Or do you call this normal?? Savings!!

[Tryingtostayyoung]

So just looking for opinions, DH works full time, I'm a SAHM and we are both under 30 (not sure if this is relevant but thought I would say because we've not been working as long as people who are say late 30s). We live in a 3 bed house with one DD, mortgage to pay, 2 cars etc etc (sorry giving all these details to paint a picture)
what do people generally have saved? I think me and DH have ok savings, currently £1500 in the joint and I have £900 and he has around £1000.
Was talking to one of my best friends and they seem to have a lot more which made me think are we not saving enough?!

In an ideal world I think enough in savings to cover all household costs for 6mo should be the minimum you aim for, to cover job loss, sickness etc

just having enough to cover mort for three months isnt enough it has to cover petrol, food, other bills

and I would say min 6 months.

we have only just started to save, dh has small salary increase, and its spread everywhere!

50 onto savings a few thousand, 50 onto a kitty for the dd's which covers clothes, shoes, school trips. 20 towards xmas, 10 towards bdays, 20 towards next years holidays, and so on and I also add to this. so we have lots of savings all slowly building up. to feel comfortable though a base of 20 grand would make me feel more secure.

talking of other income if you have an extra bedroom you can always rent it out in dire need...

your still v young op, if you can start to save more it will be brilliant for you.

thats Pmonth of course

yaysir can i ask why you woldnt pay it all on one go - your mort please

We have about a year's salary of actual savings each - any more goes towards the mortgages of some of our houses.

People here in Japan tend to have plenty of savings and are astonished at the number of households in the UK who have none.

In your situation (the expensive bit of childrearing) I wouldaspire to have all the bills paid, then savings for Christmas/ holidays/ treats and emergencies, then a savings account for your child, then start building the fund that could pay the mortgage in a redundancy situation , replacethe car, or or replace the roof . Plus life and critical illness insurance and a pension. But it may be that saving more is a secondary priority to being at home for a few years. Your choices, no 'ought to' about it.

I'd overpay the mortgage every day of the week rather than save. The interest on savings at the moment is shite, and I pay more interest on my mortgage so it makes much more long-term financial sense to overpay the mortgage. I have a credit card that I can use if the shit hits the fan but I've only a few hundred savings because we've just spent the lot on renovating. I'd much rather speculate to accumulate. I'be never had much in the way of savings. I'm a bit of a gambler though (with life, not with the gee gees or anything like that!)

Me and DP are both mid-twenties, I'm a SAHM and he works full time. We rent and have two DC's. One (cheap) car already paid off. There's about £9000 in the bank but we have spent plenty

£4k.in heneral savings £4k for my daughter for the future for things like school trips, braces, driving lessons. I save £100 per month into each while I can.

We are both late 30s, 5 kids, I'm a sahm, we rent (2 places due to dh working away - he lives in a caravan at work), 2 cars.
We have 46p in the isa, and that's it. Hand to mouth every month, I live in fear of a big car repair bill or the washing machine breaking down.
We have a credit card for emergencies, but that's it.

It's a different world on here. No savings at all and don't know many who do.

Just checked.

£28.43.

It's not a savers market you're better off paying off debt than saving.

It isn't always the case that the interest rate on mortgages is more than that on savings. The interest rate on our mortgage is less than 1% but we have savings earning up to 5% in current accounts.

Therefore I'm in no rush to overpay the mortgage and save any excess instead. This has the added advantage that the savings are available for major purchases like the house extension that we've just mostly paid for out of savings mostly accumulated because we are lucky enough for our mortgage to be tiny due to being virtually interest free.

If the situation changes we will of course overpay instead but currently it makes no sense to do do.

Barbara - I agree. Our mortgage interest is 1.4%. Our current account is with Santander which pay 3% interest on current accounts up to 20K.
We also have money tied up in my OHs company on an employee ownership programme which they top up by 33% and is yielding 25% atm.

Paying off our mortgage instead of that would be daft.

Zilch. Mid thirties, both doctors, but the cost of our student loans, professional fees and indemnity is £3k/month, almost 150% my income. We drive old, old cars, and have a mortgage of about £125k on a modest house, but at the moment everything goes on paying off my massive private student loans.

I've just checked. We have £384 in savings. But we need £350 of that to pay our holiday, balance due end of this month, so then we will have £34 in savings.

None. Our money usually covers our bills and that's it.
We probably could have savings but spend on clubs, hobbies and education for our dc-this is much more important to us than saving. That can come later. We do have insurance that covers sickness, job loss and death and lots of equity if we downsize.

equity if we downsize. How does that work? Why would an insurance company pay you if you choose to downsize?

And where does the insurance payment come into things?

Pearly Equity means that say the poster currently lives in a house worth £500k and has a mortgage of £250k she has £250k of equity.

If she sells that house and buys a £250k property with a £100k mortgage, she will end up with a smaller mortgage and receive a cash sum of £150k minus moving fees, stamp duty etc to use as savings/pay for living expenses. (Numbers made up for illustration).

I think more older people should downsize where practical to allow them a more managable property, with lower heating costs etc and release money, rather than struggling on a small pension but there is often a lot of emphasis on memories and sentiment leaving people struggling in properties that are too large for their needs and too expensive to run on a pension.

Insurance is a separate issue if they suffer illness, redundancy etc. Drummergirl is merely explaining that she has options instead of savings that could be employed if they lost an income by whatever means.

Other posters are suggesting that it is necessary to have savings to cover potential loss of imcome. Both approaches or a mixture of the two can be correct, depending on circumstances.