2/5 of people have less than £100 in savings

[Jorginho5]

your thoughts?

I am not surprised. Everything has gone up in price but many people are struggling to either: find a full time job or better job than the one they currently have.

www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/saving/article-4348544/Two-fifths-UK-s-workers-100-savings.html

Oddly I think savvy would make a better mum than many posters who think it is okay to be nasty saying she shouldn't have kids. You may have children but please dont pass the nastiness, anger and unhappiness to them. Thanks

In a nutshell savvy is saying irresponsible to have a child with less than £100 in savings.

I really can’t see what’s so wrong with that assertion. Seems sensible to me.

What is wrong is that it doesn't show the whole picture. £100 savings but a big mortgage is not better than no savings but no mortgage. Someone who has £100 in savings but leases a car is not better than someone who has no savings but own their car.

I would rather have a parent that took me on holiday than one who saved for a rainy day.

I've got a jar with about £4 in it. Single mum of three children.
This country is very expensive. We've just come back from a short break in the UK. I saved hard for that holiday, sold stuff on eBay to pay for some of the attractions we went to, used Tesco clubcard vouchers for the train fare, and I barely ate when there due to being unwell. We had one "nice" meal out and I didn't order anything myself, the rest was picnics. The trip (2 nights) still cost £500!

I have about £3k in savings (although £2k of that is the kids and it would have to be a life and death situation for me to dip into that but it is there in absolute dire straits)

We also have about 11k in credit card debt. This has been accumulated over about 10 years and includes 2 house moves [had to carpet and furnish both times.... obviously we needed less furniture the second time but it was a bigger place!] 3 children so 3 years maternity leave for me and it also includes me going part time!!

I regularly do a balance transfer, don't pay interest and we pay every spare penny to paying off the debt. We'll have it down to £7k by end of year and then I'm back at work so we can pay it off and not use it as much.

@zen1 Have they given an idea of what it will be after the switch? We have just moved and our water is £60 a month We were paying £40 with a meter in the old house. Will be changing to a meter when we can.

When I refer to savings I’m talking about money surplus to any debt other than mortgage.

So you could have £20k in a savings account
£12k credit card / lease car debt

You have £8k savings

I have 17p in my savings account. It was £1.17 but I had to use the pound to stop my account going over its limit.
Our rent is 50% of our income and we live in a "cheap" part of the country.
It's a vicious circle. If I had savings I would use them when the car breaks down (or shed on wheels we like to call it) or to buy a washing machine when that broke down but we don't so it goes on credit which we then have to pay off which then means we have no money to save.
I live incredibly frugal. My weekly shop comes to £30 for 4 of us, I walk everywhere, clothes come for charity shops.
We earn £28 over the threshold to receive any help.
I earn £7.83 an hour, it would cost me £9.70 per hour (before food) to put my children into childcare. So I work nights and don't sleep.
It doesn't feel like living it feels like existing.

I'm unable to work due to my autism and obviously have no savings. I am on ESA (500 a month) and my PIP has been refused. Currently waiting for a tribunal appeal and hoping I win as i'm struggling.

When I hear about people on here earning 100k being skint/having no savings I just can't quite believe it. Their reality is totally different to mine and unless I happen to win the lottery, I will likely always be poor because of my autism.

There's an enormous difference between having no savings because you're on low wages and have childcare costs or big expenses versus having no savings (or worse, debt payments other than a mortgage) when you're earning £100k/ year. In the first case, that's hardship and I'd wish people all the best on working through it. In the second case it's pure idiocy and I'd have no sympathy when there are "money issues". I was desperately poor as a student and just beyond, it isn't something I want to do again but it taught me a lot about living within my means as well as empathy for those struggling. If you don't have enough savings to fix the boiler, replace shoes or even bulk buy offers at the supermarket then that's a really tough way to live; to deliberately put yourself in that position when you have a good wage is just crazy. Holidays can be visiting family /friends or camping if you haven't saved up a buffer, and reconsider if you really NEED a new car; you can have a great time without landing yourself into more debt. I wouldn't consider £100 much of a buffer against hard times; £1000 is a decent amount to cope with most daily issues and £10000 if you want a serious cushion against long-term illness or other major events.

There are also those like my old neighbour, who bought herself a new big TV and new clothes for her girls while owing me hundreds of pounds she'll never repay. She didn't have much money, hence me lending it when she was stuck for the rent, but it's very obvious why not when you get a "sorry, I can't afford to pay you back anything this month" and start to notice all the parcels. She didn't earn much, but regardless of their actual wage some manage their finances well and others manage it badly.

Agree with excited.
It's extremely shortsighted to earn a good wage and have no savings. No excuse for those on 100k, even on 60k etc not having savings is ridiculous.

You could still have a holiday, maintain a nice car and live your life and save something. So not to do so is just stupid.

Yes I understand about low mortgage rates and borrowing being cheap but that's for emergencies. Saving after overpayment of mortgage may be possible for those on higher wages anyway. You should be able to fix a car or a boiler or buy an appliance on that kind of income when needed.

The only people who truly can't save are the ones on very low wages and benefits. Even then I say save, even 15p per week may sound stupid but every penny adds up and eventually it becomes useful.

On benefits, saving a few pence a week is able to buy some cheap food when a benefit payment fails to come further down the line etc.

Why would anyone want your sympathy when it all goes wrong excited? Those people on £100k with no savings aren’t going to give a shit what you think. They’ve got their own problems to worry about

I bank with TSB and they have a “save the change” thing, probably other banks have similar. Where it rounds up purchases to the nearest pound and puts the difference in your savings. I like it as I don’t notice it at the time but it does add up.

brewdog not having savings isn’t related to claiming benefits. They are completely different things

Whilst I agree that people should consider finances before having kids for some people their reality is they will never have thousands or even hundreds in the bank in savings. I think I would feel very uncomfortable saying that anyone in that position should never have kids.

On any given IVF bashing thread on AIBU there will be hoards of posters arguing against NHS funded IVF with the reasoning that if you can't afford to drop £8k in one go on a round of self funded IVF, you can't afford children

I completely agree with you btw, I'm curious just how many people who think it's unrealistic and unreasonable to expect someone to have thousands in the bank before having a child, would also argue that if you can't fund private IVF then you can't afford a child.

I can believe it. I don't think it's all down to minimum wage etc but other factors.

There's a generation of people who go ahead with their wants and don't really think of the financial consequences of whether it's a good choice or not. They just want to live in x area, drink, have children, go on holiday, not work or do a few token hours etc. It's amazing what luxuries people count as necessities nowadays.

I don't think parents teach children about budgetting or saving either. Add to that the number of children who see the old fashioned model of women don't work and men do then statistically less women are likely to have savings as they don't earn. Bailing or bank rolling adult children out doesn't help either, it just teaches them it's ok to make poor decisions as mum and dad will pay.

Over time our level of savings have varied significantly. After buying first house the were negative, grew slightly as our incomes rose, the decline when son born, grew again until he went to university (and mortage paid off) and since he is now in work, martied and in a place of his own growing by £1500 a month and nothing on credit. But in the early days it was a real struggle to just manage.

I agree with Savvy too, it's highly irresponsible to have a child without savings and the means to support one.

It's why benefits changed to a two child maximum as people kept having children that they had no intention of supporting themselves.

Some put more thought into their latest gadget purchase than they do before getting pregnant. I'm always shocked to see how many don't even consider money before making such a huge decision and then moan about the benefits system, complain about SMP or that child related items cost money and are shocked that find out childcare isn't free etc.

So to all those saying poor people shouldn’t have children, because effectively that’s what you are saying. Do you think then that people living in poverty stricken parts of the world should all be sterilised? I mean, they certainly can’t afford to have kids so by your reckoning it’s highly irresponsible for them to produce them!

Haven’t read the full thread so don’t know if it’s already been mentioned but I’ve just signed up to something called plum savings that came on my fb feed. Did some online research and all the reviews are really good so thought I’d give it a whirl. It’s all done through fb messenger, basically you give it your bank details and it assesses your account and spending patterns and every 4-5 days it saves a small amount for you if you have the money to do it. Hasn’t taken any money from me yet but this morning I got a message which told me how much I’d spent in the last week and gave a breakdown by category of what I’d spent it on which was helpful. If you want to withdraw money you just tell it how much and you get it back within 1 working day.

Promise I don’t work for them, I just thought might be useful for other people who were shit at saving like me! Hopefully I will have a few hundred quid saved before Christmas which will be handy.

We have a significant amount in savings from an inheritance. We also save around £300 pcm into a couple of long-term pots and extra into pensions each. I do still worry about money (more for 10-15 years hence when our - multiple - children need help with uni / deposits). I feel ridiculous and know I need to "check my privelege" as DH regularly reminds me, but we were lucky enough to have financial, practical and emotional support from my parents and I hope to be in a position to pay it forwards.

I can absolutely see why 40% of people have no savings - life is expensive and shit happens with alarming regularity. I don't think you can blame people with no hope of affording a mortgage or a car for blowing their spare cash on bingo, a camping holiday or a big TV. Life is about so much more than being sensible and kids are only young once.

Earning power tends to increase as people get older but we have such a short window in which to reproduce (20 ish years) that it isn't always possible to fund an education, a home and furnishings, wedding, children etc in that window. Cheap borrowing does have a place and most people will work until they're 68 - a good few years after kids are grown to get some infrastructure in place for one's own and the kids' futures.

@SweetheartNeckline your situation sounds a lot like ours. No inheritance yet and I have one DC starting uni next month and the other in two years. I'm in the US where uni is a lot more expensive. Dear MIL has helped out a lot with that, so that's a bit like getting some of the inheritance early.

We're in good shape now, but mostly because we've always been savers and not chased a lavish lifestyle and I'll easily be working until I'm 68. Full retirement age for social security benefits here is 66.5 years, but if you delay taking payments they go up by 8% for every year you wait. It's scary when you get older and realize that the window is closing for you to earn for your self and for your kids.

@Storm4star - I'm not one of those suggesting everyone should have a financial buffer in place before having kids. Nonetheless I'm fairly sure that support for global enforced sterilisation programmes is not the same as expressing which behaviour someone thinks is ideal. Something in this topic has over-triggered your emotions to inspire such a dramatic response. What do you think that is?

You shouldn't have have children when you have no money? Well, that's impossible for some of us. Looking at the National Crime Statistics we can see that people in low income families are more likely to be the victim of a sexual assault. You can fall pregnant through rape, and not everyone has the strength to terminate.

So to all those saying poor people shouldn’t have children, because effectively that’s what you are saying. Do you think then that people living in poverty stricken parts of the world should all be sterilised? I mean, they certainly can’t afford to have kids so by your reckoning it’s highly irresponsible for them to produce them!

In many poverty stricken countries they do not have access to contraception. It’s often not a decision to have children but rather an event thrust upon them in the absence of contraception.

Whereas to be on the bones of your arse and not have a spare £100 to your name and yet make the conscious decision to bring a child in to the situation - well, it’s pretty baffling to some of us.