30% of people in Latvia and Estonia and 32% of people in Lithuania have saved up to 5,000 euros, according to the survey. 11% of Latvians, 23% of Lithuanians, and 28% of Estonians have managed to save more than 5,000 euros.
While in Estonia a quarter (25%) and in Lithuania about a fifth (18%) of the population have no savings at all, the survey shows that up to a third of respondents (32%) live without savings in Latvia because they do not have enough money to put aside. Moreover, comparing the data from the survey conducted in March this year with the answers of respondents in a similar survey last December, savings in winter fell the fastest, by 16%, for seniors aged 60 to 74 and for people aged 30 to 39, whose savings fell by 9% in two months.
“The most worrying fact is that the largest share (36%) of people who don’t have enough money to save are aged between 30 and 39, when jobs and incomes should be stable and growing," said Jekaterina Ziniča, Business Development Manager at Luminor.
Almost half of the Baltic respondents (48%) do not plan to deposit savings this year, while 17% of Latvians, 15% of Estonians and 7% of Lithuanians have not thought about depositing their spare money, especially the youngest Latvian respondents aged between 18 and 29. Of those considering a deposit, 72% of Baltic people would opt for a medium to longer-term deposit, starting from one year.
The Luminor Bank survey of the population was conducted in March 2023 in cooperation with the research agency Norstat, with 3,020 respondents aged 18 to 74 in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.