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

Hmm what counts as savings? I have a few thousand £ credit card debt (bad I know...) but we just bought a house so unless house prices have fallen, there's some equity in that. Does that cound as savings?

You're referring to "net worth", which is the sum of your assets less the sum of your liabilities (mortgage balance, credit card balances, etc.). The savings I think refers to highly liquid assets like cash in the bank or money on deposit in a brokerage account. Some assets, like shares, can be very liquid but meant to be long term investments, not something you cash in to fix the car.

I’m surprised 3/5 have savings! I’ve never bothered too much with savings, but anything I did have was wiped out funding maternity leave (I decided I wanted more time off than I’d originally planned and budgeted for) and the subsequent childcare costs. We were paying £1800 ft chilcare pm at one point. I don’t get how anyone can save for that sort of expense before they’re too old to have kids.

Two well paid jobs, no savings. Overdraft, big mortgage, 9 years of nursery fees...

I feel very very sorry for people in this situation. It makes me realise how fortunate I am.

It's sad and quite shocking that in very rich first world countries that the tons and tons of money isn't shared out just a little bit more evenly.
It's clear it's not through lack of people trying.
Zero hour contracts, austerity, ridiculous house/rent prices, huge childcare costs....
No wonder a lot of hard working people can't save.

There is nothing niave about my stance here. I would NEVER have children unless I knew I could fully support them. Supporting them.is having more than £100 in the bank....

I have only started saving recently. Currently have about £500 saved.

I am also using a savings app called CHIP which automatically works out you can afford to save every few days / week and takes it out and puts it in a savings account. It uses algorithms based on your normal spending patterns and takes the money in small amounts so you don't really notice (but you have instant access to it if needed).

I have found it really useful as a savings tool as I was crap at saving before. If anyone is interested, enter 9TI9J3 into getchip.uk and you get an extra 1% interest on your savings.

Thanks for your explanation @MissConductUS.
Given houses and pensions don't count then I'm not surprised at the figures. I know some people are cash poor but have houses they bought years ago that are probably worth a fair bit now.

Even sadder is the fact that the dreaded word, whisper it.... Brexit seems to only favour those who already have enough to cushion themselves against its threats. And many proponents of Brexit stand to make a lot out of it too.

I often wonder who in Government is representing ordinary people anymore. Not a squeak out of Labour about shortages of this and that, and the Tories don't care about anyone except the continuation of their own party.

Sorry to bring politics into it. But at the end of the day, they are the ones who rule our lives.

There is nothing niave about my stance here. I would NEVER have children unless I knew I could fully support them. Supportingthem.ishaving more than £100 in the bank

Money does not equal support.

My mum is amazing. She had me at 18 and I'm sure she never had more than £100 In savings (though she does not because circumstances change) I never knew we were "poor" I never missed out. I had a fantastic childhood, with a "poor" single mother in a HA house.

Money has very little to do with being a good parent. Hopefully you'll realise that before you have kids.

(You also cannot buy affection just in case you didn't realise that either)

*she does now

I have £1 savings. I have to keep it there to keep the account open.

I can't afford not to save. I save £50 per month and prioritise this as if it was any other bill. I save before I spend on other things. It's not a huge about, but it means that there is a buffer there when the shit hits the fan, which it inevitably will.

We have a household income of £100k before deductions but no savings. We seem to cover life’s incidentals and holidays, but with a big mortgage (£1000 per month), bills, 2 DCs (one of whom is a teen), two cars to run (both owned in full), life is expensive. We are lucky, we enjoy life, but we have no savings. I recently discussed this with a seemiky more hedonistic friend of the same age (mid 40s) and he was shocked, saying “I had no idea you and DH were so irresponsible with money. Go figure. We don’t have designer clothes or flash cars but we do live in a nice bubble.

@AnotherEmma we are on the council list, but they have said to get rid of our animals, so we are hoping we can find somewhere within the deposit scheme and go from there, but its a long shot, landlords don't like housing benefit paying some of the rent (might not be the actual landlords, but mortgages.) Some don't like pets and some don't like children, since we have all 3 we are limited in what we can look at, but I have received some great advice on here

HotSauce.

Good on you, as I said earlier some of those with no savings/cushions are very self reliant and full of confidence.

You could save something if you wanted to really, but you don't want to. Great.

I save a reasonable amount usually 1/4 of my salary since finding out I am pregnant that has increased to half I know I'm fortunate enough to be able to do this.

But we also live pretty frugal and I'm careful with budgeting. Other than mortgage nothing is on finance, rarely buy clothes, phone contracts are no more than £15 a month, shop is £35/wk for 2, no gym membership etc. I'm not bothered about having the latest gadgets or a shiny car ours is 14 years old. If we want something then we save the money for it.

My DH has suffered 3 redundancies in 6 yrs due to companies going bust so I got used to being on a tight budget. Although I now have a better paid job I'm still in the habit of being skint.

I agree it's a low wage high cost society which is a massive contributor but I also think payday loans and credit cards have a lot to answer for that people can have what they want pay later attitude.
Along with the attitude that kids/adults need the latest gadget, phone, big TV, sky and its perfectly acceptable to put this all on credit and then wonder why they struggle or can't save.

I see this within my own family, my nephews and nieces receive ridiculous birthday and Christmas presents which my brother definitely can't afford, the kids don't need it all. They end up paying shed loads in interest and call us flash for going on holiday which we have saved hard for.....

@thesearepearls sound economic advice! I’ve just googled: best savings rate I could find was 1.95%, inflation 2.5%. We’d be mental not to blow all our money before it becomes worthless.

Wish I lived in Savvy’s world! My pensions, state and occupational combined, is barely more than her £800 per month saving level. So as a result I haven’t had a holiday in years, even when working, and now sit around watching the world pass me by! I’m lucky to be one of those baby boomers and have a mortgage free property but quite honestly don’t see the point of carrying on.

I'm not really sure what the point of savings are in this day and age. My savings account has about 15 € in it. That doesn't mean that I can't support my children though. In fact we are paying 2 of them though uni and they will come out with no debt. We own our house and car outright and have no debt. That is far more important to me than savings. Like many we have credit streams available to us if we have an emergency, but having £100 in savings is hardly going to make a difference.

Sorry if that came across as a boast, it didn't mean to - I just wonder how much debt some of the smug sods are sitting on.

I must be one of the two on my street with less than £100 and the rest would have about £100k cash at bank. They still plead poverty though!

I have no money in my savings account, but I have enough in my current account to live off. I'm just happy I'm not in any debt.
My sons at uni now, he's having to take out student loans because I can't afford to pay for him, but I do manage to house and feed him during his holidays and help him out with tiny amounts when he's skint.

Key board Kate it's a shame that so many poor people were crippled by the lack of working or indeed any restrictions back in 2007 etc. Many poor people were pushed under and any smaller charities were anillihated by the sheer volume of more poor people arriving.
So please don't preach about brexit making things worse, it's another classic head in the cloud comments about a wave of people whose meagre quality of life already plummeted.