It’s the same if all our investing is done in 3a (+2nd pillar +potential own home).
It starts to differ if we invest more than the 3a cap and would have invested the money in financial assets anyway, in a taxable account, and are pondering when is the best time to do our 3a contributions. In that case:
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the tax advantage of putting money in the 3a is fixed no matter when it’s done within the year.
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dividends are part of total returns. In a 3a, they’ll only be taxed when the 3a account is retrieved, and at a lower rate. They’ll be subject to witholding tax (so deferred access to them for us) in taxable, along with regular taxes. Capital gains are actually taxed in 3a, when we retrieve the funds, though at a lower rate.
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fees differ between taxable and 3a solutions. 3a should be slightly more expensive. For VIAC, Frankly and Finpension, they’re some variation of a .% of (invested) assets under management, taxable investments can have different fee structures.
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the products available for investing are different between 3a and taxable products.
My own intuitive take (I have made no calculation or informed comparison) is to delay contributing to 3a and first add to taxable, provided I am certain I’ll have the money available when the time for investing into 3a comes. A case could be made for contributing to 3a before dividends season, or according to our asset allocation if we use 3a tax shielding for the more tax subject parts of our portfolio (see the excellent analysis by @Dr.PI here: Splitting the world).
Though good arguments can be made for simple and easy set and forget automatic monthly contributions.