If people actually save 20% of their income ?

[Designerenvy]

Just that really !
I read that it's recommended to save 20% on your income ( after tax)
Not sure I could ever manage that with 3 Dc's.
Does anyone manage it and if so....any tip to help me manage it !
Need to clear debts and save ..... TIA

Debts are clear here other than mortgage, we have no car payments, earn good salaries and only one child with free childcare and I would struggle with 20%.
10% is doable though.

We save a lot but we earn a lot so even with 3 DC we lead a nice lifestyle despite saving 30%. Would be much harder on a lower income, I don't really worry about our spending.

it depends on many things
for some the easiest time to save is when they start working they live at home maybe contributing to food but substantially below market rent bills are lower so often 60% plus of income is discretionary spends
others start on low income but need to rent and so for them this is really hard to save so nearly all income is taken up with food and roof over head
the earlier you start saving the longer your money has to grow
most peoples livings costs mortgage rent etc utilities are not fixed as ultimately they choose these, someone may take out a 500K mortgage and complain of living pay check to paycheck someone else on same income may choose smaller property in a different area and only have a 250K mortgage and so have much more discretionary income ( their disposable income is the same as disposable income is money after unavoidable taxes council tax etc) People confuse disposable and discretionary income all the time
other bills are variable depending on how we choose to live as its Mumsnet your house is either too hot at 14C or too cold at 22C
the best advice is to try not to increase expenditure with increased salary, this is the quickest way to save; you get £100 extra a month it is easy to use this up without actively deciding to, it is fine to decide actually I'm going to use my payrise to buy X or Y, or to have the heating on more, but it is easy to fritter away a pay rise without knowing what extra you are actually getting
if you can afford to pay debts off at £150 a month once debt is paid off you can afford to save £150 a month

Yes, I think probably (don’t actually know because I’ve never really thought about it, but we’ve managed to save and invest probably about £50k in the past few years, which is worth about £100k+ now). But we don’t have any debt (other than student loans), no credit cards, no other debt of any sort. We’re aiming to buy a house mortgage free (with a bit more savings and investment in the next year or so). We have 2 dc but with a 5 year age gap (only ever 1 nursery bill at a time), which makes it more manageable.

We’re mid 30s now with good full time careers. No way though we could have saved anything when we were younger though, but in recent years we manage by not having extra stuff (no fancy phones, no gym memberships, no hobby expenses, rarely any big nights out, old secondhand cars, etc.)

I think it is helpful to have an idea of what you are saving for.

So I have retirement savings in my pension. I cannot draw this down in any way until then (but some is released to my dependents should I die). Great in some ways, but in exactly the same way it is great it is rubbish because it is untouchable - I could have a million pounds saved but lose my job tomorrow and it is no good to me.

I save for my middle age and retirement by paying a mortgage (Well I'm between mortgages just this second but in general that's the idea). Which will end in middle age giving me a choice to possibly retire early, or possibly give money to my children at a stage in life that they need it. I will not have rent to pay for the rest of my life.

I save for a big rainy day right now by aiming for 12 months salary saved (half way there). By saving this in a mortgage offset account I hope to combine this with my middle age savings and pay my mortgage off early, but still have access to this should I need it. Unlike overpaying on mortgages

I then save for medium term goals. A house deposit (sorted). A new kitchen or car as needed (done recently so need to save up again)

I save for emergencies. New boiler. A new (secondhand) car to get me to work. Roof leak etc. This is there and held to one side. I will put this in the offset account when I get it.

I save for niceties like holidays.

All of these are savings. But only the 12m and the emergency fund are of any use to me at this stage in my life and should be my priority.... But cars and holidays and kitchens seem to keep getting in the way.

One day I'll grow up and prioritise the right things. It will hopefully not be too late in life

We save about 20% per month, but this often goes into paying for work to be done on our house. Once the big bit of work has been done this year I want to put the money away monthly for the long term. When the youngest gets her free childcare hours, we should be able to then save that money for holidays, unexpected costs etc.

Hopefully when they're both in school, we should be able to relax a little!

I struggle saving for Christmas never mind actual proper saving ☹️

We save quite a bit because we never allowed our standard of living to increase when nursery fees stopped when school started. When DC at nursery we were spiralling into debt and I got scared to even look at the balances on the various accounts. Outgoings changed and I was still in the habit of denial and hiding from the truth of debt but one day I was in the bank and had a glimpse of huge looking number on screen which I thought was a dent even bigger than I had feared - I genuinely thought someone must have hacked in and maxed out the overdraft. However it turned out to be a credit balance and we were spiralling up out of debt - I gradually started paying off credit cards. Nowadays the excess goes into a savings account. Don't know if it's 20% but it's certainly a good chunk.

My house has doubled in value in the last ten years, so I save by overpaying the mortgage. Money in the bank is worth very little, so I don't see the need to keep loads of it in there.

I think it's pointless saving until debts are paid. I only started saving when all my debts were gone.

I had a comfortable life and good savings until I left my ex-dp. Now we live paycheque to paycheque and I couldn't even save a fiver a week

you should not have savings while you have debts except if you are completed maxed on credit cards and could not borrow even £100 if something went wrong, if you are paying off your debts and there is a gap between your debt and what you can borrow this is your savings
ie if your credit card limit is 5k and you debt on card is 5k and 1K saving if you use your savings to reduce debt to 4K you have £1000 leeway for emergencies so if there is no emergencies you are paying interest and capital on 4k with a £1000 credit available, by next year you will have reduced debt and have more spare(say 3k debt and 2k credit), if the worst happens and you need the 1k you go back to up but probably only to 4k debt as you will have paid off 1k capital not just interest

if you had the same savings account of £1000 and £5000 debt if instead of using the 1k to reduce debt to 4k you keep it in saving at the end of the year you will only have about £1010 in savings with interest but debt is still 4.3k, ( as paying interest on 5k not 4k you have paid off less capital) however if you now need the £1000 you have the savings to use but overall you are 4.3k in debt with £10 in savings and £700 as available credit as opposed to 4k in debt with zero saving but still the £1000 in available credit

Teacup that sounds complicated but makes sense tbh !

I put 20% of my gross salary into my pension.

10% net monthly pay goes into savings but these aren’t absolute and I soo
In and out sometimes.

No way we could ever do that right now. We struggle to pay the mortgage and live week to week. I’m a full time student.

I wish we could but we have had a severe change in circumstances in the last 2 years and now have no savings and my DH is on £18500 (having just had to take a pay cut from 21000, which was a pay cut from 42000)) and I am on PIP (so we've lost my wage) and we get £60 child tax credit a week. We also have 3 kids so get child benefit as well.

We have a small debt to council tax which should be paid off in the next two months and the same with the gas/electric supplier. I've just been through all our outgoings and changed suppliers or reduced service where I could. We rent so I can't make savings there.

I've just opened a Credit Union account and have set up a standing order for £10 a week to go into it and will try to up it in a couple of months once my DH has had a couple of pay packets and I've worked out the new figures properly. As it is not instant access I can't easily get my hands on it and it is slowly adding up as an emergency fund. The CU will lend me up to 3x the level of savings if I need it in an emergency and they will sit down with me face to face with my SoA to work out affordability of repayments. They will also put some of the repayments into savings so I am still paying something into savings as well as repaying the loan.

My DH has also just started Matched Betting which at the moment looks like by summer we will be able to start taking an income from so that is hopefully going into a savings account or ISA.

DH is always looking for better paid jobs but I do worry about what's going to happen when we reach retirement age as I'm 50 and my DH is 40.

I do, and pretty much always have, even when my take home was £1k/month and I lived alone.

My method for when I get paid more is:

• for one month, spend the extra income - get some treats, and usually a household item treat to celebrate
• after that, increase my monthly personal spending by a fraction of the increase, and put all the rest into savings.

So crudely, say I had a payrise of £100/month, for one month, I'd spend it all, then from the following month, I'd increase personal spends by £10/month, and savings contribution but £90/month.