It took me a while to work out that there was nothing exotic to do. Buy a low-cost fund that holds the whole market, buy it every month whatever the news says, and forget about it. I tried a pile of other instruments along the way, and to this day I cannot tell whether they earned or lost me money. The boring fund I can.
Two things matter more than which fund: that you start, and that you keep going. Ten years of delay costs more than any fee, any bad year, any wrong choice between two sensible funds. The chart on this page shows your numbers started now against started later, with everything else the same.
Keep it to one or two broad funds, in euros, from a serious provider with low fees. If someone offers you more than the market for less risk, they are either lying or confused. I am not naming products here, and would not: the principle is what matters, and it has not changed in fifty years.
Two people, twenty and forty years on
Ivo starts this year. Ana starts in years, with everything else the same.
In Bulgaria, as of September 2026
For a person in Bulgaria, gains on shares and funds traded on a regulated market in the EU are exempt from income tax, and dividends are taxed at 5%. A broad fund that reinvests its dividends therefore grows almost untaxed. That is unusual in Europe, and worth knowing.