How much do you have in your emergency pot?

Me & DH earn about £80 grand between us high rent in SE, 1 DC. We have about 5 grand in savings, 2 grand cash in a safe at home, nearly £400 in bank reward account although decided that money will go on DDs new bed/desk for bday coming. Currently only have 2 car payments left 🥳so that’s nearly £300 extra will have & in Feb & March will have about £700 extra from 2x council tax staying the current account - which needs building up a bit.

Single income household, middle income and supporting DC at Uni. I have around 5k tucked away that I never touch it is my security blanket. I am trying hard (it is a struggle) to add £400 a month to it as I want to ge my mortgage paid off in 12 years when I am 60. I am having to make big sacrifices though (no luxuries, no holidays, watching the food budget). Once DC is out of Uni things will improve.

Im so glad im not alone! We sold a newbuild as this was our dream. I have so much regret. I hope we can start squirreling away in about 6 months but we wont have any savings sufficient enough if anybody lost their jobs. My husband would find work quickly again but it would be harder for me, who has to factor in childcare etc.

Just got 5 more years of it! Thanks for being kind x

Im so glad im not alone! We sold a newbuild as this was our dream. I have so much regret. I hope we can start squirreling away in about 6 months but we wont have any savings sufficient enough if anybody lost their jobs. My husband would find work quickly again but it would be harder for me, who has to factor in childcare etc.

Just got 5 more years of it! Thanks for being kind x

2.5k as a single parent of 2 who are 8 and 5.
Was 3k until recently but i had to dig into it for a necessary house repair.
I also have 11k of debt so working on paying that down before adding much more to it. Although I do often panic about what if I ended up really unwell etc, but I guess that's life.

I received an inheritance which enabled me to buy my home two years ago, I didn’t put everything into the deposit and chose to have a bigger mortgage and keep back £10,000 for emergencies or any house repairs. I’m at about £8000 now as I’ve dipped into it a few times and although I have paid back in I then seem to need it again before I can build it back fully. I’m single, a teacher and would say I’m on a middle income (£40,000) but no dependants (other than pets!) and I don’t really spend on any luxuries.

Are you me?

We also bought a fixer upper. Same income as you pretty much. Had to get a 30k loan for essential work (heating, roof etc) which we are currently trying to pay off. Have a few hundred in savings and £700 on a credit card.

Cant sell as probably in negative equity due to the market and house not being finished.

Wish I had bought a new build!!!

I hear ya!

Absolutely 0. Husband earns nearly 50k, me 20k but we have 2 children ( 4 and 9) so im part time (26 hours)as he works away and I do everything. And I mean, everything.

Reason for being so hard up -we are up to eyeballs in debt. We downsized last year and bought a fixer upper. Biggest regret of my life. Have ended up taking on 45k in debt for the works ,(not the original plan but here we are,). This is added to joint debt of about 30k (bank loans no credit cards)We are currently living in a caravan on the drive.

We have enough to live off but no spare cash. Hoping neither of us gets fired/ made redundant in the next 4 years or are screwed.

My mouth dries up when I think about it. We have enough disposable income to pay for a mid sized unexpected bill, say up to £300 but that would skint us for the month. Anything worse than that it's a lot of robbing peter to pay paul/ temp use of credit card

Posted to show support. Anyone else been here and it was ok in the end?

Just over £2.5k but now have to spend almost £4k on something unplanned so the difference will have to go on cc

Neo - that’s interesting. I envy you, though. Private education in the UK has gone through the roof. I would say it’s getting beyond the reach of middle class professionals now. It starts at about 30K in the SE and as for top schools…it’s ridiculous. I only mention it because friends in Oz have said their kids are at private school and I was baffled as to how they managed it.

(Misses point of thread…sorry!)

Not enough. I think the issue is big things that come up. We currently need a new bathroom after discovering a leak. Not something we would have predicted.

We have a few sinking funds for things like car insurance, Christmas etc so can dip into that for an emergency. Next year we are going to work at building up a bit of an emergency fund. We do also have a credit card that we can use for emergencies if needed.

Both earn about 40k each, two kids in primary school, one car. I’m saving hard at the moment to try and get a buffer, I’m trying to save £300 and month and husband the same. no holiday next year to try to achieve that. Currently have £2500 and husband has about £4000. Id really like to get £10,000 saved between us before we can relax it a little, so I think being frugal this next year will do it. We have an interest free kitchen loan, small amount in credit cards <£500

For lower/mid earners, it's important to build up available credit, as much as savings. There are weekly boiler schemes and even garages offer repayment schemes (via a third party). For the people who I know savings tend to be between £1-3k. They use interest free credit and book holiday etc a year in advance and pay it monthly etc.

I have zero savings yet but in a true emergency I have sufficient credit id be able to get a loan or card of some type.
I also have family members who can temporarily help me out if needs be.

If your mortgage rate is very low, you need to stop overpaying right now and save the money instead. You're potentially throwing away thousands in lost interest.

We have several thousand put aside for Christmas, rainy days, holiday, saving for a new car. We overpay the mortgage the maximum we're allowed each month as our mortgage rate is very low. If things became tight, we'd stop overpaying for a while.

Not necessarily. Plenty of people have no savings because they spend all their money, including on non essentials.

Or they over pay their mortgage or make expensive choices for house, home improvements, car etc.

Often it's little differences in spending choices that mean having savings or not, such as if you have a spare £50 and choose to save it and have beans on toast for tea vs get a takeaway. Do that once a month and you've got £500+ saved after a year.

Just under £5k in a MoneyFarm account that I put a few hundred in every other month or so. Credit card with £18k limit that I don’t use.

We have a house that needs a lot of work, so it’s savings for that rather than emergencies.

We have £3.5k. £1k of that is untouchable, unless a dire emergency (death, not out of work). The rest is ideally saved but available for general emergency.

I have 2 kids and a disabled non working partner. I do feel the weight of financial responsibility for them, but looking after everyone is restrictive to well paid employment. I wish I had more emergency cash, but I'm not unhappy with what I've managed to save just in case.

I’m a single parent on low income and have £1400 in one of those help to save accounts for people on UC but try not to touch it so I can get the maximum bonus.

0 emergencies end up on credit card or loans, making the ability to save even further away.

£0

When we were in your position we bounced along using a 0% credit card. Would pay it off before the interest kicked in, but then need to use it again. We earn more now so things are a lot easier but for around 7 years we were financially on tenterhooks 😅

We have minus around £25k. Savings are for the privileged.