The Phone Call That Changed How I Think About Money
I thought €25,000 in my current account meant I was being responsible. I was only seeing half the picture.
Hi friend,
Two years into my first corporate job in Paris, I received a call from my bank asking me to come in for a meeting.
My French was still fairly limited, so my first thought was that I had done something wrong.
I arrived slightly nervous.
It turned out the bank still had me registered as a student. They simply wanted to know how someone they thought was a student had suddenly accumulated €25,000 in a current account.
Phew! I wasn’t in trouble. They simply needed to update my profile in their system.
But they were right to ask.
Their follow-up question was even more interesting:
Why was all that money sitting there doing absolutely nothing?
For context, I was still living much like a student. My monthly expenses didn’t exceed €1,500, while my monthly salary was around €3,500. So €25,000 represented well over a year’s worth of living expenses.
Clearly, I didn’t need all of it sitting in my current account.
That was the first—and last—time anyone said to me:
You have too much money sitting idle.
Their solution was to manage part of it for me and offer an annual return of around 2%.
I quickly did the calculation.
If I locked away €20,000 for a year, I would earn €400 before accounting for inflation, fees or anything else.
It did not sound particularly compelling.
I politely told them I would (not) think about it, and then I left.
The offer did not convince me.
But the conversation did.
My money was sitting there without a purpose. It was gradually losing purchasing power, and I had no real plan for what to do with it.
The year was 2018.
In the end, I invested the money in real estate in my hometown.
I suppose I still was not ready for the stock market. Unfortunately, it would take me another four years to get serious about ETFs.
But that is a story for another time.
Looking back, I made a reasonable decision (the real estate one)—without fully understanding the broader lesson behind it which is that …
Inaction is also a decision
A lot of people are in the same position I was in during that bank meeting.
They begin earning more.
Their account balance slowly grows.
They know they should probably do something with the money.
But they do not feel knowledgeable enough to act.
So they wait.
Waiting feels safe because the balance does not visibly fall.
But cash has its own risks.
Inflation quietly reduces what it can buy. And every year spent waiting is another year in which no investing habit is being built.
That does not mean every euro should be placed into the stock market.
It means every euro should have a purpose.
Some money may be reserved for emergencies.
Some for a property purchase.
Some for short-term expenses.
Some for long-term investing.
Holding cash intentionally is not the problem.
The problem is allowing large amounts of money to accumulate by default because making a decision feels uncomfortable.
Inaction may feel like avoiding risk.
Often, it is simply choosing a different risk without acknowledging it.
So thank you, BNP Paribas, for the early reminder that my money needed a purpose.
And thank you for the sufficiently uninspiring offer that encouraged me to take it elsewhere.
It would take me another four years to get serious about the S&P 500.
But that’s a story for another time.
Talk soon,
Martin
P.S. What was your wake-up call that made you start taking your money seriously?