INFLATION
Is it safe to keep my savings in a savings account?
Alpa kept ₹8 lakh in a savings account for fourteen years and called it her safe money. She never lost a rupee, and she lost nearly half of it.
THE SHORT ANSWER
A savings account protects the number, not the value. At around 3% interest against 5-6% inflation, money in a savings account loses roughly 2-3% of its purchasing power every year. That is fine for an emergency fund you might need next week and expensive for money you will not touch for a decade.
Losing money without losing money
Jinesha's mother, Alpa, kept savings of ₹8 lakh in a plain savings account for fourteen years. She called it her safe money, and in one sense she was right. The balance never fell. No market crash touched it, no scheme failed, nothing went wrong.
When Jinesha checked in 2024, inflation had quietly reduced its purchasing power to roughly ₹4.2 lakh in real terms. Alpa had not lost a single rupee. She had lost about half of what those rupees could buy.
Why it feels safe when it isn't
Risk, as most people experience it, means seeing a number go down. A savings account never does that, so it registers as safe. Inflation does its work without ever showing you a falling balance, which makes it the one financial risk almost nobody reacts to emotionally.
The rough arithmetic: at 3% interest and 5.5% inflation, money halves in purchasing power in about twenty-eight years. At larger gaps it happens faster. Nothing about that appears on a statement.
What women are actually doing about it
A lot, as it turns out. The AMFI-Crisil Factbook 2026 shows women's mutual fund assets grew from ₹5.84 lakh crore in March 2021 to ₹15.88 lakh crore in March 2026. Women now hold 34.5% of individual investor assets while being 26.4% of the investor base, which means women who do invest tend to invest larger amounts.
The shift within those portfolios is sharper still. Equity-oriented schemes went from 49% of women's mutual fund holdings in March 2021 to 64% in March 2026. Among women under 25 the figure is 88.3%.
The sorting question
The useful question is not whether a savings account is safe. It is what each pile of money is for.
Money you might need this month belongs in a savings account and the inflation cost is the price of instant access. Money for something two or three years away belongs somewhere that at least matches inflation. Money you will not touch for ten years or more sitting in a savings account is not caution, it is a slow and invisible loss.
ONE MOVE THIS WEEK
Find the oldest untouched balance in your accounts and ask what it is for. If the answer is more than five years away, it is in the wrong place.
