If it's a large amount of money, you might decide to put it in a bank so that you don't have to worry about it being stolen.
Once it is in a bank now you have to play the game of trying to figure out the comparative risk between the bank not being around any more 30 years from now, versus the chance that the German government will have forgotten how to operate the money printing presses.
Of course, since this is the EU, I'd actually be rather worried about the latter. Unlike sovereign currency countries, EU countries do not just get to print Euros. A lot can happen in 30 years, especially to a country with 1.5 births per woman like Germany.
> Of course, that could never ever ever happen in Germany? Not even in 30 years? Let's hear an explanation.
well anything can happen.
I mean I live in germany and I can totally see that happen. our biggest industry needs a lot of breaking changes or else they will fail pretty hard. and they have less than 30 years to do so
Yeah I don't get the impression that you know too well what you are talking about if you don't know the difference between the EU and the Eurozone. Even if the euro were to break up/be abolished and resolve back to smaller currencies there would be a conversion key. The chance that the renmenbi, GBP, yen or even the dollar will have major issues look a lot more likely in the current climate - the renmenbi is still struggling to become a global currency and everyone can see the political struggles on the horizon, the GBP will continue it's free fall after the disastrous Brexit and the following depression, the dollar is widely overdue for a correction and will lose out if eg China starts dumping their reserves, not to speak of the endless debt spiral the us is in - similarly for the yen, with the high debt it looks unlikely to be a stable currency in the long term (even if it's mostly local debt). That doesn't leave too many options - with the euro a fairly stable option as long as people remember the nightmares of Europe pre-euro (and most outside the anglophone bubble do): huge costs and price uncertainty in cross border trade, big financial players gambling and manipulating against smaller currencies (as you still see in Africa today), and overall little trust in the local currencies.
Trust in the euro (not necessarily the EU as a whole, as it is a target for much local political hate & lies when it's easier to blame Brussels than accept responsibility for mistakes) is at an all-time high, with not even Italians wanting to give it up. No one wants the lira or drachma back.
Eurozone is a horrible term to use here, as some nations are pegged to the Euro or have adopted it with no issuing rights or have promised to adopt it. We are talking about specifically about EU governments with partial issuing rights that sell Euro-denominated debt. Like Germany.
One risk (of many different kinds of financial risk) with buying debt denominated in Euros from EU governments is that if such a nation is economically worse off than the others nations that also have Euro issuing rights at the time of bond maturity, then the chance of default goes up substantially. As happened quite recently with Greece.
This is not a type of risk faced with nations with their own sovereign currencies. Default is still possible, but devaluation is a safety valve.
Once it is in a bank now you have to play the game of trying to figure out the comparative risk between the bank not being around any more 30 years from now, versus the chance that the German government will have forgotten how to operate the money printing presses.
Of course, since this is the EU, I'd actually be rather worried about the latter. Unlike sovereign currency countries, EU countries do not just get to print Euros. A lot can happen in 30 years, especially to a country with 1.5 births per woman like Germany.