To think we aren't saving enough...

[prettyinpinkormaybegreen]

We are a family of 4, 2 adults and 2 DCs one at uni one at home. We bring home £100k per year so approx £6k a month so I know we are much better off than many.
By the time we pay mortgage, cars, bills and food I don't know where it all goes every month. We save about £500 every month but I always feel we should be saving more but just don't know how we could. I'm scared about the cost of living and I know I am far from destitute.
What do you all manage to put away every month??

DH and I were earning similar and we were saving nearly 2k a month... but then we prob have a smaller mortgage/less debt to pay then you. It's all swings and round abouts.
I've now been made redundant so all that saving has been rather helpful!

Also ... re having to go buy extra milk and then spending more.... either have a store of long life milk in the cupboard or get milk delivered.

I wouldn’t count either as savings. You can’t get the money back out of your mortgage or pension if you urgently need it, you need an emergency fund that you could access tomor if you need to.

Could you cope tomorrow if you had a massive car repair bill or you lost your job?

There are lots of recent threads on here about overpaying your mortgage vs saving the money and getting interest on it and then overpaying at a later date. I would look at these, all depends on how much your current mortgage interest rate is.

We put a lot into pensions as the money is tax free via salary sacrifice and we hope the investment will grow, so it’s a no-brainer. But obviously we can’t access until late 50’s so this can’t be counted as ‘savings’, it’s a necessity for a decent retirement and we hope to take our 25% tax free for deposits for the children. But a lot could happen between now and then :)

Sorry my last message was in reply to ‘SpringOn’

We get around £5.5-£6 k a month but don't have a mortgage anymore and we save about £3k a month. We have a very old house though so repairs are ever looming!!

@Tryingtokeepcalmandcarryon thanks. We might have a bit of a rethink. We could fairly easily access about 10k, but it would be good to have the reassurance of a proper emergency fund. And you are right of course that we can’t get it out again. Overpaying is just what we have always done. And then scrabbling when we hit an ‘emergency’ 😂😂

Also, you can get your milk and bread delivered. Then there’s no popping to the shops. It’s a bit more expensive than supermarket milk but I think it saves money overall.

DD is 16.

After primary the big items were school uniform, phone, laptop and school books.

Clothes/shoes as soon as she started adult sizes, in her case, when she was 12. And she has no interest in brands.

Books - I just spent £100 on 6th form books with lots more to come. When she started GCSE in Y10 I think I paid around £500 for school books and revision workbooks/guides.

Pocket money - nowadays it is virtually impossible to get a job under 16 unless you have some connections. We live in a town with a college and most jobs are taken by the students as they are over 18 and you don't have the red tape to employ them.

Clubs are obviously a personal choice, we pay around £200/term for theatre, scouts, Tae-kwon-do and riding.

Eating out - normal adult portions

Holiday - either a proper 2 bedroom appartment or a second hotel room

"Luckily" she had no school trips thanks to Covid.

We put £250/month aside since 5 years to hopefully be able to get her to go to uni without huge student debt. That is extra to any savings we do for other things. Her grandparents are saving for driving license, car and after uni life.

And we only have one child.

I mean....are you just showing off? Our monthly saving are approximately 0 if that makes you feel better

That sounds about right.

So I'm certainly not seeing anything there that could add up to £1000 a month, every month.

Presumably the OP has a big mortgage, cars on finance and perhaps some debt repayments which make her outgoings so high.

Indeed!!! Children cost a fortune 🤣🤣 putting a child through uni is a massive expense

I didn't count pensions and mortgage overpayments in my original post, only what I "save". I am also making mortgage overpayments every month in a huge attempt to clear my mortgage in 4 years time.... to divert that to DC2 going to uni!

@Nw22 Sorry, been at work tonight...

That's our total savings every month which covers Uni accommodation, holidays, birthdays/Christmas, unexpected bills, etc. We move the money to a different account as soon as we get paid and don't touch it unless we have to (holiday payments, bills, etc.)

As a caveat, we are mortgage free and don't have any car,/other loans. As soon as the mortgage was paid off, we saved the payments every month so we didn't get used to spending the money!

MN at its best

Feel free not to comment if that's how you feel. I'm not the only MN that has a decent income (which I've worked hard to get) and plenty people on here have more!

I think you're saving less than we would under your circumstances.

My monthly net pay is ~£5.5k. I put £2k into my pension (over and above what already goes in from my gross to get the max from my employer) leaving ~£3.5k. Then, out of that, I put £1.7k into my S&S isa to max that out each year.

The remaining £1.8k I use to contribute towards the usual household costs (only DH & me now DDs have flown), my car, whatever else, and it's very comfortable.

DH has a slightly higher income and does the pretty much the same.

We don't have a mortgage and I suppose we live a relatively frugal lifestyle, given our income, although we definitely don't feel we deprive ourselves for the sake of saving; we're very happy with what we're doing. We've never been people to increase our outgoings just because our incomes increased.

Just to point out that many people who are on low incomes also work very hard.

My own income has been circumstance + luck + work and I expect yours has too.

It's a myth that higher earners work harder.

We have always saved 50% of our gross income. We used to invest the entire amount but now have a mixture of cash and investments.

High earners who aren’t grads, and who start off in minimum wage / menial jobs, do work harder than grads or those who start in white collar jobs. They continue to work harder until they can prove themselves.

My career as a data / AI professional started when I was packing at a warehouse. I kept thinking of ways to make my job easier - wasn’t allowed to implement any of my ideas until I became a supervisor. That took 5 years and me being the most productive packer day in day out. My fingers used to bleed by the end of my shift because this was in the days before robots and automated packaging.

Joint income of £5600 NE UK. Save £1000 for incidentals plus's £400 for personal tax, another £300 for Xmas/car insurance etc our mortgage and bills etc leave us with approx £200-£250 week for food, petrol, school dinners, clothes, incidentals etc etc. tight, and our mortgage will be going up massively in September but count ourselves lucky.

They don't work harder than people who also work hard but don't have asuch financial success.

Luck always plays a part. I'm fine accepting the role of luck in my own life.

No they don't. That's working smarter, not working harder. There's a difference.

We’re on the same joint income, teenage kids and probably save £1k a month on a normal year between us. We sometimes draw on that for large purchases (cars, household repairs) but leave a decent buffer. This year we’ve got a once in a lifetime holiday coming up which is likely to cost about £20k(!) and all available funds are going to that to avoid using credit cards. I don’t feel the need to scrimp and save on food costs etc - our budget isn’t as tight as when we had double childcare fees for 10 years.

Doesn't it depend on your core outgoings? We are on 7k per month but our mortgage is 2k and childcare another 1k, our core immovable bills are 1,400 and food is 600. In my head, I would like to save lots but in practice that leaves us with 2k per month in London. And that needs to cover everything from holidays, xmas, savings, presents, clothes, house repairs etc.

Not one to encourage credit card debt unnecessarily but if you were to get a credit card with a long 0% period... then it's actually better to keep your savings and get the interest. Just have to make sure you have a plan to pay off the credit card.

Must be nice to earn 6k a month...