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?

@Oakenbeach it's different horses for different courses.

My DH suffered 3 redundancies in the space of 3 yrs due to industry downturns. Despite a stable local authority job for 18 months we are still paranoid so we have a large buffer and I save 50-60% of take home.

This has made maternity leave choices a lot easier and anxiety. I never want to go back to having to worry about every bill coming in, if I have enough to go food shopping, banks changing overdraft agreements etc.
I appreciate that for many that is reality which can't be avoided but for us living cheaply and saving makes us happy as we don't have to stress!

I can save nothing at the moment. However, things will improve by early next year when I have a reduction in outgoings and an increase in earnings.

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.

Well I live in a large 4 bed house and spent the day looking at designer dining tables so don't feel like I live frugally despite saving money. After all, some of the short term savings will be spent on the fancy dining table. Possibly. Or maybe one of the other things I want for the new house. Savings become addictive like that, the planning of the spending of the savings is more satisfying than the actual spending of it, because you can plan to do a or b or c or d with money that if you actually spent it you could only do one of those.

Nothing. My monthly take-home is around 2K but mortgage plus bills add up to 900 per month. It leaves me about 900 disposable income after food, so I think I could afford to set a couple of hundred per month aside.

Most people I know have debts not savings

@crimson72 I live fairly comfortably on £300 pm (clothes from charity shops, no big nights out or expensive hobbies) so I reckon you could easily save £500.

I put a third into my work USS pension. It means things are a little tight but doable.

I usually put 40% away every pay day unless I know it’s going to be a particularly spendy month (I.e December, a month when we go away)

We are getting married next year and I’ve got a goal to have £10K saved by the end of 2019 so I’m being pretty frugal at the moment. I’d say about 50% goes on the mortgage/household bills/petrol etc so it only leaves me with 10% leftover for fun stuff at the moment but oh well

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

I think posts like yours can actually be quite harmful. Nobody can argue that saving is a bad thing, but posts like this suggest it’s not possible for people to save, and live well.

That’s not the case. I save a lot. I also live very well. Today, as an example, I’ve taken my family out for Sunday lunch, mooched around the shops where I bought a few nice bits for myself and my mother (nothing extravagant- some books, a magazine, some slippers, a Christmas ornament), and then I drove us all home in my nice, new, reliable car, stopping for petrol on the way and not having to worry about the cost of filling-up.

Nothing extravagant, just a nice life with plenty of luxuries. I can do this because I save. My savings have meant that I’m able to buy things for much cheaper compared to someone who has to borrow.

If I buy a car for £15k from savings, I pay £15k. If someone borrows to buy the same car, it’ll cost them maybe £1,800 in interest (very rough calculation based on 8% interest over 3 years).
If I invest £15,000 and get back a yield of 4%, I have £16,800 after three years. My money has earned me money, another person’s debt has cost them money.

We save £500 a month by direct debit into different savings funds. We live off cash weekly, and any cash left at the end of the week, whether it's £20 or 50p goes into a pot. Once a year the pot is emptied for a big purchase. Last year we had £600+ in it!