How much savings do you have and what’s your income? Are my savings disproportionate?

[turtlessswim]

I earn 65k and save 550 a month. I know that’s not a small sum but it’s hardly moving mountains financially. I wonder how much you have to earn to actually have a decent buffer? I would feel comfortable with 100k saved and it feels impossible. I’m 37.

Nah, for every person who posts about their massive pension pot (which the OP didn't even ask about) and their huge ISA, there will be 100 more just like you.

These threads bring all the boasters out.

I'm on Disability benefits and have saved £1000. It's come from bank switches and prolific studies mostly. It's our safety net for when we have to switch over to UC as we will be without cash for 5 weeks.

We can usually save 1/3 of our month income without much effort or 1/2 if we are very careful. We do have over 100k on different saving / investment accounts which will be used as a deposit to buy a house. We do feel very secure with this amount of savings, which also brings a few hundreds £ in interest every month. However once we manange to buy a house, I doubt we will be able to save much monthly.

You just sound bitter that some people are in a better financial position. That’s life.

I see very little boasting and posters are anonymous so who cares? People have always had different situations and having or not having money doesn’t make any person better or worse in any way.

As is often said, don’t like the topic then scroll on by.

Age is a massive factor here which many people are missing out on.

During my 20s and early 30s I was constantly saving for “something” - car deposits, house deposits, maternity leaves, and so on. So as much as we saved a lot; it was always gone quite quickly.

We are now (just) at the point that we don’t need to do that kind of “saving” - we have our forever home; our car is paid off (and is still worth enough for a hefty deposit) and we are done with kids.

Now we are able to save; but we plan to do overpayments on the house instead. And we have increased our pensions to counter tax.

We stick £500/month in an instant access saver. Sometimes we don’t touch it; sometimes we do. Sometimes we buy something sensible with it (like a car/home repair) and sometimes I book in for Botox. Sometimes it gets up as high as £10k; sometimes it’s as low as £0.

We have secure jobs and are still young; so securing a solid foundation was important. But at the same time; saving isn’t a total priority, because we have young kids and I want them to have a nice life too. We could all be dead tomorrow.

It depends what you want that much in savings for. We are early 40's household income is just over 100K and we have different savings pots, some for holidays, one for our DS and one for rainy days. We make sure we have a few thousand just in case. We are both insured to the eyeballs so if one gets made redundant or can't work due to critical illness we have cover for that. If one of us dies we have the mortgage paid off and a lump sum paid to the surviving person. We feel as secure as we can with that. We also have decent pensions pots, although when DS is grown we will hopefully put much more in or buy a property to rent out as an investment.

https://apple.news/AM-UDC8YuS4qk05UECbj1IA

Feels like a stealth boast? Some people in the UK would feel more comfortable if they could eat every day.

FFS. Sanctimummies are out tonight.

Hardly a boast as she doesn’t have 100k. 🙄

We have 3 months' worth of outgoings saved in case of unemployment. We've both been through redundancies twice in the past three years so I think it's important for us to have that cash squirrelled away.

I've also got a little bit of pocket money to spend as and when I like, but only about £500 in that pot.

Throughout my 20s I spent what I earned. I had a wonderful time and did so many great things, but it wasn't until I was 30 and had children that I started to think about the future.

OP, you need to invest. If you are just saving, your cash is being devalued.

I don't work and haven't for a few years . I have a good personal pension that will give me a reasonable return when I reach pension age.
Dh works , we are lucky to have paid off the mortgage . I have just over £220,000 in savings that are sat untouched with no real need to dip into as we live off dh earnings.
Dh also has savings . We live a fairly frugal life , no foreign holidays , buy charity shop clothes , drive 2 old bangers.

I don’t know how - having been council estate born and bred - but our household income is now £130k genuinely, not MN…yet our savings are currently 27 pounds total! So don’t feel like your lagging OP, you’ve got years ahead of you!

We have a good amount of equity, lowish mortgage, and very good final salary pensions, but after childcare costs, house renos etc (plus too many holidays if I’m being totally honest) we seem to never be able to save anymore.

Im aiming that towards the end of this year we’ll finally be able to save more as we seem to go through our money like water, and I feel guilty about it.

We don’t earn huge salaries. We took on a bigger mortgage last year but that allowed us to pay off other debts (credit cards and loans) so we don’t have a lot left over for savings. We save every year for Christmas and I’m trying to be more frugal and save extra for treats/holidays etc

Why?

Im not being snarky I’m genuinely wondering why you’d want to have such a large amount rather than have a slightly easier standard of living. No mortgage so no real fear of needing a huge amount. What are you going to do with your money? What’s your plans for it?

We save around £1800 a month currently (1 PT, 1 FT salaries totalling around £54k (excluding overtime!) but we are mortgage free currently!

We have no savings. None. Fairly low income family, dh works full time, I’m disabled on highest rates of PIP long term and we also have Ds who has severe and complex autism. So pretty stretched financially. But we don’t tend to worry as we are very lucky to have paid off our mortgage early (I used to be a high earner) and we just live month to month. We don’t have spare money to save. Anything breaks etc we have to borrow money to fix it. I suspect a lot of families are the same.

Our savings our low, because we spent them. It’s been a very expensive 2.5 years.
Our savings and investments are only around 20k now. Planning on saving £2k a month to build them back up. No major life expenses planned and working on a decent pension. Job not that secure right now though, so hoping to save enough to create a cushion should a new job be needed.

I have 5k
I earn 25k
But my car broke so I will be back to zero

Financial security is a pipe dream for the majority of people. Most of us don't earn anywhere near the sort of salary that would enable the level of savings that made us secure, and in the absence of a hefty chunk of free money from inheritance, are only ever going to get by while we're able to work and earn. Saving is a great idea if the money you accrue will be the type of meaningful amounts talked about by the high earners on here. But scrimping and saving just to have a few thousand that wouldn't touch the sides in a financial crisis isn't worth the sacrifices along the way.

I am utterly staggered by how different these responses are to the ‘how skint are you’ thread. FFS. Please nobody feel bad reading these, it isn’t the norm.

@RJnomore1

It's partly an inheritance from a long time ago , I don't need it now , but see it as a nest egg .

DH 62k, myself 12.5k pension and I have a further one that I will take when I am over 60.

We are currently making £350 per week in interest on maxed ISA allowances going back many years. I choose to leave my second pension which is slightly less than my main one. DH is chucking in an extra 1.6k in to his pension every month. No mortgage since we were mid thirties, we are now mid fifties. We have one really decent holiday every year plus eat out once a week, we hardly spend anything on clothes or goods though. Sum total of inheritances has been I received 3k from a family friend, nothing from the parents wills as we were not the favourite children as we joke, we really were not.

@Meowandthen I have written and agree with you because I share zero financial details in real life. We are planning on travelling the world for about 5 years when both retired by about 58, no one knows yet because I do not want the how will you afford it questions.

Personally i have 40k. I’m a very low earner. As a household we have around 100k savings. I don’t know how much OH puts away each month, but I imagine it’s between £500 and £1000.