To ask how much savings you have

[mrsshears]

nosey old bag emoction

thanks for answering

We have joint savings of £75,000
+£4,000 in the house for emergencies

• £5,000 in my account for quick access
• pensions

bonbons well I would eat them if I knew what they were.

Seems a trend... people renting or with high mortages have huge savings?

porcamiseria you've just caused the sickening realisation to dawn on me that the bookmark for my mystical portal of cheap premium haircare was saved on my old computer which is now acting as a 5* boutique hotel for spiders in the garage.

I'll have to dig it out and crank it up when my current batch runs out so promise I'll pm you or post the link somewhere when I do...

We had 20k and then I got made redundant 5 times in 5 years and now we have about 2k. By the time we move back to UK we should have saved a further 18k, but we are saving hard to put towards moving to a bigger family home (we need 2 more bedrooms) and finish paying off debts that we still have left over from our previous relationships as we were both the mugs that paid out.

our 'worst' luck was thinking that houses were getting to be overvalued in the early 2000's
we were desperately saving for a deposit and they just kept going up and up by more than we earned (never mind by how much we saved)
(we were actually really unlucky in the whole housing thing but that's a long thread in itself)
we could never have predicted the gov et al were going to do all they have to keep prices up
we still do think they are overpriced

however I now believe those that try and control thee things plan to inflate the debt away
making it the single worst decision in my life I don't think we will ever 'catch up' now

I wonder sometimes how that decision will influence my children as they grow older

dont wiorry vivipru! I cant aoffrd it anyway!!! Pantene these days xx

5 x over 5 yrs gonzo
sorry to hear that

Probably is a trend, if you are pouring all your available money into the mortgage to get it down then you would have less liquid funds.

Ours isn't that big and is less than a third of DHs income, we also have about 75% equity. Worth saying though that we didn't go for the biggest bestest house in the poshest suburb we could afford, we aimed right for the middle which is where I like to be when it comes to neighbours/schools etc.

If we had stayed in our old house we would be mortgage free and rich! But with a 3 hour round trip commute it didn't seem the best now we have kids.

None. I'm a nurse, dh is a builder. Every penny we earn goes out on mortgage, utilities, childcare etc.. I hope to be able to afford to put a bit away once the children are at school but we'll see.............

Vivipru - I didn't mean to sound boasty, just answering the OPs question.

We have 2 DCs, 5 and 3. Our position is down to three things.

1. Both DH and I had our own houses before we met, bought when prices were just starting to rise at silly rates. In my case I'd just graduated from university and sadly my GPs had died, but left me £5k, which then was a 20% deposit on a house. I thank them in the sky all the time for this. however, I had to stay in a job I HATED and it made me suicidal because I had the mortgage/bills to pay.

2. House prices rose and I sold my house to pay off my husbands mortgage. We now rent that house out.

3. DH has a good job and gets paid well. I have been a SAHM for the past 5 years, but hope to get back to work when DD2 heads off to school.

4. We are extremely frugal. We are comfortable, but I don't even like spending £10 on some fish and chips because I see it as a waste of money etc. My family didn't have alot of money growing up and I still save.

The downside to being comfortable is that we live a long way from any relatives. So DH and I never get time to ourselves and I feel quite lonely being in my city by myself.

Andrex Aloe Vera gives me thrush. Just thought I'd say.

I have no savings, by the way

Nope, nothing. Every time I manage to save something - circumstances conspire to create an expenditure that is higher than the amount saved

Erm not much. BUT, we've just cleared around £7k in debt and whilst not completely free we are financially better off. DH can make an extra third of his monthly salary each month minimum.
We try to enjoy one month without paying things off, then one month everything goes to one debt. We have paid 10% off our mortgage in 4 years, we have two financed cars and a son in private nursery, plus a couple of smaller debts.
In two years, we will be completely debt free (mortgage not included) if we take our time, whereas we could accelerate that to a year. We took a loan with the Credit union to pay off debts at a higher APR, which has helped enormously, and they get you to pay 10% of monthly payment into savings, plus keep one month payment there.

We aren't great at saving but we are learning and paying off what we owe. We don't live on credit cards, we are reducing them.

Best way I have found to save is a Terramundi pot . I don't want to smash it to get at what's in there, until it's a good amount.
I'm 29 and DH is 31. We'll get there. We've made silly choices before but it's all a big learning curve and our combined salaries are much better now.

£700 - god reading this thread has made me so depressed. We both work hard - i am a teacher and DH a lorry driver so we don't earn much. Paying £500 a month off the only debt we have which will be paid off next April. No mortgage as can't afford the deposit at the moment. The £500 a month being paid into the debt will be used as savings from next year.

ilovedjasondonovan

You didn't sound boasty at all - just clued up and I was keen to crib your secrets curious as to your circumstances. Thanks for expanding.

Interesting you mention your distance from loved ones - Our geographical location helps a lot, its a beautiful part of the country with great transport links but not commutable to London so our rent & mortgage are lower than many of our friends & family in the southeast and other more inflated places. That does mean a long trek to a good number of loved ones (but thats a blessing in the case of the PILs)

We're mid-30s. We have a mortgage on our house (which I own) and my husband's old flat which is now rented out (mortgage is more than covered by the rent). They are both manageable (the one on the house is now about 2.5 times my income) but we would prefer to sell the flat if we could (we try for a short while each time it is between tenants). We could pay my mortgage down but as it is on such a low rate and we might move in a year or two

We live moderately frugal lifestyles compared to many of our London peers - no Sky, no designer clothes, very few expensive nights out, good use of leftovers. But we have our indulgences - waitrose for fresh food (much better quality than other supermarkets, imho, and we would rather sacrifice a few meals out to eat nice quality food at home), good loo roll (another fan of Andrex aloe vera here!) and infrequent but lovely holidays.

We are lucky and are very aware of that but we have also worked hard and made some sacrifices along the way. For example, when I got booted from my job a few years ago, if I hadn't saved through my 20s when many of my peers were out on the p1ss every night, I probably would not have been able to pay my mortgage, lost my flat and would have had to start all over again. And in an average year I probably work around 1/3 of weekends and evenings, which is pretty tough, as well as travelling a lot and spending time away from home which is only going to get tougher when we have kids but as I am the higher earner it will probably have to continue.

Morloth and others with Offset mortgage accounts. Do you know what happens if the bank/b society with your offset mortgage goes down the drain (and I don't think that's outwith the realms of possibility)?

Would you be covered for the amount over £85k? I don't know the answer to this but I'm interested as when we return to the UK and eventually buy (when it's crashed a bit more) that's what we'd be looking at. At the moment we have our savings scattered amongst the banks in case of bank failure.

£23.54

But have had a great summer.

I've posted up thread about how much savings we have got.
For all those feeling depressed about how little you have we were in the same boat, in fact probably worse about 10 years ago where we had baliffs knocking on the door and the tax man doing a home visit.

Our luck changed when DH became self employed and I vowed never to feel vulnerable like that again.
Once he started working for several years all my salary was untouched (i'm on a decent wags) and that got our savings up quickly.

My point is nothing stays the same forever and goodtimes will come.
I am 46 and have two children of school age.

I won't read any of this thread, got to the "have 40k at 30" post and felt sick so.. HEAD IN THE SAND.

I have about 9k - no debts other than the mortgage. We own 35% of our house though, and overpay every month. I want it to be ours free and clear by the ten years time. Have had a pension since I was 24, bought the house 4 years ago.
I would have more, but blew 5k on an amazing holiday for us both this year.

Not sure about DH - he runs his own business and has about 50-60k in the business account, but that has to pay his wages if he cant get work.

amout twice our joint annual gross salary

we are in our 40s. Earn well, spend less and are saving for school fees

Earn less than average salary, early thirties, no house, have greater than 150k saved. I move it about a lot in ISA's etc to maximise it's utility, so only have access to about 50k in hard cash.

I've been very frugal and know what it takes to save and invest, so would certainly not waste it on a house at these insane prices.