Do lots of people have these sorts of savings? Or am I bloody right?!

[moneuapme]

I feel like utter shit after a meal with friends at the weekend. We all have decent jobs but I am still a long way down the ladder after re training. We don’t usually talk about money but will go to nice places for a dinner etc which I can afford easily too. But it turns out that 4 out of the other five of them are saving between 1k to 1,500 a month and already have over 50k savings?! The other woman there said she has no savings and I just said I had some but not that much. The truth is I have 2k to my name and save around 150 a month usually. I earn 53k. I feel really stressed and worried about the future now as I have nowhere near the security they are talking about. I have tried to keep telling myself this week that that’s surely unusual but is it? Have I just massively fucked up somewhere? Last week I felt really content and lucky and now I just feel like a failure.

Because they're saving for a house move/kids uni fees or property ladder /retirement/rainy day funds. Lots of reasons. Savings doesn't have to mean "dead money".
Overpaying the mortgage is in its way a form of saving because in the long term you will pay massively less on the loan and release money for other purposes.

Depends on your monthly income and expenditure. Unless you're saving for something in particular, general advice is to have six months of wages as savings, to tide you over in case of sickness, redundancy, or unable to work for any number of reasons. During that time, most of your expenses continue, i.e. mortgage, utilities, car lease repayments, gym memberships, food, etc., your only real savings would be commuting and work costs such as food and drink on the move and maybe work clothes.

Someone with a take home pay of £2,500 per month (roughly average) would therefore need savings of £15k for that alone. More if their wages were more, so someone on £4k take home per month would need £48k for "safety".

I don't personally think having savings of £50k for someone on higher than average earnings is particularly too high at all.

A lot of people must have really dull lifes. Saving for stuff that might not happen and feeling guilty about a nice meal as they “only” have £2k savings. Live a little ffs

@Lalalol Financial security gives many people peace of mind. And gives options to eg move house, change school, change job. TBH, I think the "live for the day" mentality may be OK in a good financial climate, but in current financial climate, I would recommend OP prioritises savings over fancy meals out

I am gobsmacked by the vitriol on this thread from people who think saving is some kind of evil thing that means you have to live a small, mean life

@mateysmum I agree

What people can save is made up of all the thousands of decisions they’ve made before now. I currently only save about 400 a month (half is sinking funds, the rest true savings) I’m currently trying to over pay my mortgage before it renews next year and pay off a new kitchen loan (before mortgage renewal. This time next year I should be saving £1k a month in true savings, £400ish in sinking funds. But I can only do that because I have no childcare costs (DD is 14) and I choose not to upgrade the size of house, and I’ve had significant pay rises since I bought my home 4 years ago.
I do however put 10% in my pension (salary sacrifice) which my employer matches and have managed to get to 40% equity in my house since I bought it so I feel secure if things went really wrong- I still count the Pennys though and I wish I was better at day to day spending

What are sinking funds?

Money allocated to be spent later.
Our sinking fund is £500pcm to cover annual service/insurance/tax for car, house insurance, quarterly energy bills etc.etc. so the account total fluctuates wildly.
Actual savings are kept separate.

We contribute 1250/month and then a lump
sum of DH’s annual bonus to a work-sponsored high interest savings account. This is in addition to full pension contributions. We have three children who will be university age in less than 10 years, so we are saving like mad to be able to help cover upcoming expenses for those years. We want to make
sure that we can pay for things like their university maintenance (they won’t be eligible for assistance due to parental income), driving expenses, living costs if they get unpaid work experience opportunities, etc.

We rarely eat out because it is expensive and feels like a waste of money. If you have money to regularly have nice meals out, you have money to save. I’d suggest you go over your discretionary expenditure to see where you could re-direct some of those funds to savings for your future.