Saving in Gold and Silver Monthly: How It Works and Costs

Saving in gold or silver monthly means you pay in a small amount every month and a provider uses it to buy physical metal and store it for you. You build up precious metals gradually, without a large one-off sum, and pay the average price of the period rather than the price of a single day.

Since 2000, gold has gained about 10% a year on average in euros, well above inflation, and it was up over every 10-year period. In crisis years, when shares fell, it usually gained. That makes it a sensible part of long-term savings that protects the value of your money. Below is how monthly saving works, what it costs, what is different with silver and what to watch out for.

What a monthly amount in gold or silver would have returned at historical prices can be worked out in the gold and silver calculator.

How it works

You open a savings plan with a provider and choose an amount, for example €50 or €100 a month. On an agreed schedule, the provider uses each payment to buy metal at the current spot price plus a premium and credits you with the matching fraction of a gram. The metal is usually held as larger bars in the provider’s vault, and you own your share.

The amount is not locked in. With most providers you can raise or lower your payment or skip a month at any time, stop the plan, sell the metal back to the provider or ask for physical delivery. Before you start, check the minimum payment and whether the provider charges for changes.

Why gold for the long term: what the data shows

Gold pays no interest, so its role differs from a deposit or shares: it preserves the value of money over longer periods and protects savings when other investments struggle. The data since 2000 bears this out.

For comparison, inflation in the euro area averaged around 2% a year over the same period. Gold also gained in years when other markets fell: 11.9% in 2008 during the financial crisis, 13.8% in 2011 during the euro debt crisis, 14.2% in 2020 during the pandemic, and 6.0% in 2022, when shares and bonds lost value at the same time.

So the risk is mainly short term. In a single year the price can fall by a fifth or more, but over the long run gold has proved itself time and again. History is no guarantee, though: between 1980 and 2000 gold lost value for a long time. That is why gold makes sense as savings for 10 years or more, not as money you will need soon.

Why monthly: the average price in practice

Because you buy every month, you get more metal when the price is low and less when it is high. You avoid having to decide whether now is the right moment to buy. With gold and silver this matters more than it may seem, because prices do not just swing for a few weeks; they can fall for years.

The largest fall in the euro gold price since 2000 began in autumn 2012. By January 2014 an ounce had lost 35% of its value, and it only returned to its October 2012 level in September 2019, almost seven years later.

What would have happened to a saver who started paying €100 a month into gold in exactly October 2012 and kept going until the end of 2015? They would have paid in €3,900 at an average cost of €1,035 an ounce, well below the €1,383 an ounce cost at the start. At the end of 2015 their gold would have been worth €3,780, just 3% less than they paid in. Someone who invested the same amount in one go in October 2012 would have had only €2,831 at the end of 2015, 27% less. The calculation ignores costs, but it shows why buying monthly hurts less if you start at a bad moment.

Averaging does not mean you cannot lose. If the price falls for years and stays low at the end, a monthly saver will also be down. What it does reduce is the risk of buying everything at the top.

Pros and cons

What gold costs

Monthly savings in physical gold have three main costs:

• Premium on purchase. The provider buys gold at the spot price and adds a premium. For monthly plans this is often a few percent, falling for larger amounts. For comparison: if you buy a 100 g bar yourself, you pay roughly 1 to 3% over spot, and 10% or more for 1 g minibars. Premiums are covered in more detail in the article on buying investment gold.
• Storage. An insured vault usually costs from a few tenths of a percent to around 1% of the gold’s value a year.
• Buyback price. When you sell, the provider buys the gold back slightly below spot.

You pay the premium once, when you buy, and storage every year. Over a short period the premium matters most; over a long one, storage adds up too. When comparing providers, do not look at a single number but at all three together over the period you plan to save.

In Slovenia, investment gold is exempt from VAT and gains on sale are not taxed for private individuals. That is an important difference from a gold ETF or ETC, where gains are taxed until the investment is 15 years old. Taxes and costs are compared in the article physical gold or a gold ETF.

What is different with silver

Silver is cheaper than gold and in past rallies it rose faster, but it also fell harder. For saving, there are three important differences:

• VAT. Silver is not exempt from VAT in Slovenia. When you buy silver bars or coins at home you pay 22% VAT, which you do not get back when you sell. So the silver price has to rise by more than a fifth before you break even. That is why some providers keep silver in a duty-free warehouse in Switzerland, where no VAT is charged while it stays there. You pay it if you take delivery.
• Higher premiums. Silver is far bulkier for its value and costlier to process, so premiums on smaller amounts are often 10% or more.
• Dearer storage. For the same value, silver takes up more than 100 times as much space as gold, so the yearly storage cost is higher too, often 1 to 2% of the value.

Silver therefore suits people who want it as a smaller addition to gold and are ready for bigger swings. How gold and silver behaved in the past is explained in the article on gold and silver as an alternative investment.

Example: €100 a month for 10 years

What would 120 monthly payments of €100, from October 2016 to September 2026, a total of €12,000, have become? The calculation uses actual historical prices in euros, the same as the gold and silver calculator, and the value at the end of September 2026.

Gold - we compared four approaches:

• No costs: gold at spot, a theoretical upper limit.
• Monthly savings plan: 8% premium, storage 0.75% a year, buyback 1% below spot.
• Buying by the ounce: you save the money yourself and buy a 1 oz coin or bar when you have enough. 3% premium, kept at home, sold 2% below spot.
• Gold ETC: 0.25% annual costs, tax on the gain on the Slovenian scale for each purchase separately.

All three realistic approaches ended up close together. Buying by the ounce left €3,017 in cash not yet invested, because an ounce costs several thousand euros, and the gold sat at home uninsured. The ETC had the lowest costs, but paid around €3,500 in tax, because every purchase was younger than 15 years. The monthly plan had the highest purchase costs, but all the money was invested each month, the gold was insured and the gain was tax-free.

Silver - a monthly plan with a premium falling from 18% to 9% as payments add up, storage of about 1.7% a year and buyback 2% below spot, compared with a silver ETC with 0.4% annual costs:

With silver, the higher premiums and dearer storage took more than with gold, so the ETC came out about €2,000 ahead despite the tax. Physical silver has the edge mainly if you want to own it or hold it for more than 15 years, when an ETC gain would be tax-free anyway.

Past returns do not guarantee future ones. The period in the example was exceptionally good for both metals, so the calculation does not mean the future will be the same. You can test your own amounts and periods in the gold and silver calculator, and compare gold and silver with a deposit and an ETF in the gold, ETF and deposit comparison.

What happens if the provider goes bust

This is the most important question for any metal you do not keep yourself. The answer depends on how the metal is held.

• Allocated metal is physically identified and held as your property, separate from the provider’s assets. If the provider fails, it is as a rule not part of its bankruptcy estate and you get it back.
• Unallocated metal is only a claim against the provider. The provider owes you a certain amount of metal, and in bankruptcy you are just one of its creditors.

So check whether the contract states clearly that the metal is your property, whether the vault holds at least as much metal as has been credited to all savers together, who checks this, and how the metal is insured.

How to sell or withdraw your metal

When you need money, you sell all or part of your metal back to the provider at the buyback price and get the money in your bank account. Because you own a share of a larger bar, you can sell just part of it, for example as many grams as you need.

You can also ask for physical delivery. You usually pay for transport, insurance and administration yourself, and for silver VAT on top. Delivery therefore makes sense mainly for larger amounts. If you plan to keep metal at home, it is often cheaper to buy bars or coins directly.

What to check when choosing a provider

• Ownership: the metal must be physically yours and kept separate from the provider’s assets, not just a claim against them.
• Storage: where the metal is kept, who insures it and up to what value.
• Premium: how large it is and how it falls with larger amounts.
• Buyback: at what price the provider buys the metal back and how quickly you get the money.
• Stopping and delivery: whether you can stop at any time without cost and what physical delivery costs.

Monthly buying does not help if you stop at the first price drop: it is the purchases at low prices that bring the average down. Gold and silver are insurance for bad times, so they should be a small part of your savings, not a replacement for investing in funds or an emergency fund.

Example provider: Elementum

Elementum is a FinPortal.si partner: we work with them through their ambassador programme.

In Slovenia, monthly savings in physical gold are offered by Elementum with its Aurora plan. Under the terms published at the time of writing (October 2026), the minimum payment is €25, the premium over spot is at most 8% and falls to 4.25% for larger amounts, and storage with full-value insurance costs from 0.0625% to 0.0333% of the value a month. Elementum buys gold every week as 100-gram bars of 999.9 fineness and keeps it in a vault at Zurich Airport. It buys the gold back 1% below spot, and you can stop the plan at any time at no extra cost.

For silver, Elementum has a separate plan, Argentum Excellence, which keeps silver in a duty-free warehouse in Switzerland, so no VAT is charged until you take delivery. It also offers one-off purchases of gold and silver and plans for children and family wealth, which we will cover separately. Check the current terms with the provider.

In short

1. Since 2000, gold has grown by about 10% a year in euros and was up over every 10-year period.
2. Saving monthly frees you from deciding when to buy and works with small amounts.
3. For gold, the main costs are the premium, storage and the buyback price, and investment gold is VAT-free.
4. Silver has higher premiums and storage costs, and at home you also pay 22% VAT.
5. For gold, the 10-year result was close to buying by the ounce or through an ETC after tax; for silver, the ETC came out ahead.
6. Check that the metal is your property and kept separate from the provider’s assets.
7. Gold and silver make the most sense as a long-term part of your savings, for 10 years or more.

This article is for information only and is not investment advice. FinPortal.si works with Elementum as an ambassador. Precious metal prices can swing for years, so always check providers’ terms before deciding.