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

*SavvySaver24

Should really be called Goadysmugcunt*

Who hasn't got a clue - or possibly is Teresa May

A little story for savvy and anyone else who thinks that you shouldn’t breed if you can’t afford it- we had our DC when we were young and poor. It was a bit impulsive and silly but I’m so, so glad we did. 8 years down the line when we can afford children and I’m now in my mid-thirties, we’ve tried for anther baby and it hasn’t happened. If we’d waited until we could afford it we could well be looking at a childless future. Instead we’ve had an amazing 8 years of love and laughter (and all the rest of the shit too!) yes we were poor but that’s changed now and I don’t regret my babies for one second.

It so sounds so tough. A pp who said the UK has a high cost/low wage culture with growing inequality is right.

Me and dh have jobs that would put us in the same boat if we still lived in the UK. We moved 7 years ago and we have no doubt we would be earning the same with the same ridiculous hours but way way less money because of having dd.

Instead we moved to Australia. Moving here has had a very positive effect on our finances. We earn twice as much for less work doing the same jobs. Actually it makes me feel sad as it makes it very hard to imagine going home.

Depends on the time of year for me. I try and save a little bit each month to put towards the cost of school holiday childcare. It all goes on that and then I’m back at square one and saving for the next school holiday...

Yep in that bracket low paid job and part time student. Any emergency would have to be on finance. Budget every penny. Someone mentioned up thread you miss out on chances to save ie bulk buy, discounts for paying in full. You gotta be rich to be poor

Single mum of two young ones here. Significantly more savings than £100. I could not sleep at night otherwise

No one knows what the future holds. You can be hit by disability or loss of income at any time. I hope it doesn't happen to you, but don't think you're immune to it.

Bombardier25966

Worked in Insurance all my life.

I’m insured up to my eyeballs
Serious Illness
Injury or illness resulting in a disability
Redundancy
Death (for my children obviously)

Covered.

I pay a fortune a month for it though.

Ah savvy you have such a lot to learn.

I have always had a rainy day fund since I was 17 as I never had much money. We struggled just after we were married as DH job finished and nothing to go onto so we moved near my parents when DS1 was due. We had fresh air to live on then benefits which DH hated as he had never been on them before. My dad manage to give him a job for less than the benefits. £36 a week and our rent was £15 so everything had to come out of what was left. I can remember crying after the HV left telling me to get some steak to build up my iron ( I had a transfusion & CS) when I couldn't afford a pound of sausages! However due to an old friend of my dad's I learnt how to make food stretch. She took me to the local thrift shop and I soon learnt.
I had more children.I still like a bargain. Still quite savvy with supermarket purchases and like to challenge myself at times.
Now thanks to retraining ( no childcare help those days) and some inheritence😢 I am at last comfortably off with a good amount in the bank and we have almost paid for our house😄 I don't spend much and have simple pleasures in life. I also give to several charities including one locally for families where I always give some money for school shoes to my friend who is the contact. I used to always worry about school shoes so I hope it makes someone happy.
I think it is very hard but it was then too. I think the trouble is people's expectations are more now. We started off with second hand furniture, WM etc

I wasn’t crowing Bombardier25966
I simply said that it must be terrifying not to have savings.

I said I personally wouldn't have bougt a house until I knew I had £800 to save after all bills etc.

I did not say everyone SHOULD.

But there is a difference between that, and people having a child when they know they don't even have £100 in the bank.

I have a fair amount of savings, now DC is 10 and I can work 2 jobs, but I didn't not so long ago. Things change within minutes, a job loss, a death, an illness. I'd never ever berate or goad people about it. You can be all smug and self righteous on MN threads but one simple thing like your spouse sadly passing or you getting ill and savings go within months and are impossible to build back up. So savvymccuntypants and the others, be very careful what you're smugging about as you have no idea what may happen to you tomorrow. Be thankful you have your little nest egg and empathise with those that can't. No need to be a cunt, upset people who clearly are already worried about their finances and troll the internet trying to make yourself feel better about your existence.

Don't think any of you have actually read my post.... I said it is irresponsible to HAVE children when you know you only have £100 in the bank. I am not saying it is irresponsible ti have children if you had plenty more than that but then somehing hapoens further down the line.

Obviously things can happen which is why I wouldn't have children until I had built up a substaintial best egg to fall back on if the worst did happen.

Mumsnet makes me feel like a proper pauper sometimes, there was a thread I saw earlier where the husband was making the wife feel bad for "only" earning £60k That's 3 times our household income easily!
Plus he earned £100k, numbers like that, I can't even imagine!

I've saved since I was 16. Due to leaving home & having no one to help me if I needed it financially speaking.
I still save, it's kinda all my 50p coins or £2 coins into a jar. Like a child.

It builds up and after 12 months it pays for a weekend away or a school trip or something.
I work a lot, long hours, extra shifts and now have 3 jobs on the go. I'm able to squirrel away bits thankfully.
The paranoid thoughts about not being able to rely on anyone at all if anything goes wrong is overwhelming so I do save.
It's fecking hard though, I do go without a lot in order to put money away.

No one's circumstances are exactly the same. A lack of emergency funds can happen due to illness/redundancy/break up/Dv etc.

I just think life today is one long want after another, but needs are so much more important. That's where I learned my lesson a long time ago, and now have a decent cushion thank god. But no one will know what life can throw at them at the drop of a hat either.

Now I am going to ask something, and I am a bit scared of the question...... but are pets and their costs a want or a need? Seems to me there are major costs in having pets like vets, worming, spaying, cat litter, cat flaps and so on and on.

TBH that is one reason I will not have any pets at all. Too costly altogether. Fine for those who can afford it on top of everything else, but sometimes, reading things here, pets come top of the pile, even to the extent that a vacuum cleaner must be oh so powerful to take up the hairs and stuff. Well now......

OK I am just stating something, so please do not descend on me or report me thanks. Everyone has a voice here provided it is reasoned!

We have zero at the mo. But we are paying off debt at several hundred a month, and when that is done we'll start over paying the mortgage. No point in money sitting in a savings account earning 0.25% when we've got 34 years left on the mortgage!

We've got credit cards with several grand of space on for emergencies. Insurance for A LOT of possible bad news. Dh and I are both in decently paid professions in which we can quickly pick up contracting type work at a good daily rate. We bought an affordable, modest doer upper of a house so that our mortgage is pretty small.

I don't feel that we're in a bad position or that we've been financially irresponsible. Savings aren't the be all and end all!

And how much do you have? @SavvySaver24, how many children do you have? What's substantial to you? £10k may last you a year or so raising one child when your partner dies or you get sick.

I'm surprised that 3/5 have savings. In fact, I doubt it.

But then I grew up in a hand-to-mouth kind of world, and didn't realise another world existed outside of fiction until I went to a posh college. Even now I'm a high earner with foreign holidays and savings and all that jazz, I still feel like the world I grew up in is the real one. I think it IS reality for the majority of people in this country.

hmm whats a fair amount though??

i have a friend that is late 40's house paid of worth approx £250k

single parent to two with a after tax income of £400 a week and savings of approx £17k and she worrys thats not enough

ive said she sounds pretty sorted and should worry less but she seems to think she has not enough,do you think it's enough??

Don't think any of you have actually read my post.... I said it is irresponsible to HAVE children when you know you only have £100 in the bank

Sorry I just do not get this. If the hypothetical parents in question have steady jobs with regular incomes, they should not have a child if they have little in the way of savings? You do know, that people have children young-ish don't you? And often, their earning and savings potential grow and they have savings later when DC are a bit older? If people wait and wait for large cushions of savings then they may well go past their fertile window in this expensive day and age.
Just because it's what you would do doesn't mean it's irresponsible to have DC with low savings .

*Don't think any of you have actually read my post.... I said it is irresponsible to HAVE children when you know you only have £100 in the bank. I am not saying it is irresponsible ti have children if you had plenty more than that but then somehing hapoens further down the line.

Obviously things can happen which is why I wouldn't have children until I had built up a substaintial best egg to fall back on if the worst did happen.*

After this insult to the English language, to be completely honest with you duck, I'd be spending your little "best egg" on spelling lessons before I came onto MN acting like the be all and end all of finances. You put people down all you want, act superior all you want but you have no idea what tomorrow holds.

I know a couple of people who earn over 60k who have no savings whatsoever. Not everyone saves money.

We are thankfully not in this category but I was once upon a time. Due, admittedly, to my own shocking money management (and not saying others are in this situation because of money management at all, some just simply don’t earn enough to pay bills, but for me, it was the management which was the issue).

I’m not surprised however that people find themselves in this boat. The cost of living just seems to keep going up across the board, and yet wages are not keeping pace. So it’s no wonder people are struggling.

I disagree it’s irresponsible to have kids if you don’t have savings and think that’s a horrid thing to say. You can bet all the parents with less than £100 in savings dote on their kids and make many sacrifices so they don’t go without

I'm a "bugger all in the bank" person at the moment. We have recently moved and everything is currently tied up in the house! There were some moving costs that were rather higher than estimated, the car needed some major maintenance and then family illness meant we had unexpected childcare costs. Would be ideal if nothing els unexpectedly expensive happened before September! (My wages will increase as I'm increasing my number of days)

The situation is almost identical in the US:

Nearly a quarter of Americans have no emergency savings

Only 29% of Americans actually have the recommended six months of expenses stashed away. Just 18% have enough to cover three to five months of expenses. And nearly one-in-four Americans have no emergency savings at all.

We're fine. DH and I have always had good jobs and he's always been a diligent saver and investor. He's in technology and bought Amazon and Apple shares 10 years ago when the market crashed.

I am worried about how the kids will do when the get out of uni.