The only profile in this series that runs out of money completely.

Methodology

A renter, an ETF Sparplan, and a pay-as-you-go pension

Same discipline as every profile before it - a named government or industry survey per figure, median over mean where both exist - but Germany's system doesn't map cleanly onto Dispono's model either, and three real gaps had to be worked around, disclosed here rather than fabricated. First: no single official Destatis table publishes gross earnings cleanly by single-year age the way US Census HINC-02 does, so this profile uses a commonly-cited average for 30-year-olds rather than a table lookup. Second: a German payslip has income tax plus four separate mandatory social-insurance contributions (pension, health, unemployment, long-term care) - combined here into a single ~40% rate, since Dispono has one flat rate per income item. Third, and most consequential: the state pension (gesetzliche Rentenversicherung) is pay-as-you-go, not a funded account like CPF - there's no existing balance to seed, only a future income stream starting at the statutory retirement age. Retirement savings are instead modelled as a global-equity ETF Sparplan, the dominant vehicle for this age group (ETFs already exceed 40% of under-35 investors' portfolios per BVI/Trade Republic/Consorsbank data) rather than Riester, whose take-up has been flat-to-declining and is harder to model as one clean figure.

Outcome · Cashflow

The 2026 budget

Salary, dividends and interest come to exactly €42,203 against a €42,203 budget, with €911 of modest surplus swept into the ETF Sparplan - after a combined 40% tax-and-social-insurance deduction that takes the single largest bite of any line on this budget.

Both bars climb steadily for 35 years - then at age 65 (2061) the income bar drops hard as salary mostly disappears, and a "Withdraw Investments" segment appears immediately. It never really recovers: the state pension arrives two years later (2063) but only replaces part of the gap, and from there both bars slowly shrink together until, around age 73, the expense bar simply exceeds what's left to spend - permanently. There's no orange or green marker line on this chart, unlike some of the US profiles; the drop is real, but the product doesn't call it out visually here. Five real years, in the same category-level detail as 2026:

The last full working year, and the portfolio's high-water mark: €153,055, roughly nine times today's net worth. It's downhill from here.

Salary keeps only a partial year (birthday's in June), and the portfolio already has to cover a €3,311 shortfall - two years before the state pension even starts.

The pension helps, but the €1,836/mo Standardrente only covers about half the budget - withdrawals still carry nearly as much, and the €3,898 shortfall hasn't closed. Age 81, the final year of the plan, for comparison:

Pure pension income, nothing else - the ETF Sparplan ran out eight years earlier, in 2069. A €12,803 annual gap, every year, with nothing left anywhere to fill it.

Outcome · Investments

The investment picture

At 30, net worth is €17,300 - the lowest starting point in the series by far, matching this being both the youngest profile and the only one with no property. It grows for 35 years, from a Bundesbank-median starting balance to a peak of €153,055 - then it's spent down to nothing at all.

Outcome · Analysis

What Dispono's risk analysis finds

The only profile in the series to hit the literal floor of the "Assets at life expectancy" gauge - not thin, not a floor, exactly zero - alongside the only flat 0% "Comfortable" debt-to-income score anywhere in the series.

Stress-testing the plan

Same five scenarios as every other profile, same mechanism - except this time there's nothing left for any of them to distinguish. Once the portfolio is gone, it's gone.

Every scenario floors at exactly €0 - the live figures show up as tiny floating-point noise around zero (e.g. "-8.9e-18×"), not a real negative balance. This is the only profile in the series where none of the five stress tests can be told apart: the account is already fully spent by age 73 regardless of which assumption gets pushed harder.

Testing a fix

How much of a cut would actually fix it?

We tested real cuts to discretionary spending - not a single extreme case, a range - re-running the real account after each one and reading the real "Assets at age 81" result.

A remarkably sharp sensitivity for such a modest starting portfolio. Just a 10% cut (about €61 a month) is enough to stop hitting absolute zero at all, and 25% reaches "Balanced" - far smaller cuts than any US or the Singapore profile needed for a comparable jump. The reason is simple: this household has 51 years for a small change to compound, more runway than any other profile in the series gets to work with.

Key insights

What this profile actually tells you

Four findings, each tested the same way as everything else across this series: by changing the real account and reading the real result.

Read the whole picture

Three numbers worth remembering

The average 30-year-old German starts with just €17,300 in net worth - the smallest starting point in this series - on a €42,000 salary, renting rather than owning. A combined ~40% tax-and-social-insurance deduction and a modest but real ETF Sparplan surplus still build a portfolio that peaks at €153,055 by age 64. It isn't enough: the two-year gap between work stopping (65) and the state pension starting (67), followed by a Standardrente that only covers part of a retiree's real budget, drains the account to exactly €0 by age 73 - the only profile in this entire series with no house, and therefore nothing at all, left standing at the end.

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