To ask how big your financial "safety net" is?

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Having been made redundant twice and being in private rental, this is something that I worry about at 3am think about from time to time. We have roughly the equivalent of three months' salary in savings. If my job went tits up the small amount of redundancy I'd get means we could, with some strenuous belt-tightening, eke it out to four, possibly even five months. We are trying to save more but can only afford to put a tiny amount away each month - it will take about 18 months to save another month's salary.

It's certainly better than nothing - and I have been in the position where I had literally no savings or safety net at all - but it's not much either, in today's world of 200+ applications for a single job. AIBU to ask how you'd fare if the plug was pulled on your regular income?

Me and DH both work in the same-ish sector of the public sector. Our sector has weathered the storm quite well but changes are coming. This is scary because it means both of our jobs are affected by changes.

We paid off the mortgage in about 5 years. We did this deliberately for this kind of situation. Our out-goings are quite low. As of today, we have about £50,000 in various savings which could last us 5 years without too much scrimping.

Enough to last 18 months if we were careful.

We have just under £2,000 which equates to 2 maybe three months of frugalish living.
That's more than enough time for a benefits claim to process so tbh I am not concerned (and I have worked in benefits and debt advice).
More important than saving, I think, is being careful to avoid committing to large fixed costs.
So, for example: I've bought a smaller flat in a cheaper area than I could hypothetically "afford", we bought a cheap car for cash rather than get finance for something newer, I have a £7 per month mobile contract with a basic handset.
Quite a high proportion of our spending is on discretionary costs (nice food, days out etc.) which can be cut out if need be.
I am fully aware that we are privileged to have those choices btw. Obviously without starting capital, we would be tied to expensive rent and would have no choice but to borrow for the car.

6 months mortgage payments
£3000 in "emergency" savings

I also have a "emergency budget" I know we can live off one salary if needed.

Hmm, nothing at the moment. I mentally argue with myself a lot about this. We have a low income and put £150 per month aside, this is all we can afford while still living life. But that is "working savings" - in that we use it for things like holidays. There is currently zero in the account as I had to pay £200 for DS's school trip, and the balance of £500 for our holiday. Before that our oven broke so money went on that.

I argue with myself about whether we should spent £700ish on a holiday or whether that money should stay in a pot for emergencies. I always opt for holiday cos I think that is important family time but then we'd be screwed if DH lost his job...

Right now I have literally £5 to live on til payday (4 days away) I have a house full of food and a monthly bus pass so I'm fine, but if payday didn't come I'd be up shit creek

We'd last about a year on accessible savings. We have longer term investments on top of that, that we don't plan to access until retirement but we could if DH was still out of work. He is the only earner which makes things a bit more precarious, although he's in a strong industry and has a good skill set so he's unlikely to be out of work long term. We don't have major commitments like childcare or school fees - the biggest is the mortgage but we've overpaid a lot so we'd be able to take a mortgage holiday if need be.

ExcellentWorkMary - could you maybe budget £70-100 less on the holiday and squirrel away the rest each time? (Advice we got a while back was to try to cut things by 10%, as that can feel do-able.) Admittedly you'd probably have to like camping or Sun deals to do that.

It's a difficult one to estimate, because we are homeowners there could be other calls on our money at any time. For example I could do the simple maths that £x would last us for 1 year based purely on living costs.

There is however the unknown - house might need serious work doing to it, car might need replacing. Those things could blow my simple calculations out of the water.

We have about 2 months of bare minimum expenses. Not as much as we would like. We had more but have moved recently, DH has changed jobs, set up on his own etc. We have also overpaid the mortgage in the good times so could have a mortgage holiday or switch to IO for a bit if needs be.

Sadly nothing and I don't like it

Zero/minus, except in the event of death.

But like previous posters, we have no debt commitments bar one interest free credit card and the mortgage. So no car payments etc meaning our basic outgoings come to about 1300 per month. So of we needed to scrimp and save on food, fuel etc we could stick under 1500 for everything, including the mortgage.

Sorry, Excellent, I've just re-read my own post and suspect I sound like a patronising muppet. Oops.

We could survive a long time with savings, selling investments and downsizing our house. I have enough to take 2+yrs off work and mind our little ones which makes me very relieved to realise but I'd hate not working (because of security, independence, routine and being a role model to my kids) and dipping into savings constantly (because I'd prefer to aim for comfortable and early retirement) to live.

But if we needed to of course we would do what we had to.

We have 3 months salary, would be more but had to dip in heavily recently, spending a month in Cambodia in October so will still only have about 3 months wish it was 6 really it come November we will be making cutbacks to get our savings up again. B

We are both over 55 so could downsize and retire if that happened. It would be likely DH would get a deal paying up his pension and letting him take it early, overall it would probably enhance our life - but at the moment too entrenched in the pattern of going out to work to think about doing it on a voluntary basis.

I've about £50000 stashed away so could cope for a long time.

Have no savings or anything. Every time I mention this to OH he says that the money in his and his dad's business is our savings but I don't see how that would work if things went tits up.

Pane have I misunderstood your post are you saying your pension between you would be £22 - £23 k a year because that's a very generous pension.

Zero

The classic financial advice is to have at least 6 months savings to cover rent/ mortgage and essentials.

To my mind, everyone ought to try to do this before they splash out on holidays etc.

it doesn't apply to me any more as we are edging into retirement but we are advising our Dcs to put away some money every month by DD rather than splurging it on non essentials.

We currently rent and we are worse off with my dh working that we would be if we claimed benefits by a few hundred pounds a months so not to worried.
We do have enough savings to live for approximately a month but that wouldn't be necessary.

At the moment about £300.

We're currently saving for an extension and have decided to put away £10k as a safety net. That's about 4 months salary for us.

£22K is hardly a generous pension if it's 2 people's pensions. The state pension will rise to £10K per person by the time I am retired. On top of that we will have DH's pension which is very generous and my own pension from my work.