Should you "almost empty" the building savings account?

Hello everyone,

we have 2 old building savings contracts whose balances we want to include in the equity capital.
Currently, no more payments are being made into one of them anyway, but my employer adds €26 every month to mine.

However, this only applies to old contracts with my employer. So if I close this one, I will lose this additional payment.
Of course, I will also lose 2% interest on the balance, but the €26 per month is definitely more significant.

Do you think it is possible that I can pay out only a small residual amount from my building savings contract so that it continues to be saved normally?
Where is the limit before BHW says "not like this"?

The contract has already been allocated for a long time.

I don’t think I need to call BHW and ask them... they won’t want that and it would only draw more attention to it.
They tend to want to get rid of the old contracts with high interest rates.

Thanks for your assessment and opinion.

Hard to say, but I would rather keep my feet still. I also still have an old 5% with BHW. I am constantly being contacted. However, I will let it run until it is terminated.

Currently, the building societies want to get rid of the old contracts. Therefore, I can well imagine that they will not do the devil's work and let you save again under old conditions.

A bit OT I also still have an old contract from Wüstenrot. At least there you have to be careful if you have a bonus interest rate for loan waiver in the contract, as theoretically a loan can still be called up. If the building savings credit > building savings amount, no loan can be called up anymore and accordingly the loan waiver is not possible. This causes the bonus to expire.

I would also keep the "feet" quiet. They will want to give you notice in due time.

I'll chime in here if I may. We are in a similar situation. Both my husband and I still have an old building savings contract with high credited interest rates. The contracts have also been allocated for a long time. Actually, we had planned to terminate the building savings contracts soon and use them as equity and/or a buffer when building the house. We don't have much equity and might only reach the "20% threshold" with the paid-out building savings contracts. Your answers are therefore a bit confusing to me now... should we rather let the contracts run and thus risk possibly falling below 20% equity?

I'll join in here if I may. We are in a similar situation. Both my husband and I still have an old home savings contract with high interest on the balance. The contracts have also been allocated for a long time. We had actually planned to terminate the home savings contracts soon and use them as equity and/or buffer for the house construction. We don't have much equity and may only reach the "20% threshold" with the paid-out home savings contracts. Your answers are therefore a bit confusing to me now... should we rather let the contracts run and risk possibly falling below 20% equity?

You mean an 80% loan-to-value with a corresponding condition for the construction financing?

Only Excel can help which interest weighs more. The 0.xx more for the loan versus the interest from the home savings contract. Possibly the interest also has to be taxed. We had the same problem back then, but with fixed-term deposit. That’s why we took out a small loan and then redeemed it 8 months after allocation. The installment loan was counted as equity. But I don’t want to advise you incorrectly.