To be worried about not having savings............

[primitivemom]

We don't have any savings ( trying to build a nest egg at the moment) and i worry about what would happen if my dh lost his job ie paying the mortgage debts etc. We have quite a lot of outgoings and just about manage but if the worst should happen , i think we would be pretty much in the shit. Im disabled so cant work so we rely on dh salary to keep us. Does anyone else feel like this or is anyone building some sort of nest egg at the moment?

[BadLad]

I agree with you. I would panic if I didn't have savings, and I'm amazed that people don't make having a savings cushion a priority.

[Orda1]

We've just bought a house and are making expensive adjustments. After that we will probably have around 10k savings which makes me itch, will build them up again as soon as we can.

[OurBlanche]

YABU to worry about it. That just makes you feel shit.

Many moons ago we were financially wobbly, managed to get to the end of the month, but only just. It was the days before the internet and lovely

www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/which-saving-account

and

www.moneysavingexpert.com/banking/Budget-planning

I started with a jingle jar. Pennies, 2ps, 5ps... all went into the jar. Every now and then I took it and weighed it in at the bank - you could do that back then. These days (30 years later and I still have a jingle jar) I take it to the supermarket and pour it into the self service till - make sure it is a pour in one It means that I get a free shop every 6 months or so.

Later, when we were a bit more stable, I added a PEP/ISA at £10 per month. That was increased over the following 25 years, as we could afford it.

I don't think you need to copy that, but I wanted to show that savings can start with pennies and be very effective, you only need to be persistent

Have a look at the links and see if there is anywhere you can squeeze even the smallest amount of cash into paying off more debt/savings.

Good luck

[Sparklycat]

I have never had savings, I never have the extra income to put any aside. I hope one day we could save but for the foreseeable future we can't.

[gincamelbak]

I worry about not having enough in savings. I've just returned from maternity leave and decided that I need to save. I can afford £80 a month which will give me roughly £1,000 in a year. I will record how much extra or less I save each month. Recording it makes me realise how much or little I have saved.

I also used to save £2 coins. That's a Money Saving Expert trick - I don't get them very frequently in change etc so if I do get them then I s put them in a separate part of my purse and then in a coin bag. The last time I did this I managed to save around £200 in six months. I used it for christmas presents!

[Redglitter]

BadLad Paying bills is a priority having a savings cushion is a luxury many of us can't afford

[Samantha28]

Good advice from Blanche

[BadLad]

Sure. But if any of the people in that situation have children, then their way of thinking is one I just don't understand, because I would never take on the financial commitment of having a child unless I had a savings cushion.

I'd find it worrying enough to be struggling to make ends meet if I were on my own, let alone if I had dependants.

[MummaV]

I worry about this quite a lot. Since I have lived independently/with DH we have lived hand to mouth every single month, we earn just enough to cover our outgoings and have a small amount to have a bottle of wine/a trip to the cinema once a month. Having DD last year terrified me as maternity pay was a drastic reduction to our income but we coped without any savings. I'm returning to work later this week for not much more than maternity pay and will somehow have to continue to manage on this for the forseeable. The chances of building up any savings in the next 10 years seems completely unattainable.

YANBU to worry about not having any savings however sometimes situations do not allow savings. If you can put away anything, even pennies do so. It does add up over time.

[StarlingMurmuration]

We've just wiped out our savings following a year of maternity leave for me, and by buying a new, much bigger house. It's making me pretty anxious - after having over £170k sitting the bank, we're going to be down to our last couple of grand (I know that we're still in a privileged position to be able to say that, by the way). Anyway, as one way of tackling this less secure state of affairs, we're taking out life and income insurance alongside our mortgage, so at least if one of us dies or lose our job, the house will be safe. Could you afford to do that, OP?

[Sparklycat]

Bad lad I would have had to have left it too late in age to have children if I'd waited until I'd had a substantial amount of savings before ttc. I think saving is easier spending on where you live, I.e if we moved up north we'd be mortgage free and be able to save that large amount of money a month. However we would not move as our families are here.

[TheSecondViola]

But if any of the people in that situation have children, then their way of thinking is one I just don't understand, because I would never take on the financial commitment of having a child unless I had a savings cushion.

Bully for you. But better make it a very large cushion, because things can happen and they can be very expensive and before you know it your savings cushion is gone and you still have the kid(s). And you can't pawn them.

[lexlees]

Well, even if you do have savings and your dh was laid off, you could still exhaust your savings. So having savings or not is one thing but worrying about it is a choice.

You are worrying about something that hasn't happened and something you have little control over. That is borderline neurotic. So yes, YABU for worrying A LOT about it, rather than taking little steps to have savings. @ourblanche has a great idea.

If you don't have debt, then you are actually better off than many other people who have no savings and only debt!

You are worrying about something that I have been through.

We went from having a big house, and £20k of savings through to 22 months of unemployment - we lost ALL our savings and finally had to sell the house (due to imminent foreclosure) - after paying debts - ZERO left over.

Dh was fortunate to get a job just as we found a buyer for the house. We moved cities and had to borrow more money from family to pay deposit for rent and for the move. Because we moved nearer London and rent is so high (50% salary) - we have hardly any ability to save. We are now renting without any foreseeable opportunity to save for a deposit to own a house.

Dh worried about it all the time. He is still worried we have only been able to save £800 in 15 months. Me - I had faith that things would turn out ok. I am a Christian, and my faith just got me through it. I honestly didn't worry about it and still don't. My security is not in cash - I have seen it can be gone in a flash. I have seen all the good worrying has done to dh -what a waste of energy. What will happen will happen whether you worry about it or not.

There are worse things than being poor due to lack of savings. It is uncomfortable and if you have the ability to avoid being poor - great, but if it is unavoidable, at least being poor in the UK is better than many other places I can think of.

[senua]

You may not be able to contribute via a salary but you can still contribute through canny money management. Do you shop around for the best utility prices, the best bank accounts, etc?

I like the idea of putting aside the money that you have gained (eg if you start getting interest on your current account or cashback on a credit card). You never had the money before so you won't miss it now. Put it to one side and see it grow.

[BadLad]

Of course "things can happen". Nobody can anticipate every eventuality. But if you don't have any savings cushion, then you can't cope with any eventuality, and that's the constant worry I wouldn't want. Fine for people who can deal with it, but personally I find the peace of mind of having savings essential.

[JapanNextYear]

I was in this position and I just started putting a little bit away each month, somewhere it was relatively tricky to access - notice account in those days. It started to build up, slowly, but it did make me consider choices of what to buy and spend money on.

I'm now in a much better financial position, mostly luck and an inheritance, but I still put money away each month.

As for being unreasonable about worrying, worrying is probably fairly useless, but looking at moneysavingexpert and other site for tips on how to save money and make things less tight at the end of the month and making sure you are claiming everything you can - probably is quite sensible!

[senua]

If you really are worried about the mortgage, can you get insurance? But make sure that it is sensible insurance that will actually pay out and not weasel over get-out clauses.
I've never had insurance because I don't worry but I know others that do. They know that it is expensive but they like the sense of security.

[Iamnotloobrushphobic]

Bad lad - I find your posts to be quite rude and ignorant about the fact that life can not always be planned for.
We had savings before we had children and then we had a disabled child which is something we could not foresee. I had to give up work to provide care for our child as no suitable childcare exists. Giving up work meant using up our savings, especially as we needed to move to a bigger house which we could adapt to meet our child's needs.

[Badders123]

I can assure you if you waited until you could afford it to get married or have kids, no one would!

but then there would be lots of weak chinned wonders would knocking about -)

[Badders123]

We had savings when we bought this house 4 years ago.
Then EVERYTHING went wrong.
Roof, boiler, kitchen....savings gone.
But on the plus side we are dry and warm.

We are trying to build up some savings but it's difficult. There always seems to be some sort of crisis of something blows up.
AND my children will not stop growing.
I'm going to have to sell a kidney soon to clothe them :)

[SatsukiKusakabe]

Circumstances change though badlad. We had a lot in savings before we had children. Redundancy, increasing costs in an expensive area, expense of moving out of said area in order to give ourselves a chance, mean that from being 'savers' we now are in a different situation.

Savings is still the ideal but it is not achievable at present. It is precisely 'affording children' - keeping them clothed, fed, heated and sheltered, plus small luxuries (for them, not us) that preclude savings at the moment.

[Badders123]

Kids are pesky like that...needing a roof that doesn't leak, or hot water and heating when it's snowing in January (yes. My boiler broke the year of the awful snow and ice...)
I buy cheap clothes as they aren't in them long but it all adds up!
And food! Jesus. My youngest eats on the hour every hour.

[BadLad]

Well, quite. You had savings to use. If you hadn't, you would have been in financial difficulties. Therefore your savings were essential. And therefore my answer to the OP is that she is right to worry about having no savings, as long as that worry motivates her to start saving - if it doesn't then it's just pointless worrying.

[StarlingMurmuration]

When my parents got married, that was exactly the advice their vicar gave them, Badders. Don't wait until you can afford it or you'll never do it. And then my dad got laid off when my mum was 6 months pregnant with my brother, so it's a good job they didn't wait, or they might never have had either of us.

[BarbaraofSeville]

YANBU. We've just spent all our savings on an extension and it makes me feel uneasy to have no savings. Hopefully we can build it up to a comfortable level again over the next year or two.