AIBU to think most people have no idea how wealthy people live their lives?

[AnneValentine]

Just that really off the back of a lot of threads but most recently one where multiple people were adamant that the only way it’s possible to have no savings if you have salaries of £200k plus unless one of the couple is squirrelling savings.

Followed up with how do they pay for a broken down car with savings? Hasn’t even dawned on them that people on those salaries don’t have cars that are breaking down.

Is it so hard to believe that money literally eliminates money worries? That you can create a level of security that means savings and such aren’t needed?

youre very simplistic and tbh your posts don’t make much sense.

Id consider investments savings. I have a stocks and shares ISA - that’s some of my savings. I then have purchased some call options on some shares at work and I’d consider this savings.

Just because something isn’t cash doesn’t mean it’s not a saving.

Yes cash is the most liquid asset so I’d say someone in the situation you’ve described is exposing themselves heavily to liquidity risk if they did need some money but I think you’re obsessing a lot on the concept of cash being savings and that’s it.

We are less savvy because we saved £1500
by paying up front? How did you work that out?

I'm astonished at the length of this thread. Yes, the privilege of having a high income is that you don't need a savings pot. Does this point really need to be ventilated over several pages?

How does the money sat in your current account not count as savings according to this definition?

You know, the money that you paid for Disney with

Except that even the amount she has in cash in her current account doesn't count as savings!

When you go into a shop and by groceries is that spending savings?

She seems to think savings are something built up slowly with difficulty. So she doesn't have savings, she just has wads of cash. Anyone else who has excess cash but moves it somewhere else is doing so out of financial constraints in her opinion - which doesn't track as far as I can see, but is apparently very important to her.

Just in case what?

OP - you are too funny. Health insurance doesn’t pay for chronic conditions - it may pay for say 100sessions, but then they stop...... and when you need much more than 100 sessions..... it also won’t pay for the therapists travel time.....nor usually the actual cost of the therapist.

and 13 k isn’t wealthy, and yea my household earnings are also about 13 k a month....before bonus, and yea I could give up work as well......

while I consider myself well off.....am not wealthy.

You are too funny and have really entertained me 🤣

Ok, so you asked what kind of thing might you need a savings pot for.

So I was in an accident ten years ago, quite a bad one. NHS treated, operated a few times but missed something important.

Private health insurance paid for me to see consultants. It did not pay for:

Hydrotherapy 100 quid an hour
Physio 60 quid an hour (I was entitled to 4 hours on the NHS despite not being able to walk)
Wheelchairs (plural over the years, and believe me they are expensive). NHS will give you a voucher towards one if you are lucky.

Despite a seriously mangled leg and other injuries, I was deemed able to work by the critical illness insurance.

I went through 20k easily in the first year. Customised wheelchairs alone are 8k plus.

NHS is shit for anything like this. Private medical will get you a bit further. Critical illness etc insurance as far as I can tell is a waste of money.

If my accident had been worse you'd be looking at full support wheelchair (25k plus), fully adjustable beds. Etc, etc.

No. That isn’t what I think at all.

I think there is a distinct difference between money put aside for future use and money that is just spent every month. I don’t think just because the money hits my account it’s automatically savings.

No, not normal within month expenses.

But you said earlier:

Some months we have leftovers that we carry across to the next month for a bigger expense.

This is saving

High earners would also have a mortgage, just bigger.
They have to pay higher taxes.
Business owners and owners of business assets have debt, responsibilities paying wages and without necessarily making a profit each week.
School fees are high. If some people could not afford to send their children to private school, the state schools would not cope.

The OP knows everything! There is no point trying to point out different perspectives. She thinks the NHS will sufficiently treat chronic illness 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣, she knows all about the NHS.....

what she doesn’t appreciate is that Great Ormond Street, where her sick child is treated, is run more like a private hospital, given donations etc...

to be fair though - she is entertaining.

All this boils down to is that:

• you don’t wish to call readily available monthly cash savings (when you admit you pay for things in installments in order to afford them)
• you have huge reliance on insurance
• you don’t believe that investments are savings (when you would have to rely on them in the scenario of needing a large cash injection).
• you don’t believe a ‘big bad thing’ is likely to happen to you.

All of these things are just your opinions and lack of having experienced certain scenarios in life.

Your whole point just seems to be: money means to have less money worries – I mean, what? Do you want a Nobel Prize?

And we’re not talking about it ‘all coming crashing down’, we’re talking about something happening which involves the requirement of a large amount of money quickly and unexpectedly. Many many high income individuals could oust here and give a variety of things that have happened to them which required a big old dollop of money unexpectedly. Would you deny them their experience of having needed readily available cash.

I have one which involved the catastrophic failure of a thatched roof (which insurance wouldn’t pay out for). But undoubtedly you would say ‘but we don’t have a thatched roof’ or ‘we would just move into another one of our properties’ or ‘I would never buy a property with a thatched roof because they’re a liability’. Rinse and repeat.

She also knows everything about every school in the country and how they should operate. It must be wonderful being such an expert.

Thats frustrating for you. When I broke my leg 7 years ago our health insurance paid for the physio etc no problem.

Re the critical injury insurance I wouldn’t expect a broken leg to be covered.

If we needed to access money to the tune of what you’ve described here we could. We have adequate assets etc that we could liquidate, but we could also cover those costs.

I find it odd to crow about being wealthy when it is mainly (it seems) down to the hard work of your husband and not yourself.

How much time have you spent in great ormond street? Because it’s really bloody not. Exceptional treatment yes but to suggest that admissions is like a private hospital is absurd.

I think this all comes down to your attitude to risk. We have a higher joint income (300k+ bonuses) and pensions, investments etc. We do also have several small savings pots though, split to maximise interest on them. We have both had redundancy rounds we were potentially in scope for in the last year and never feel secure that our earnings will continue indefinitely and therefore plan for this. I have also had some chronic health issues and am not sure how long I will want to work for, I’d like to have choices in this regard.

No, we don’t have to worry day to day about paying bills or monthly spending but we don’t take anything we have for granted. I don’t even feel we are that wealthy tbh… we don’t have a big house, we have one family holiday a year we rarely spend more than £4-5k on… we have a standard family car that is 5 years old and was not bought new. we have put our kids though private school so that's where we have prioritised our spending. I’d never want to be in a position where I didn’t have a couple of months salary to hand though, as I say we are very risk averse.

If you end up with more money in your account at the end of the month than you did at the start, then you have saved that money. Doesn't matter if that money is in a current account, a savings account or under the mattress, you've saved it. Or, to put it another way, "savings". You might go on to invest that money, but you've still saved it.

Dont assume things. I’ve explained elsewhere in the thread. Cannot be bothered to explain again.

Yes, and accessing credit is not accessing "debt" - not that OP ever needs to do something so chavvy.

Well good on you OP that you don’t need emergency funds. I don’t myself either but I’m not a fool and realise that circumstances can change very quickly. Redundancies and ill health can happen in a flash and there will still be bills to pay. Investments and pension funds can fall. Nothing is cast in stone.

We don’t actively look to spend our entire salaries, we could have a bigger house, another holiday home, bigger cars, more expensive jewellery , more expensive holidays and so on but choose not to.

You say you don’t need to save for holidays but what kind of holiday is it - is it five star plus, first class travel to the most expensive accommodation, are your children in the most expensive of schools, do you drive the most expensive cars, have expensive original art in your home. Do you have full-time household staff ?

Or are you doing what most people do - cut their cloth according to their measure?