I moved out of my parents's house a couple weeks ago. I moved into an apartment in a big city and I am not sure yet if I will like it here or not. I have no idea when I'll switch to a house and if it will be around the same place.
For now, my apartment has a one year contract so I'm here for at least a year.
I've been looking to start investments, saving up for a house. I started a retirement fund.
(I don't know if that's the right word, but what I refer to as "guaranteed investment" is my crude translation of a french word for an account that gives you a higher interest rate in exchange for locking your funds away for a certain time. The longer you lock it, the higher the interest rate when the time is up)
I'm very interested in this kind of account because getting 2.5-3.5% interest is much better than the usual 1.25% I get for normal accounts. I'm not sure how liberal I should be with locking away funds if I don't know when I'll need to take out as much money as possible for a down payment on a house.
So the question is: How comfortable should I be with investing money like this? If I decide to buy the house 1 year before the term is up, how much money will I lose in interest by having a smaller down payment because of that? Would it still be worth it?