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.

It's all relative. Depends what you need money for and if you already have a house. I have minimal savings as I can't afford to save being a single parent, but I already have a home and the mortgage is low. I am a bit worried about the future, but I prefer to spend money on travelling etc than save it all - at least I will have had a nicer life with memories.

My son is trying to save £1K a month but he wants to get on the property ladder in or near London so it's a completely different scenario.

I would expect someone on a well above average salary to save more than £150 a month although it will varydepending on if you are married/have children etc.

I'd recommend putting £250 a month into your workplace pension so that you are not paying 40% tax on your income over £50k. That will only cost you £150 out of the money you receive in your paypacket so you'll be saving more but it will cost you the same as you save at the moment. Make the decision to increase your pension contributions every time you get a pay rise (e.g. put half of any pay rise into your pension) so your pension savings steadily increase.

After that look at your outgoings and work out what you think you can cut back on without too much pain and start saving that in an easy access account.

Finally, peoples savings aren't always long term. I have a much higher income than you so save a lot but it's split between pension, long term S&S ISA savings (also for retirement but accessible before then if needed) and short term cash ISA savings (for home improvements, holidays etc).

You spend it or you save it, if you want to have reasonable savings you have to think about your lifestyle unless you are mega rich. By all means go out for meals with friends or have nice meals together in each others homes. But how much do you decide to spend? £30 a head, £50 a head £200 a head or more? And how often?

Also possible some of those people have been given money by family or inherited something?

As far as the affording nice dinners out, social contact is very important so I think there needs to be balance. If you're doing it frequently though, maybe there's some room to cut back.

I’m married so there’s two of us, but mid 30s and we save £2k a month. No kids. But we have dipped in a lot for renovations and so have just under £20k saved at the moment, excluding pensions.

Life's for living. I keep a constant pot of a few months income, in case I lose a contract and I've got a reasonable pension. I save for certain home improvements and I buy cars outright. But not masses of savings. I'd rather travel, see shows, meet friends, live life.

I am a married mum of three and have absolutely no savings! So its not just you!

saving £150 on a 50k salary is not a lot. But I can’t say unless we know the full picture (kids/debts/mortgage etc) but generally I would expect that you can manage to save a lot more.

Depends on so much.

We had a massive savings pot, then bought a house and had a baby (within a month of each other) and it went down to nothing.

Now we have a 2yr old and childcare fees so save around 50-100 a month that isn't the "rainy day" pot. The rainy day pot has a few hundred each month but disappears regularly because life.

Childcare fees will drop again soon and then there's school etc. but the car is on its last legs (wheels??) so we'll replace that when we free some money up. We currently own ours outright but it's old and worth nothing so it'll be the start of a new outgoing.

It depends how old you are, your marital status, your residential status, your outgoings Vs your income. Any savings you manage are not to be ashamed of. Some people have nothing because they are paycheck to paycheck every month with nothing left to save. Also nothing to be ashamed of.

Well it's a matter of priorities isn't it? If OP has the money to go for a nice meal out occasionally then she can afford to do it. It might mean she doesn't put quite so much into her savings but she is getting pleasure from going out for a meal.
I really fail to see why OP should be worrying about what other people are saving. She is managing to save and have occasional treats. Sounds good to me. Especially when you look at the vast amounts of people living on, or below, the breadline and can't even afford basic necessities let alone save.

Same...60 years old, been teaching for almost 30 years but single since 2004, and brought up my family alone with no financial support from my ex.

I have 4K in savings and have just bought my first home using my pension lump sum as a 40% deposit.

I'm still working as a teacher (even though I took my pension) but have reduced my days to 3, due to abatement rules on how much I can earn after taking my pension. I'm now £400 a month worse off so can no longer save anything!

The blessing is that my new mortgage is £200 a month less than my old rent I guess - not quite 'balancing' it all out but I have my own home 😍

I am in awe at how some people can save over 1.5k a month..my total monthly take home (incl my small pension) is only £2100!

I saved approx £900 a month to get it at a good amount in the bank.

but it took hard work to do so. Now I have reduced it to £500 a month which is still relatively tricky however I am a parent and we have a small 2 bed house.

We chose a small mortgage to enable us to
save.

Upsizing to a 3 bed house would be disastrous for us.

You are doing fine OP. A quick google shows that the median annual earnings in the United Kingdom was 34,963K per year in 2023. 30% of people don’t have any form of savings account and 46% have £1,000 or less. Obviously there are plenty of people who earn more than you and who have inherited 'savings'. But you are doing fine.

This.

You've made yourself feel shit by comparing yourself to people who have more disposable income and save more of it, but you're still better off than a lot of people who have no disposable income and no savings at all.

I can't remember percentages, but a sizeable percentage of people have nothing left before the end of the month and couldn't cope with an extra expense of a few hundred pounds without borrowing. You're ahead of all those people so something to be mindful of.

All you can do is make the best of your circumstances. It sounds like your income will increase, which is good. Have you reviewed your budget to check you're getting the best price for everything and aren't leaking money on things that aren't good value to you and can be avoided - eg have you checked you're not paying for subscriptions you don't use and you have the best price for insurance, broadband, mobile phone etc. Some people massively overpay for these things so could easily free up extra money to spend or save by just changing to a cheaper deal.

I earn a similar amount to you and have quite a lot of savings but I'm also quite frugal and always check prices etc and there's a whole list of things that many people spend quite a lot on that I spend very little or nothing on so a lot of my savings have been due to not spending money on these things. I also haven't upgraded my house like many people do, mostly because I CBA to move, but a lot of people spend a lot of money on expensive home and decorate it regularly with expensive fixtures and fittings and then wonder why they might not have as much cash as other people.

Wow, judgy.

In your opinion you should have a certain amount in savings. It's not everyone's opinion, priority or ability to do that.

And life still needs living. What's the point of going to work, slogging your guts out to earn money if all you're doing with it is putting it in a savings account?

Balance is what's needed, for everyone. And that looks different for everyone.

My DH and I are mid 50s. We are about to pay off the majority of our mortgage this month and we are both teachers so have good pension with around 85k lump sum between us, However, we have no savings at all. We have 3DCsvand have paid for private school and their rent through Uni so pretty much always spend more than we earn. Excellent credit rating so move debts around. The key isdue is do you have housing and pension security? I’m not worried about savings as I know that if there are issues I can borrow money to sort them and can afford to juggle that debt.

So many factors..

Whether you're working full time or part time
Whether you're renting or own your own house
How long ago you bought your house (i.e. mortgage will be lower if you bought many years ago when house prices were cheaper)
Ages of your children (i.e. what childcare costs if any)
Whether you are single or have a partner (and how much they contribute)
Whether you have any expensive hobbies
How frugal you are with household finances
How often you compare utilities/insurances/mobile phone costs etc
Old car paid off or new car on finance

There is no single factor. Lots of things come into play. Lots of different things to balance out according to your needs and wants.

We have been saving lots for the last decade or so. But that's because we scrimped and saved to pay off our mortgage as soon as possible, so for the last decade, we've had no mortgage to pay, so all that money has gone into savings. We decided to do that rather than play the housing ladder, so whilst we could have moved to a bigger house, we made the decision not to, and saved instead.

The rule of thumb I've heard is to save at least 15% of your income every year to have a safe retirement. So on a 50000 salary that would be saving 625 pounds per month.

But obviously you have to use common sense and adapt things to your circumstances.

@moneuapme there are lots of variables at play here. The key thing I think is to be open to the idea of saving as a possibility and not to see all you disposable income as, well, disposable. Martin Lewis has great info but as a pp said, first build up an emergency fund. You can then consider what your next objective should be. Don’t be fooled by others either. If you are saving hundreds or thousands a month of net salary that may not be such a smart move if you have minimal pension for
example. Equally, if you are miserable and living in a property needing repair, no point having money in the bank. The money should work for you.

@27 dresses. The abatement rules don’t apply if you get the school to unemployment you for a day and then re employ you. Teachers at my school have done this so they don’t lose out if they work past 60.

My DH and I are mid 50s. We are about to pay off the majority of our mortgage this month and we are both teachers so have good pension with around 85k lump sum between us, However, we have no savings at all. We have 3DCsvand have paid for private school and their rent through Uni so pretty much always spend more than we earn

Are you SLT? I’m amazed you have paid for 3 lots of school fees & uni!

No, I couldn’t save that much a month even if I wanted to. I think it’s probably pretty unusual to be saving over £1,000 per month especially if you have children and an average job.

Dh and I should have more saved, but don't. This has prompted me to take a look.

I am late 40s and I save 700-800 pcm. I only work 12-15 hours a week but also have income from a rental property. I am not a big earner but I don’t have a mortgage.

However, much of those savings get used for maintenance costs on my flat and my tax bill. My actual savings, as in money that I won’t need to use, is about 2000k

Nooe, never saved that amount.