-If you buy a real estate and rent it out on the other hand, you will collect payment every month. That's called an asset. It generates a positive cash flow.
not every month
some tenants refuse to pay rent,
some tenants damage the property
some houses require ongoing costs that all combined are above the market rate of rents.
its not a guarantee of perfect profit, just take a look at all the buy-to-rent people now selling-to-dispose of assets due to market downturn and inflation of maintenance costs. interest rates, taxes, state requirements
As a matter of fact, it is not advisable to save a large amount in the bank unless the purpose of your depositing money in them is savings & investment type. The interest you get from the money you put in the bank is very low, so it's okay to save there if it's for an emergency fund or monthly expenses. It's even better if you can find an investment with a good return and can double up your initial money that you've invest, you can take a risk for that.
investments are not meant for the large amount, nor the long term. its small amounts for short term emergency
for instance. lets say you had saved a months incidentals.. then you would stop inputting your income excess into savings. and put the income excess into investments.
if you then had a medical emergency which later came to a huge bill.. instead of panic selling investment assets to pay the large medical bill. usually selling assets at a bad time, thus at a loss.. you would instead arrange a payment plan with the medical institution. by which the payments initially are affordable to use the rescue(savings) to cover 1+ payment. to buffer you and save you from the panic. to then organise peacefully and effectively how to dip into investments to pay down the bill over months.. rather then rash decisions in days of incident
The money you save today will depreciate tomorrow and become cheaper. It is very not practical to save money for the future in the form of money. The value of money should be converted into something else: something more liquid in the short term, and something less liquid and profitable in the long term.
yep savings for short term small needs. investment for long term future needs. dont worry about inflation in regards to savings. the small amount of say $1000 even at 5% inflation is only $50 spread over a year is only $4 a month.. thus not something that will break the bank compared to putting $500 excess initially in savings for a couple months and then $496 excess going into investments per month