Placement: where to place your gifts in 2025? The best savings solutions

Have you received gifts during the holidays and are looking for the best way to make them grow? Booklets, life insurance or even ETFs: overview of the most attractive investments for investing a small amount at the start of 2025.

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End-of-year gifts are an ideal opportunity to boost your savings. Whether you have received a generous envelope or a small symbolic sum, several solutions are available to you to make it grow. With the fall in interest rates, however, secure savings products are proving a little less attractive than a year ago. For those hoping for higher returns, you will therefore have to agree to take a little more risk.

Regulated booklets: a must

If you are looking for a simple and effective option, regulated savings accounts, such as the Livret A, the Sustainable and Solidarity Development Account (LDDS) or the Popular Savings Account (LEP), remain the preferred solution. Indeed, with 56 million Livret A accounts already opened, you are undoubtedly already equipped with this savings product. You will therefore not need to take any other steps to place your gifts there.

As a bonus, at the start of 2025, these savings accounts will continue to show decent returns, because they are net of taxes and remain higher than inflation. The Livret A and LDDS rates should increase from 3% currently to 2.5% on February 1, 2025, and the LEP should decrease slightly from 4% to 3%. For the most cautious, you will have the assurance of always recovering the gifts paid there, at any time, in the event of an urgent need for money.

If all of your regulated passbooks are at the ceiling, you can also consider unregulated bank passbooks. Among them, super savings accounts, offered by digital players, still offer periods of boosted rates up to 4% – gross of taxes this time – for a period of a few months. With the possibility, again, of repatriating your savings at any time.

Invest in life insurance for future plans

If you plan to invest your funds for the longer term, life insurance can be a flexible and effective solution. With a multi-support contract, you can invest both in secure investment vehicles, funds in euros, without risk of losing your investment, or in units of account (UC), more risky, but potentially more profitable. For the year which is ending, the average return on euro funds should be around 2.5%. For UC, an average is more difficult to establish, because these supports allow you to invest in a multitude of assets: stocks, bonds, real estate, etc.

In addition, life insurance allows you to benefit from an advantageous tax framework, especially if you keep your contract beyond 8 years. Even with a small initial amount, your gifts can lay the foundations for a long term, adapted to your future projects. Because with life insurance, what counts to calculate the eight-year period is the date the contract is opened, regardless of the amount invested. Even small amounts will do the trick! However, make sure you don’t need this money for at least several years.

Taking the step of ETFs: a gateway to the stock market

Finally, perhaps you will be one of the French people who will take the plunge into ETFs in 2025, if you are however ready to take a little more risk to hope for a higher return in the medium or long term. These listed index funds (or trackers) replicate the performance of an index (such as the CAC 40, the S&P 500, etc.) or an asset (gold, Bitcoin, etc.) and allow you to invest in the stock market with reduced fees.

With a few hundred euros, you can already diversify your portfolio by choosing ETFs accessible on a PEA (equity savings plan), life insurance, or even more simply via an online savings application (Plum, Sumeria, Trade Republic, etc.).

To limit risks and get started, choose an ETF portfolio that is as diversified as possible, in terms of geography or sector of activity. And if you only have one ETF to choose, focus on a “world” ETF (which replicates an index bringing together the largest stock exchanges in the world, such as the MSCI World for example), which will allow you to follow the performance of the most large global companies.