May 2 was the last day to declare, unless you were granted a reprieve to submit it later. Those who declared before April 3 have already received their tax refund, while others will receive the money between June 4 and 7.
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Photo: Janerik Henriksson/TT
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Got a tax refund? That’s how you should think
Last year, around 5.6 million Swedes received a tax refund. On average, the refund then landed at SEK 10,000, but according to SBAB the corresponding figure is expected to be higher in 2024. This is due to the high interest rates.
If you then, purely hypothetically, receive just over SEK 15,000 in tax refunds this year, what should you do with the money? News24 asked the couple behind Instagram account “Sparmakarna”: Karin Löf and Johan Perssonwho in posts and reels on the platform shares saving tips with his over 105,000 followers.
– Firstly, you should look at your finances as a whole. Do I have a contingency buffer? If the fridge boils, can I repair it or buy a new one? For us, it is the highest priority, before we even look at investing. We must first make sure we can sleep well at night, says Johan.
Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT
How much you should have in buffer varies.
– A single person in a rental apartment may need to have a smaller buffer than two people with two children, who live in a villa, with a house and a car. There you can think about how many months you want to be able to live without any income. We ourselves want three monthly expenses in an account with a high variable savings rate. We have approximately SEK 35,000 in expenses per month, so we have a buffer of just over SEK 100,000.
Karin and Johan save 30,000 a month: “No fancy jobs”
This is how you can make your tax refund grow
But if you want to make the money grow instead?
– If you want your SEK 15,000 to grow, there are today fine savings accounts with an interest rate of around four percent. But here you need to think about when you need the money and what you save or invest for, says Johan.
Investing in the stock market means, according to the couple, that there is “always a risk”.
– Your money can be worth zero. It is pure fact. No one, not even experts, knows how the stock market will act tomorrow, in a week or in 20 years. There could be, for example, a coronavirus that pulls the stock market down by 30 percent. Then it is bad if you intended to withdraw the money at that time.
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Photo: Henrik Montgomery/TT
Anyone who still wants to enter the stock market is right to read up, and then there are several books available.
– Then you can look at the stock exchange purely historically. It has yielded between seven and eight percent per year. That doesn’t mean it yields seven to eight percent every year. The stock market can go down ten percent one year and go up 20 percent the next. It is only an average, but historically it has been beneficial, says Johan.
The “spargers” themselves appreciate so-called index funds, which are equity funds that follow specific “lists”.
– Say that the Stockholm Stock Exchange historically gave around eight percent in return per year. Then there are index funds that “automatically” invest in these companies, so you can basically buy such a fund and indirectly invest in all these companies for a relatively low fee.
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