Should I be worried about my savings?

[Sosomuchpain]

or lack thereof

We’ve got 20k between us. I don’t know, it hit me today that some people might consider that incredibly low. Is it? Should I be putting my sole focus into building back up my savings.

2 adults 2 children (one nursery- 15 hrs)

atm it’s a moderate focus. Spare cash goes towards travel and savings

from my old financial advise days it was around 6 months living expenses in savings which I think that is. Am I flapping over nothing?

(we just shelled out 40k for our htb and 20k for a new car)

Don't feel dejected when your house purchase is made and you cant afford to pay nursery/mortgage/savings. Nursery is crippling but also only for a few years, if you can just get through it without doing anything drastic like giving up your job you will feel like a sultan when school starts.

Ah, we use an accountant to do our self assessment (No CB but partner on over 100k so required) but I would double-check your DH is doing that correctly this year, I would of thought you need to enter the lower gross income figure after salary sacrifice (should be on his p60 received after the tax year ends)

(But this might be wrong and no facts to back that up so I would check with HMRC or an accountant. Ours only charges about £100 to do the tax return)

On the tax return front I also think you may have filled something in wrong but it depends what you mean when you say salary is x amount.

So if salary is say £53k + bonus but pension contributions are on top of that then obviously your net adjusted income would be the £53k + bonus. Also depends what benefits you have as those are added back on as part of the calculation (company car or expensive medical insurance would push it up significantly)

My salary is £52k + bonus but that’s already adjusted for my main pension, which had about £23k of contributions last year. I also get medical insurance but it’s only worth about £60/month so not a big thing

To keep all child benefit I typically put an additional £3k into a separate pension pot on salary sacrifice, £1.3k into a share scheme that is deducted when calculating net adjusted income and then take a couple of weeks of unpaid leave. You can also adjust for charitable donations.

It’s a very subjective question how much you need in savings. We also have ~£6k a month as our net income from salaries and similar to you can cover core expenses with one salary. We save about £500 a month into longer term savings and currently we have about £90k of investments and £20k of savings so we could cover expenses for 18M. My OH thinks we need more & stresses we spend too much. I think we have more than enough and could just save short/mid term for a while and enjoy spending all our income. I know some of my colleagues have double/treble our savings on similar incomes (usually due to losing parents/inheriting money, which is a really sad reason to be well off) and I know others with next to no savings who can’t fathom how anyone can afford them. What do you feel like you need to be “safe”?

You’re doing ok but keep adding to it.

I think it’s the first one, as he put all the details in online and he used the figure from his p60. Ill have to double check all of this though.

so it was (for instance) 55 base+ 15% bonus which took him above 60 and then it all had to go back

he has quite a few things through work, health for all of us, CIC for me and him, LI and dental too. No car allowance.

truthfully I think I’d feel better if I was in a position by where I could invest

‘Average’ of 17k???

Yep, it’s £17K:

https://www.money.co.uk/savings-accounts/savings-statistics#:~:text=Quick%20overview%20of%20UK%20savings,1%2C000)%20in%20a%20savings%20account.

Yes, likely skewed up as a result of the very wealthy

Maybe start a separate saving fund with the intent of starting to invest that once you get to a certain amount? We started with my work share scheme and then if we sold any shares reinvested into buying more from other companies. My only real worry is we have too much still in the work scheme but are unsure what would be better

My understanding is that sharesaves are quite risky, obviously it’s good if you get them at a discounted price or your employer matches or gives you them for free, but as investments go, they are risky as they are tied to a single asset class, single geographic location, and a single firms shares. So they are exposed to a high potential for volatility.

but yes that’s my understanding to get about £10k spare and then to start with that as investment, maybe a with profit bond or some sort of managed fund

My car was £3500 🤔