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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

Or do you call this normal?? Savings!!

137 replies

Tryingtostayyoung · 10/05/2016 20:53

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?!

OP posts:

Inshock73 · 11/05/2016 20:59

We have bugger all and we're 43 and 39!!! I had £20k a year ago but a year off with my newborn and my DP having the worst year of self employment he's had in years has finished us off. Back to the long term savings plan for us.

yummymummycleo · 11/05/2016 21:07

We never used to save and would fritter money away. Never buying anything for the house.

It's only now dh is earning decent money that we can save. We save £570 a month and have £3,000 round about in savings.

TaIkinPeace · 11/05/2016 21:12

Which UK based savings account is paying 3% interest nowadays?

pearlylum · 11/05/2016 21:25

I get 3% interest on my current account, on balance up to 20K. Plus I get 1% back on all my household bills, including my mortgage payments.

TaIkinPeace · 11/05/2016 21:53

if its the Santander 123 account, how many people actually get more in interest each month than they pay in the monthly fee?

it will be interesting to see what they do to that rate if the UK vote for Brexit as they are making that work by lending in Spain .....

specialsubject · 11/05/2016 22:04

There are several current accounts paying up to 5%. On a limited amount though.

Magicpaintbrush · 11/05/2016 22:04

Savings...?? What are they? In our house they are a mythical thing we would like to have if we had leftovers from paying the bills, but at the moment they equal zero pounds and zero pence.

porridge90 · 11/05/2016 22:18

My husband brings home around 3k a month, I don't work. We don't have a penny in savings. In fact, we have credit card debt and are slightly I our overdraft. We foolishly fritter money away and cant seem to get organised with it. I don't even know where it all goes. We have a mortgage (we only bought our house 2 years ago) and a company car and that's it!

pearlylum · 11/05/2016 22:25

talkinpeace, The monthly fee for the santander account is £5.

I get £50 interest a month, plus £20 in transaction credits.

So they pay me £65 a month.

yummymummycleo · 11/05/2016 22:26

I ve just upped our savings to £700. Month. We were saving this when I was on maternity leave and my husband was earning less as we had credit card debts to pay off. Now I am earning again, be it pittance, and dh is earning more I can't see why we aren't saving more. If we ve got it we spend it mentality I want to get out of.

Depressing though as we save, buy something and go back to £0 and then do the sabe again. It takes forever to get things done in the house and there's lots to do.

BarbaraofSeville · 11/05/2016 22:52

Which UK based savings account is paying 3% interest nowadays

Accounts that aren't strictly savings accounts, but current accounts that can be used as savings accounts. Full details on moneysavingexpert - you can often get about £100 bonus for opening an account too.

I don't have much if anything in the way of savings because we've just paid for a big extension and we're still spending money finishing it off but before that, we had several current accounts with about £40k earning 3-5% per month, so about £80/90 per month in interest (this was before April this year when interest was taxed - it isn't any more). We still have some money in the accounts which are:

TSB which pays 5% on up to £2000 - you can also open a linked monthly savings account paying the same.
Santander 123 account - £5 pm fee but we do get about £4 back each month in cashback (our bills are low, anyone with a Santander mortgage, expensive utilities and a full satellite TV package would get quite a bit more than this and about a tenner in interest from an average balance of about £5k - this is our proper current account, so I don't really count this as savings, more regular bills plus a bit of contingency.
Lloyds TSB - 4% above £4k balance plus a reward each year such as 6 free cinema tickets or a magazine subscription.
Bank of Scotland - 3% up to £3k
Tesco - 3% up to £3k and has the added advantage of not requiring a regular monthly pay in. The others do, but this can be painlessly dealt with by a circulating standing order.

So it is reasonably easy to get non trivial interest on savings if you play the banks at their own game. In the current climate, cash ISAs and fixed term bonds are a waste of time unless you have a huge savings pot and have maxed out all the current accounts available.

bunnie1975 · 12/05/2016 10:32

Thanks to 7 months of utter hell, we now have zip/nada/zero/nothing! Quite worrying tbh & due to what has happened I don't know how/if we will be able to save much for a while.

DrHarleenFrancesQuinzel · 12/05/2016 19:00

of the amount of savings people have.

If anyone has any tips, Id be so grateful.

frieda909 · 12/05/2016 19:32

Zero. Zip. Nada. Zilch.

At one point I did have about 8k saved, but then I made the decision to go back to university full-time and embark on a totally new career path, which means at 30 years old I'm now right at the bottom of the ladder career-wise and in an industry which doesn't pay much to begin with.

It was worth it, though. I'd rather be broke and happy doing a job that I love, than still be stuck in my awful old job with that 8k in the bank!

EatsShitAndLeaves · 12/05/2016 19:48

Mid 40's mortgage paid off a few years ago. Just shy of 180k in savings.

leotwist · 12/05/2016 20:05

Perhaps see if you can get a better monthly deal on your mortgage? Not sure when you took yours out but the lending climate is constantly changing and you've nothing to lose (well, except if you consult a private broker). If you've never been late with a payment, you might be considered a better risk than before. We've done it a few times and been able to invest the money, so that it works harder for us. Worth asking about anyway.

Maryann1975 · 12/05/2016 20:06

What are you all saving for? £180k saved up, is that for retirement so you can have a lovely time and travel the world? Or for care home fees? Or to leave for your children after you've gone?

My grandparents have Over £150k saved up. We are currently spending just over £8000 a month on care home fees. There are people living in their care home getting the same high level of care (which they deserve, im not disputing that) with the bill being paid for by the state. No way am I saving all my life for that. We save about £200 a month, which goes on the next house project. But soon we are going to have to switch to saving for a new car, we can't have everything.

Want2bSupermum · 12/05/2016 20:08

I've said this before on other similiar threads. You have enough in savings when you are not worried about how much you have in savings. Some people are fine to have little to no savings while others need to have more to feel secure that they have enough in case the worse possible combination of events happens to them.

We are able to save huge amounts because DH makes an awful lot and we live on my gross salary. This feels right for us because we need to be able to support our business, we live in the US where there is much less of a safety net and because we have moved around we don't qualify for British or danish pensions (DH is danish) and social security is reduced.

Our variable spending is $2500 a month which sounds a lot but food costs here in the Us are high. I budget using six envelopes. The goal is to get to the end of the month before the money runs out.

We also have multiple income streams with both DH and I working, DH runs his business and I have stuff on the side in the UK. We also cut our housing costs by renting out half our home. It's awesome and I highly recommend it if you are looking to increase savings. I'm on maternity leave right now. I've found myself spending more so this week I babysat and got paid $20/hr for it. $80 later I have paid for the fruit and veg for the week.

EatsShitAndLeaves · 12/05/2016 20:29

Mary - for retirement/contingency in case of emergency I suppose.

Marmitelover55 · 12/05/2016 21:45

$80 fruit and veg?

Shallowstreams · 12/05/2016 21:50

I thought you were meant to have 6 months salary and always panic that we have nowhere even near that. We have £10k in ISA's, I have about £4k and then we have a savings account that's a few grand too. I would be happier with around £20k

perrita · 12/05/2016 22:15

I'm 30, we paid our mortgage off last year, and have about £60k savings at the moment, although we're saving that for a house deposit so most of it will go (we want to buy a bigger/nicer house for ourselves with a small mortgage and rent out our current home) I think saving level depends on what you want, I think a good rule would be to have 3-6 months of expenses in case of job loss, illness etc but then just save what you can on top of that. I used to be a spender too but now I love to save! We're lucky though, we don't spend a lot on material things, we like a holiday and occasional meal out but we don't spend much on other things really.

JustABigBearAlan · 12/05/2016 22:39

We have hardly any savings.

I'm surprised that some people are surprised to be honest that not everyone has savings!

Dh and I are both well educated and have good jobs but various factors means the savings we once did have are gone. We have a high mortgage plus the fact that two lots of maternity leave really eat into your savings, plus then the reduced income due to working part-time after having dc, plus childcare costs...
Oh and then there's costs of swimming lessons, children's clothes etc - all these additional costs we didn't have when it was just the two of us.

I'd have thought plenty of families with young children would be in a similar position. Reading this thread it would appear not.

Falling270 · 12/05/2016 22:53

My fiancé and I have separate finances but are going to open a joint account for household bills at some point soon. I have about five months take home pay in savings, he probably has three. Between us about £20k. I'm always urging him to save more it must really get on his nerves but neither of us have secure jobs and it worries me a lot. We have an expensive year ahead of us and if we can just keep our savings in tact rather than dipping into then I'll be happy. I own a flat with a medium sized mortgage (still owe about £80k on it) and this is rented out so about breaks even.

My aim was to try and pay the mortgage off in about 7 or 8 years but there's always something to pay for and saving up a decent chunk is proving a lot harder than I thought.

I'd be much more comfortable with more in savings though.

Falling270 · 12/05/2016 22:54

We are both early thirties.

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