What percentage of your salary do you save?

[NoEffingWaytoSurvive]

I have finally started saving, currently I am putting 10% away each week, but is this enough? I see recommendations for 20% but this would leave me with hardly anything left after bills etc.

( I saved 0% for years, no judgement from me if the lure of a cold beer in the local has won out-I just want to save for wedding/car/holiday etc etc)

Previously I saved %25 but am currently working a lower paid contract thanks Covid so am not really saving properly.

I moved all savings into investments so not sitting in the bank which for the duration of the contract I feel is fine.

I also moved all my visit the uk savings into crypto so have tripled their value which makes me feel better.

Usually though I save as much as I can. As a single parent I am generally pretty frugal.

I do:

25% in my pension
25% in premium bonds (that I can get at if I need to for emergency purposes, but I have never needed to yet)
25% to my tax account (I'm self employed, but this only gets paid if I owe tax, so perhaps 3 months of the year is enough to cover it)
The remaining 25% is mine - so covers my bills and extra spends.

I tend to have two savings pots. One for not touching and another for big costs like school uniforms and school holiday camps etc this is basically my child maintenance from Ds dad.

He is a high earner so pays a reasonable amount which I have in a seperate account for all child related costs as they aren't weekly but more often termly.

it helps when they come around that I can throw money at school holiday camps as I have no family support in the country for holiday care.

50% for early retirement & some on holidays

I’m not sure, I pay less than 10% of my take home pay into my ISA every month but every so often if there’s excess in my current account I transfer a bulk over. Last year I saved about 25% thanks to lockdown!

I save about 50% of my net pay that is paid directly to me each month. Sometimes it’s more. Also have money deducted for pension and shares from gross pay and some further deductions for other shares from net pay before it reaches me. Overall, it’s probably 75%.

Not as much as everyone else!

And i suppose it depends what savings is

We put over 12 % into à pension every month.

We also over pay the mortgage by £100 ish every month.

And i buy 25 punds of premium bonds every pay day.

We would have to change our way of life to save much more

None. 50% of it goes to rent for a start!

Not a set percentage, but I have a rule that I only increase my lifestyle by a fraction of a payrise, after taking two months to enjoy the extra money.

So say I got a payrise of £200/month, I'd spend the £200 extra on fun things in the first two months (usually some significant, long lasting thing to enjoy as a memory).

Then after that I'd add £150 of the extra on my savings standing order and increase my life spend allowance by £50. (I spend back about £500 out of savings a year for leisure, plus things like car insurance etc).

I find this approach helps you gently step up your life and provide medium and long term savings that are very healthy.

I have a decent pension (pay in 10.5% and employers pay in 20%) so I don't worry about long term. Short term savings range from 100 to 50p pounds a month. Some months are more expensive, haircuts, new tyres for the cars, vets bills. I think aiming for at least 10% immediately transferred on payday is a good start.

That percentage thing is a great aim but bollocks if you're in a lower paid job or live in an expensive area. I'm only just managing to save 20% pcm aged almost 40. Rent and then mortgage have always taken up a large proportion of my (average) wage.

20% just now. Interesting as that’s about half my age as a pp said upthread.

Up until this month it’s been 33%. Which will come in handy because as of next month we won’t have an income for a while as DH is taking some time off and I’m not working atm.

Nothing atm but childcare costs are just coming to an end and I'm going to be full time in September so saving the difference! Will be around £200 a month so not quite 10% but I'll save an extra I have left at the end of the month too!

I do save my child benefit but that's for the kids' uniforms/shoes/birthday and Christmas presents!

The half your age thing is for pensions/retirement savings rather than general savings. A general rule of thumb is to halve the age at which you started your pension and then contribute that percentage of your income throughout your career eg start pension at age 21, contribute 10.5% for the rest of your career.
For general savings a percentage based on age is meaningless as it depends what you are saving for! For a wedding you might need quite a lot relative to your age but for a holiday maybe less so.

0%. I can't afford not to but neither can I afford it 🤔

100%. We work off the principle that we spend DH's salary, save my salary. And it's worked a treat for yonks.

Though it's only possible because we're both fortunate enough to be on high incomes without a mortgage.

How long is a piece of string? Currently I save maybe 1/4 to 1/3 per month plus I pay an extra £200 into my pension pre/tax. But Dh and I earn very well and I think we’re quite privileged.

I couldn’t save anything at all until I was about 36 and had a proper career that earned well. So I think saving anything is pretty great!

I saved a small fortune over the last year and probably will do the same this coming year too but I really haven't got anything to spend it on so I guess it'll just sit there.

Currently it's about half of our joint take home pay. We are specifically saving for major renovation though so put a stop to all non essentials for now.

All of it. We've always been careful to live on one salary only and we're trying to be in a position to pay off our mortgage at the end of our current term. We drive old cars and have a house worth about the UK average though which is probably not the norm for people on our salaries.