don’t take your bank clerk’s advice on savings as anything other than a sales pitch

don’t take advice from companies like Söderberg & Partners or Max Matthiessen either — it is often included as “personal consultations” at the companies without a collective agreement, and the only result is Max Matthiessen and alike getting rich

figure out your saving horizon. 10+ years? Invest in the cheapest global aktiefond you can find. 2 years or less? Put the money into a sparkonto with the highest rate (it won’t be high, 1% is already good). Something in between of 2 and 10 years? Divide the money.

if you have a mortgage, amortize it down to 75% as soon as possible, but don’t rush for amortizing further: the money is better off in an aktiefond

use ISK (investeringssparkonto) over the alternatives (fondkonto/depå and kapitalförsäkring)

don’t do bosparande med köpoäng, blandfonder, fond-i-fond or råvaror. Definitely stay away from ‘structured products’

for the part of allmän pension that you can allocate yourself (called premiepensionen), don’t do anything: the default choice of AP7 Såfa is the best option as of now

for tjänstepension, figure out where all parts of it are (different employers often pay to different places) and whether you can put that money into cheap global aktiefonder. Sometimes the money can’t be moved, sometimes it can but only for a fee, sometimes that fee is in the thousands of kronor — and sometimes the receiving bank will reimburse you that fee. Starting point is logging into minpension.se, and then depending on your employment history the next stops might include collectum.se, fora.se, valcentralen.se or spv.se among others.

if you earn more than 45000 SEK/month, it might be worth discussing löneväxling with your employer. This means getting less salary and more tjänstepension (which might be taxed lower when you’re taking out pension — or maybe not if your pension is high enough).

fondförsäkring is usually better than traditionell försäkring (this choice comes up in placing your tjänstepension)

if you don’t have dependants who wouldn’t manage to get by in case of your death, remove the payments for efterlevandeskydd (can be called återbetalningsskydd, livförsäkring, efterlevandepension, tjänstegrupplivförsäkring) — more money will go to your pension

it’s never a good time to bind your mortgage’s rate

it’s often a bad idea becoming a helkund with a bank (i.e. having all your business just with this one). But you don’t technically need to tell them that you have your savings in Avanza or whatever; you can express interest in the bank’s own expensive aktiefonder while negotiating your mortgage rate, and then transfer the money into a cheap global one.

only buy insurance for things you can’t afford to lose. For the rest it’s better to just have a buffer.