset, and it is the highest threshold the survey publishes: there is no top 5% or top 1% figure in these tables, so any such number quoted for this survey has been extrapolated by someone rather than measured. At the other end, a tenth of holders have €800 or less.
17.6% own listed shares directly and 23.7% hold mutual funds (Table C1), against 11.4% and 14.2% across the euro area. Deposits, by contrast, are held by 99.9% of households. The dividing line in this data is not who saves but who invests, and it falls in very different places from one country to the next.
€50,000 places a household above about 63% of the households in Germany that hold any financial asset. It is 1.8 times the median of €27,600, and still below the top-tenth threshold of €218,300. Both comparisons are worth holding at once: the multiple sounds large because the median is low, not because the amount is high.
41.2% of financial wealth in Germany sits in deposits, 15.8% in mutual funds, 12.6% in listed shares and 19.7% in voluntary pension plans and life insurance (Table D3). The euro-area split is 44.1% deposits and 18.3% pensions. Direct share ownership is unusually common here: 17.6% of households hold listed shares, the second-highest rate of the ten countries covered, behind Finland.
75.5% of everything households in Germany own is a real asset: property above all, plus vehicles, valuables and business equity. Only 24.5% is financial (Table D1), against 20.7% across the euro area. That is the answer to the question this page asks. Take the house out and most balance sheets shrink to a fraction of their headline size, which is why a net-worth figure and a savings figure feel like they describe two different households.
Deposits in current and savings accounts, mutual funds, bonds, listed shares held directly, money owed to the household by people outside it, voluntary pension plans and whole life insurance, and other financial assets such as managed accounts. It excludes the main residence and any other property, vehicles, valuables and business equity, and it excludes entitlements from state and workplace pension schemes, which for a typical employee are worth more than everything on this list combined.
Among the households that hold them, the median mutual-fund holding in Germany is €20,000, the median direct shareholding is €15,000 and the median voluntary pension or life insurance is €20,300 (Table C2). These are medians among owners, not among all households, so a large figure here says nothing about how common the asset is: 23.7% hold funds and 17.6% hold shares.
Three reasons, all visible in the same tables. The distribution is already conditional on holding something, so it excludes the 0.1% of households in Germany with no financial asset at all. 41.2% of what is held sits in deposits rather than in assets that grow. And financial assets are 24.5% of household wealth here, against 20.7% across the euro area. Germany has the lowest main-residence ownership rate of the 22 countries in this survey wave, at 41.8%, so fewer households here carry a home on the asset side at all.
On ownership, yes, and by a clear margin: 17.6% hold listed shares and 23.7% hold mutual funds, against euro-area rates of 11.4% and 14.2% (ECB HFCS Wave 2023, Table C1). On where the money sits the gap almost closes: 41.2% of German financial wealth is still in deposits, only just below the euro-area 44.1% (Table D3). More German households own investments than the euro-area average, but the amounts in them are small enough that cash still dominates the totals.
