K&H: What does the wallet of young people show? Every fourth Hungarian twenty-year-old is unable to save

How young people can save – this question was examined by the K&H Youth Index among 19-29 year-olds in every quarter of the last ten years, including at the end of 2024. The results are still mixed.

What is positive is that a smaller majority of young people have savings, 57 percent to be exact. Although this result is the highest rate numerically since the end of 2022, the difference is only within the margin of error compared to previous quarters (51-55 percent) or the 59 percent at the end of 2022. However, it is also a fact that before 2019, values ​​below 50 percent were consistently achieved, meaning that the proportion of young people with savings increased, albeit modestly, in the long term.

Not an easy task

Of course, faster growth would require more people to be able to save regularly, but there is plenty of room for improvement in this area. According to the research, in the last quarter of last year, 25 percent of young people were unable to save. The gender gap is significant: 32 percent of women do not save, while this ratio is only 19 percent for men. This gap can be partly explained by the fact that women have lower incomes: according to the research, the average net income of men in the last quarter of last year was 261 thousand forints, compared to 205 thousand forints for women.

In the eastern counties, 34 percent are unable or unwilling to save, which can also be explained by the fact that incomes in this part of the country are lower than average.

14 percent of respondents said they save regularly, but are unable to do so every month. Nearly a fifth of young people, 18 percent, are only able to save when they have a larger amount of money: this is most common among twenty-somethings living in smaller cities.