To ask how much you have saved/aim to have saved for your child when they reach 18?

We saved for a long time and were able to put aside a nice little sum for their 18th birthdays

its in premium bonds and they haven’t spent it yet

it can be very hard to save, we were lucky

There’s a limit to who can claim so nobody is
claiming it who is excessively wealthy, maybe they just manage their money better.

They will each have about £1200 each at 18. It's the best I can do.

I know, fingers crossed the market does not crash when they get to 18!

It would have been more, but it lost £5k over covid, which it's only just made back now.

I don't save for them. I spend money, I could otherwise save, every month having them in clubs/activities.

We don’t yet have children as I’m only 25 but we’re TTC and have about £4K set aside for things they’ll need separate to general house/holiday/emergency funds. If we’re lucky enough to have a child we will then put £150 a month away to start and then reconsider with any salary increase/decrease. I got nothing from my parents so this is really important for me.

I saved enough to pay there uni fees and ensured they both had skills/training/work ethic so worked from 13 and saved a lot themselves to cover living costs. This is representative of my families cultural atitude to debt rather than because we are rich.

That’s… controversial..
If I give a child money and half of it goes on the parents mortgage I wouldn’t be best pleased , a savings account yes, great idea, but the parents mortgage? The child won’t benefit for years, if at all.

£30k for dd 18. We lived overseas for a long time and relatives put money in her bank account instead of buying gifts. She was also very lucky that one of dh’s relatives gave her £3k every other year for about 6 years until he died.
we invested in trackers for her so quite a decent return.

Ours will be around £15k each but if they blow it on BS stuff I will kill them! We have separate money that could go to Uni fees.
Me and DW both WC, scholarships to Uni, decent jobs now. Neither of us had a penny from family at 18 or anything saved for us.

I worked almost FT the whole way through Uni in hospitality, night shifts, bar work, early starts, chamber maiding, the lot.
I want our kids to work, but not 40 hrs a week the way I had to and we’re lucky enough to be able to spare the money to put away for them now.

Nothing, I've never earned enough.

I really like this .

I didn’t say we didn’t need it, we’re cut corners so I can save for my child’s future

I have an 8 year old.

When she was a few months old, we opened a junior ISA and a junior savings account, both with £300 each gift money we received when she was born.
Both accounts have a DD set up from our own accounts (1 each) and we pay in £20 per month.

One account is currently at £2400 and the other is £2300 ish.
I was hoping for £5k in each by the time she is 18

She gets a lot of birthday/ Christmas money and she is allowed 50% to spend on what she wants and the other 50% I make an extra mortgage payment

I wonder whether the giver knows that £ meant for your daughter is being spent on your mortgage.

Friends seem to already have 5-10k!! This is not possible for us. Is this the norm to save so much?

Norm for whom?
I have never discussed how much I have saved for my children with my friends. What would be the point? We might discuss financial issues in broad terms (e.g. student finances, tax free savings, the best car insurance for a new driver etc), but actual amounts.

Nothing! We’ve been saving to buy a house

Overpaying your mortgage does not always make the most financial sense, you realise? You should at least have an emergency fund/some decent savings before you tie up all your cash in a non liquid asset. You should also consider the rate of interest on your savings account options against your mortgage interest rate plus the impact of inflation.

I can't fathom the obsession with overpaying a mortgage.

I tried to save all of my Child Benefit but there were months when I couldn't do that.

DS got the money last year, £14.5k.

He's spent half of it buying a car and his first years insurance and put the rest in Premium Bonds. All that saving doesn't really go a long way 🤦🏻‍♀️

DS has his own account in the credit union, money he has been given as gifts goes there. He has about €1k

I also have a savings account for him. BUT it is in my name. I put €150 p/month into it. I am saving towards his college costs. Again though it is in my name not his. Should the worst happen and I need that money to keep a roof over our head or something enormously serious I will spend it

Controversial but if you don't actually need it I don't think you should claim it.

This. As I said above, I had nothing, four of my five went to university totally self-supporting. They got full loans and jobs and all finished with decent degrees.

If you are very well off then maybe you may be expected to contribute, and with each passing year (my last child finished uni 7 years ago) it gets worse and harder, but they can do it on loans and with working. Yes, they have to pay those loans off, but they manage.

C’mon now, let’s get some perspective here. Shameful is a strong word. It should be reserved for truly bad people, not a parent who’s acting in the best interests of her daughter. It’s not like she’s spending the money on cheap beer and cigarettes; she’s overpaying the mortgage/reducing interest that she’s paying the bank, which in the long run will only serve to benefit her family/daughter. She can then use the disposable income that comes from not having to finance a mortgage to pay for car, university, flat/house deposit, or whatever she’s financially able to do for her daughter. Hardly crime of the century behaviour.

Nothing, I don't have spare money I can save. It's all spoken for.

Fuck me, this isn't real surely. It's basically theft. I'd feel so guilty taking my child's birthday money to pay regular bills unless I was absolutely on the bones of my arse and using it to overpay your mortgage is not that. I let my dd spend 50% of birthday money on whatever she wants and the rest goes into her savings. If she wanted to use it to have a bender in Bali so be it. Life us all about having experiences like that and it's HER money