Is a digital account worth it?

Some digital banks make money just by leaving it in your checking account. You don’t even have to choose where to invest.

But one of the readers sent me the question: “Is it worth leaving the money there, or is it better to invest in something?” To answer, I made a comparison between the income of these accounts and other applications. see below.

The decision depends on your need

The decision to leave the funds generated in the digital account or to look for other investments depends on the needs of the investor.

If you know that you will not need to recover this money in less than a year, then you will find more profitable options in other investments, which I will show you below.

But if you think you might have to use the amount in the coming months or days, keeping the amount in the interest-bearing account is worth it.

Other low-risk apps that allow anytime redemption will generate returns similar to digital accounts. They all yield something close to the prime (Selic) interest rate, minus it Income tax.

This is the case, for example, of the Selic Treasury (the most conservative security in Direct Treasury) and CDBs offered by small and medium-sized banks.

And in the long run?

For a long term investment, for more than a year, it is already worth migrating to other applications.

What you need to understand is that between two investments with the same risks, a long-term investment tends to yield more.

Interest-bearing checking accounts are low-risk, short-term investments (you can withdraw money at any time). If you’re looking for other low-risk but long-term options, they’ll yield more.

An example of this is Prefixed Treasury, direct treasury bonds. With it, you are guaranteed a return of 13.64% per annum and a payback period in 2025. Digital accounts must follow the Selic rate, which tends to drop to 8% per annum until 2025.

Briefly

To summarize, it’s like this: everyday money and emergency reserves, which you may need to use in the short term, will have a good return on both digital accounts and Selic’s treasury.

The portion of the capital you can leave invested for the long term tends to yield a greater return if you choose long-term investments, such as ex-Treasury, IPCA Treasury, long-term CDBs, LCAs and LCIs issued by small banks.

Here we can understand “long-term” as an investment for a period of more than one year. Remember, the longer the term, the higher the return.

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