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

Around £200 left in savings for us (on mat leave for another month). Saving was easier pre DC. Due to DH's work taking him away and being hours away from family, full time childcare, plus wrap around on backup for emergencies will cost us £1400 a month.

The plan is that if I hopefully manage to get a new job where I actually leave on time, I can use my extra time to work a couple of extra hours a day with another contract to top up the savings pot.

Doesn't help that we're paying rent and a mortgage at the moment. We're really struggling to find tenants that can even afford to pay below the market value on our house which I think really is a sign of how much people are struggling.

Ivymaud

Point is.... most high earners will have savings.

Not for a raint day fund or fix a broken boiler, because costs like this are paid easily from income without any thought. The savings are because high earners generally tend to be financially savvy and want their money to work hard for them.

On this survey though investments and pensions are not counted as savings, DH puts 25% of his salary into his pension and also saves in share options at work but it is only cash in savings accounts that counts, which seems a bit ridiculous. So DH would be one of the 2/5

Unkind wasn’t the first thought that ran through my mind!

I have enough savings to cover six months but very frugally. But I don’t have a pension and worry about my future.

Yes it seems to be ‘readies’ in a bank account that they are counting but shares can be sold.

I was raised to be cautious with money so I have a good nest egg. Pity I was too sensible and prioritised making and saving money over kids. We left having children too late and could only have one. I can buy plenty of things for my child but it breaks my heart when he asks me why he doesn't have a brother or sister. Can't buy him that!

User - what happens if you have an emergency that costs a couple of thousand? I'm sure you could just reallocate that money from your current account, but why?! It's frankly an insult to those scraping by and making an effort to save

If we had an emergency that couldn’t be paid for out the current account we would probably get an interest free credit card and pay of the debt monthly before the interest rate kicked in.
As for the rest of the comment, I don’t even understand what you mean. It’s an insult to people in financial hardship that other people are financially secure?
The point is we are financially secure, as much as we can be. If we both lost our jobs and couldn’t work anymore we’d have to sell our house and having 5k in a savings account would be very little help to us. In makes much more sense to pay off the mortgage than save.

Big mortgage at £1000??? Trying paying rent at £1750 per month!!! At least that's yr own property and you'll reap the benefits in value!!!!!

I think User sounds quite sensible. I definitely oversave or, to be more accurate I suppose, am bad at investing. I currently have a ridiculous amount of money in readily available form. We got so used to not having much when when I got a big promotion we didn’t know what to do with the extra so it’s just built up.

About to solve the problem by doubling our mortgage!

I have no savings. in fact I have no bank account. my horrid ex ls to blame.

If I had a loss of income or period of illness then I’d use my income protection insurance. I’ve also got critical illness cover and life insurance if I get seriously ill/dead.

I think our income is massive but we now have almost £4K of direct debits - I think £800 is ‘insurances’ (one of us is self employed)

I don’t need savings if I have a massive unused overdraft facility plus an empty £20k credit card.

It’s just security in a different way.

If you need care in the future, you could get around having to pay for it. That's what I mean about it being an insult.

If I need care in the future my house will be sold to pay for it I guess. Not planning on retiring, I can do my job until I get dementia/death. No pension, house is my pension as will downsize at 70.

I didn't think this was a shock, most people I know live pay cheque to pay cheque. Life is expensive.

Plus mumsnet demographic seem to be high earners (30k +) so it probably seems shocking.

To be honest I still dont understand the point about having children. As I said before I don’t have any savings. I can comfortably afford my children. I can afford £2,200 a month in childcare. I don’t understand why that makes me worse off than someone who manages to save £300 a month? You guys just aren’t making any sense.

Of course I’d like some savings but prioritise luxuries over that. If I could afford my luxuries and had some money over to save I’m sure I would, but I reckon I’m about a grand a month away from that at the moment!

Also re the paying for IVF point- I think the problem isn’t necessarily finding £8k for lots of people, it’s spending £8k on something which hasn’t such a high chance of failure, and having to spend it multiple times.

If you need care in the future, you could get around having to pay for it. That's what I mean about it being an insult.

That old chestnut! Have you seen the level of care available if you have no funds to pay for it? And that's now, in the next few decades it will be back to almshouses if you need care and can't pay for it. On the other hand, we got into this state of having a huge social care bill for dementia because we've been living too long, I'm sure that will change soon.

People younger than this current generation of suffers are showing far less dementia. There was a R4 podcast about it, people are looking a lot at why this generation seem to have so much of it. CJD presents much like dementia and that’s thought to be contributing also (that many dementia suffers may actually have CJD) it was really interesting.

Anyway the point is there may well be far less dementia in our future.

I’m not saving for care fees, fuck that. At £4K a month for potentially 10 years or more it’s a total waste of resources to try and save to self fund. They can have my house for as long as that pays for it

We have nothing saved and a couple of grand in credit cards. Don’t like it but it should sort once 30 hrs kicks in with our second. Both kids have more than £100.

We have six figures.