Sick pay in Europe: who pays you, and from which day
Up to two years of employer-paid sick leave in the Netherlands, none in Portugal. Nine countries, and the percentage everybody quotes rarely decides.
Investing & Wealth
Putting money to work: investing fundamentals, turning a salary into assets, and protecting what you have already managed to accumulate.
Featured
Our best attempts.
The three-fund portfolio for European investors
Europe's three-fund portfolio has its own shape. A single all-world UCITS fund owns the whole world, so most first-timers need two funds, not three.
The 4% rule for European retirees: does it still hold up in 2026?
3% to 3.5%, not 4%: that's the realistic safe withdrawal rate for a European retiree living off a portfolio. Here's what moves it, and why.
How to pick an ETF in Europe without losing the plot
Pick a UCITS ETF in Europe with a weighted six-point checklist: the UCITS gate, what it tracks, true cost, size, acc or dist, domicile.
Investing & Wealth Building
Dividend investing in Europe: is it really passive income?
Pooled across 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022, 70.6% of European once-a-year dividend payments arrived in April, May and June. What that does to a monthly budget, and what living off it really costs.
Why don't Europeans invest in stocks? Where the money went instead
Caution gets the blame. Add up all euro-area household assets and about €66 in every €100 is property. That is the area's total, not one household's.
Should I wait to invest? Five reasons people give
We ran 107,454 windows of European tracker-fund history since 2008. Waiting won three times in ten. Five reasons Europeans give for holding off, cross-examined: three lose, two hold up.
Does market timing work? Seventeen European forecasts, marked.
Every year Europe's strategists publish a number for where the market ends up. As far as we can find, nobody checks. So we marked seventeen of them, and the typical miss is bigger than a typical year.
What ESG investing means, and what it changes about what you own
Two funds, same ESG label. One index targets a quarter of each sector's tradable market value, the other half. That figure is not on your factsheet.
European bond ETFs: how they work, and how they're taxed where you live
Euro government bond ETFs fell about 18% in 2022, never mature like a single bond, and are taxed differently in every country. Here's how they actually work.
Financial Protection
What insurance do you actually need: subtract before you buy
Most insurance is priced above your expected loss, by design. Subtract your state, employer and savings, and only the real gap is worth a policy.
How to spot an investment scam: check the firm, not the pitch
Two registers and a warning list. That is the check that works on an investment firm, because the pitch, the dashboard and the profit on it are all theirs.
Unemployment benefit in Europe: when nine states stop paying
Nine European states, six numbers each. Whether your record lets you in, by when you must claim, what the state replaces, and the date payments stop.
Employer pension contributions mean five different things across Europe
Cross a border and employer pension contributions become five different things. Ireland and Britain force a minimum in; Spain requires nothing at all.
Inflation-proofing retirement: which European pensions keep up
Your pension rose this year; prices rose faster. Which European pensions keep pace with inflation, and how to defend the slices that quietly erode.
Why retirement planning matters: the real cost of waiting
About 41% of Europeans pay into no private or workplace pension, and each year you wait costs more than the payments you skip. Here's that cost, in euros.