To think it’s very bleak to be saving this and getting absolutely nowhere? What’s the point?

You are financially secure by any metric - you have truly disposable income (savings) over and above your necessities. Yes sometimes stuff comes up you need to pay for and yes sometimes your necessities will get more expensive (insurance has gone up for everyone). Yet you can easily cover those those things. I don’t understand why that doesn’t provide the “comfort” you talk about? And there’s no reason why you can’t go on holiday - pay for it monthly if you don’t want to pay all upfront. Life is too damn short for you to have this level of anxiety over having more disposable income than many earn each month.

I'm sorry but are you for real?

You own a property.

You manage to save £1500 a month.

You've managed to pay a bunch of big bills from said savings no problem. You can now continue to put away £1500 a month.

You want to save for a 'buffer' so you can continue to pay your mortgage without working??

How is it that you can't afford to go on holiday?

How much in debt would you be if you didn't save ?

Stuff like the boiler is an investment which should last you 10-20 years.

No, they don't have it hard, but their money doesn't go as far as it did 5, 6 years ago and it takes time for that to sink in.

You’re missing the point. If OP was just venting about unexpected costs arising, people would have sympathy.

But it’s the whinging and self-pitying along with the assertion that everyone else manages to save £1500 a month (and presumably nobody else ever needs a new boiler or root canal treatment) and she’s the only person who can’t manage to save £18K a year, that gets people’s backs up. It’s pure victim mentality, when in actual fact she’s more financially secure than the vast majority of the working population given that she can save 7.5 times the average.

You should feel really proud that you could take the hit on all those unexpected one off costs, well done.

In my house, at least some of those would have had to go on a credit card. Rather boringly, savings are often for the shit stuff. Your saving have done their job and kept you out of debt.

Don’t give up, you’re doing things right.

It's RBS/natwest "adventurous investor" fund, in an ISA wrapper. Has performed really well over past 18 months, much better than standard savings account. Of course, past performance no guarantee of future performance!

@Hello2025helloworld
interested to know what you are invested in and how you made the decision to buy those products?

Your savings is s contingency fund: it’s very much needed. It might be one year is quiet and you can use the money for something else.
You can get some extra qualifications and earn more money that way?

This is a good article on how hard it is to reach the first savings milestone but then it gets easier because compound interest starts to work for you. The follow-on article also looks at how much quicker it is to reach subsequent milestones.

fourpillarfreedom.com/charlie-munger-the-first-100000-is-a-btch/

Have you looked at stocks and shares ISA as a savings vehicle, which can attract much higher returns than a savings account. Eg my stocks and shares ISA currently grows at 10% per year, compared to approx 4% on savings accounts. Gains are tax exempt because it's an ISA.

Wowser. 2 income family. Both on good wages. 2 kids. We would never be able to save 1.5k a month! You are doing better than a lot of people

It will take time and there will be setbacks you just have to stick with the plan you have made. Sounds like you hit a plateau just now.

People with quite modest incomes do end up leaving large sums when they pass because of habitual saving. Compound interest is your friend. You should get at least £400 over a year, if you can manage to save £10,000, to be compounded next year and so on

We replaced our boiler with interest free credit so it didn't wipe out the savings,which are nowhere near as much as yours.
Your tree work is a one off so let it go.

That’s a very regressive attitude. Why do you want to pull people down who want to better themselves.

This is what’s wrong with the country. Anyone who isn’t living on the breadline is not allowed to want more. Crabs in a bucket.

^ this ^
Savings take time to build up - you'll get there in say 5 years.

If you save £500 per month over 5 years, that's £30k saved - actually more because of interest etc.

Reads that way, eh?

Maybe so, However someone who manages to save £1500 each and every month doesn’t really have it hard.

I imagine a lot of replies on here have been tempered. We think one thing, everyone has been very polite,so we bite our tongues. Me personally, I wouldn't "save" with a mortgage. Any excess money would be going to that. This is because I have been made homeless twice through no fault of my own (long story ex H) almost a third time, I worked ft plus extra jobs as well, always 2 sometimes 4 just to keep a roof over our head. People think boomers were lucky, the mortgage rate in the 80s went from 12-16,% in 18 months,there was a limit then to how many years you could add on,so 3 nursing jobs and a cleaning job. After 2 years of pain, I was forced to go private. Goodbye,"savings". I have 2 disabled sons,in their 40s, that's unfortunate, I am carer for the youngest. I help them out financially. They are really going to be struggling at the moment, with temperatures well below freezing. I 100%, agree with other posters,it's your mindset that needs re-addressing.

OP I've felt the same. The thing is, those with considerable savings have been working on it for decades - it's not instant! I would say split up your savings - £500 for emergencies/short term, £500 holidays, £500 long term goals. Life is too short (and unpredictable!) to throw everything into long term savings just to have a bigger 'pot'.

Most people can't save that much a month. Even £50 is impossible for some. You need to get some perspective.

I feel you, I have a similar thread going on here somewhere, but I can only save half of what you do, and that is with an awful amount of scrimping along the way.

I have had the misfortune of a new boiler this week, too, which has wiped all my savings meant for a rewire, so that won't be happening this year.

It's frustrating to see it all go, given how long it takes to save up.

All I can recommend are separate savings pots that you treat as though the money isn't there - I have one for the car, one for the house and one for special occasions, including holidays. Sometimes I do have to dip into those as emergency funds when I am absolutely broke, but that happens maybe every 4-5 months. Also look into insurance, especially dental.

I'm another one who segregates my savings.

I get it OP, in the sense that it's very annoying when you have to spend savings on things to return you to your original position rather than to improve your position. But this is one things where you really need time to keep passing so that things average out.

I have my savings divvied up: £200ish short term (car repairs, insurance, any annual bills). Then £200 goes to my holiday fund - uncommitted (when I book s holiday I then move it to committed), then £400 goes to medium term (on the assumption this will need extracting at some point to pay for a new car or boiler etc) and then the rest goes into unspecified long term savings which I'll draw down if I move house or something but otherwise don't touch.

In terms of feeling similar, I had a tense set of months last year where I had just absolutely rinsed all my savings because I was (very luckily) just about able to pay the mortgage off. Did that, then had a flood in the kitchen so needed new lino the. Not worth putting through insurance but figured I'd get the rest of the house done while I was at it (2.5k - obviously mainly an optional spend). Then after I'd committed to that I had a roof leak. Scaffolding required, various layers of fixing. That was another 4.5k. Then my washing machine gave up so that was another £400 and then my boiler decided it didn't like me, another £400. All in all it was about £8k of expenses within a 3 month period. I was juggling things to manage my cash flow without liquidating my longer term stuff. It's no fun at all.

BUT - I was juggling things to sniff liquidating my longer term stuff. I HAD longer term stuff to liquidate. I did do the juggling. My house is warm and dry and it's not all on a credit card. One in six workers are skipping meals to make ends meet according to an article I read yesterday. I am supremely privileged. I can hold those two feelings simultaneously but I feel massively better when I focus on the latter rather than the former.

Now, a year later, (touch wood) not much else has gone wrong. Those savings are starting to look like genuine buffers again. In a couple of years I'll get to the point where I can stop adding to things like my medium term until they get depleted again. Things don't go wrong on an evenly spread basis. I'll get a bit of peace and then some costs. But I factor in some fun up front, I save for the things that go wrong as well as the future and I do regularly remind myself how lucky I am.

It's okay to feel annoyed and frustrated but there comes a point where those feelings don't serve you. If they aren't, sometimes focusing on what we do have, rather than what we don't, can lead to an overall greater feeling of wellbeing.

Having the savings to pay for all your unexpected outgoings should be a source of huge relief - many couples (or singles) would be having sleepless nights over the boiler alone. That's what a savings buffer is for.
Keep saving £1500 a month and some years you won't need all of it.
Many, many people do not have any savings at all - the MN 18 months cash savings is the ideal but so is World Peace and universal prosperity. Pie in the Sky.

Most of us are living in a no frills economy these days, not all of us but a great many of us.

No frills means no holiday, no big treats for ourselves, always saving whatever we can to pay for the unexpected.

It's all most of us can do to pay the bills each month, and there's always the specter of the washing machine breaking down, the car that needs to be fixed, the insurance that went up and, no surprise, everything IS going up.

I know what it's like to put aside a decent amount of money and feel really good and secure about it, but I also know what it feels like to see that money disappear right in front of my eyes on a trip to the dentist, having to buy new glasses, or a repair that wasn't anticipated.

Unfortunately that's life and I think too many people are taking too much notice of people around them that aren't in the same situation as them financially, or they're spending beyond their means so give the appearance that they have more money to do things with.

You sound like you're a sensible person.
It is costly to maintain a home, a vehicle, a child, and especially in today's economy with prices for goods and services going up and everywhere you look, poor value for your hard-earned money.

Keep your eye on the ball, don't expect many treats to come your way, appreciate the little things in life, and take pride in being able to rise to the challenge of keeping your head above water, and yourself out of debt.

You can do it, you've already proven that you're able to, you're doing very well.