To ask what percentage of your salary you save?

[whereiscaroline]

I was quite crap with money in my early twenties and now trying to rectify that. I'm trying to save 10% per month of my take home pay but it doesn't seem to be getting anywhere fast. It's going to take a long time to even save an emergency fund. I'm just wondering if I'm not being ruthless enough with cutting expenses and saving.

What percentage of your salary do you save?

not enough. £100 a month towards dds wedding and £100 a month towards repairs etc. Have under £1K in a credit union fund and that's it.
Not much to show for being mid-50s and having worked all my bloody life.

Between 25-30% but our holidays come out of that money. We are comfortable financially but I remember the early years when there wasn't much left after mortgage and bills. Also growing up my family were quite poor so I don't take anything for granted.

0%

Now I’m on £1900 take home per month, i save £400, which is just under a quarter I think.

I hope your job doesn't involve maths

Huh? It’s 21%? I guess I could phrase it as just over a fifth but it’s not that far off, unless my maths really is so shocking I’m getting something wrong here (which is definitely not unlikely) :P

Am 😱 at peoples ability to save 50% of their income. Our mortgage and bills comes to more than 50% of what we earn and our mortgage is relatively low for the area

Between10-15%. This will increase once we stop having to pay childcare (another 15%)

Nothing presently
Have £2k pcm spare - all going on house renovations

I put £13-14k pa into pension as does DH

Have £10k in savings and one main house and 3 B2L with around 60% mortgages

Nothing, no spare money 😩

Ha, my income doesn't cover my bills let alone money to save. So -10% I guess.

20% excluding pension.

Used to save about 20% but my dh has given up work to be a sahd so it it is a big skint zero at the moment!

Effectively nothing. If possible I try and chuck any extra in my ‘house account’ but that money is already earmarked for specific projects. I’m also gradually paying off a holiday I’ve got booked for next year.

I’m single, on an average wage and paying off a fairly new mortgage so while I’m hardly poor my finances are a constant juggle. No other debts currently though apart from my mortgage (own fairly old car outright) and my pension gets paid automatically by my work (in Australia so we have a different system here.)

The reason we can save 50% is because we both work full time and earn over 100k. We also have a smallish mortgage.

It's interesting to see what different people class as savings too. Some people are including pensions savings, others including money put aside for holidays etc. Goes to show that there's a wide range of views

No it isn't about "views", it's a fact that saving into a pension is just that, it's saving for a phase in your life.

It depends how you ask the question. If you had asked what do you save money towards short, medium and long term goals, then people would have been able to say I save for holidays (short term), new computer equipment for my DC when they start secondary school in 2 years (medium term) and pension (long term).

Asking what % people save, or even how much they save is meaningless for you, because you're not them. But ideas on how best to save eg savings schemes, shares etc, would have given you more meaningful information you could do something with!

Nothing. We do however put over 1/3 of our income into our mortgage (if we didn't overpay it would be more like 1/8 of our income) which I consider saving. If you have debt then savings are an illusion imho, though that said we do have an emergency fund to cover a new second hand car or boiler should one be required, and only started overpaying the mortgage once we had that fund. I feel like any further savings would be pointless though as if the shit but the fan we'd need to plough them into the mortgage anyway.

Given the huge proportions many are claiming to save, and given average debt levels, I’m thinking this thread is heavily skewed towards the professional middle classes!

Whilst having financial security is clearly a good thing, I do sometimes wonder whether these threads attract Scrooge-like misers who love to boast about how much they save (often on top of huge pension contributions!) whilst living unnecessarily frugal lives.

Unless there’s a big back story, I see no point in some of the huge savings figures here. Life is for living now, not just in 20-30 years... you can’t take it with you! And if you genuinely have more than you can usefully spend, there are plenty of charities who will make good use of it!

I put 15% into my pension (I get tax relief on this and the company puts another 5% in). I should be able to save another ~15-20% but I’ve had a few big bills recently so haven’t been able to save that much. I suppose over paying my mortgage by ~30% of the monthly payment is a kind of saving too in a way.

I am single with no children and am fortunate to have a well paid job where my take home is a few thousand/ month.

We are saving around 25% of our joint net per month. Currently a similar amount goes into childcare fees, but come next September this should almost halve, meaning we will be saving nearer 35-40%.

That said, we are having an extension built next year which will completely clear us out 

We are rubbish though, we always get to a point then have a big spending session. So after next year, we really ought to start putting it away properly.

After tax and pension deducted I then save about 40 per cent. DH probably slightly more. We have paid off our mortgage so we can save more now.

It never ceases to amaze me how someone can get ratty towards other posters on here in response to a fairly innocuous comment. 😂

@daisychain01 to a degree it is about views. Before this thread I would have said that saving for a holiday is just budgeting, not saving. It's opened my eyes to see that others count those as savings, which I suppose in a way they are.

I asked for a percentage because that was what I wanted to know. I am aware of different methods of savings and if I wanted to know that then I would have asked that instead. 🙂

From my take home salary (already includes pension deduction) I save 15%. This is not put into a savings account but is used to overpay the mortgage which I feel at the moment is a more efficient way of saving.
I have only been doing this recently since I was promoted amd DC went to school and have a bit more money

I don’t want to be the richest person in the graveyard why save?

Incase you lose your job suddenly?
Incase you have an unexpected large expense like needing a new boiler or a new car?
Incase you have DC that you would like to help in the future with education or living expenses?
In case you would like to ensure you have a small income to enjoy if you are still healthy in retirement?
To retire early?

If you don't want to save that's your choice but there are many reasons why saving a little money is a good idea.