My father taught me that shares are a casino. He was not wrong about the way most people play them. But he did not tell me the other half: money in a drawer, or in a deposit paying next to nothing, loses a few percent of what it buys every single year. It is a slow, quiet, guaranteed loss, and nobody sends you a statement for it.
The cushion stays in cash on purpose; that is its job. Everything beyond it has to earn more than inflation, or it is not saving, it is a slower way of spending.
The chart on this page runs your numbers twice: once with your assumptions, once as if every euro sat in cash the whole way. The gap between the two lines is what a deposit costs you, one quiet year at a time.
Two people, twenty and forty years on
Ana invests the way your assumptions say. Ivo keeps everything in a deposit.
In Bulgaria, as of September 2026
Inflation in Bulgaria is running above most of the euro area, deposits pay close to nothing, and the interest on them is taxed at 8%. The gap between the two is what a deposit loses you every year.