I know Im being unreasonable!! but WTF?!...

[PunnyOliveTurtle]

In the queue for the post office and a woman in front of me (take note we very squished up together) opened up her banking app. and my heart sank, she had 4 accounts...800ish, 2kish, 1kish and 10kish. I have one account with 178quid til pay day at the end of the month, and i need to buy food and pay a bill. I know i was unreasonable for looking, I looked away as soon as I could, but my heart died a little. I'll never have that kind of money. Such a different world we live in...

My friend has a healthy bank balance nowadays, but that is because her DH died suddenly & he had taken out life insurance cover. I know what she’d prefer.

How is £10k savings an achievable amount!! 😮

That's unusual.

Usual is that minus means the CC company owes you money.

I have around £4k in savings to pay my tax bill, another £10k for some bathroom renovations (the bathroom is in a terrible state so not a luxury) and another £10k to pay off my daughter's uni accommodation.

If you looked you'd see you have £24k - but we'll actually have £0 in under a year.

OP I can acknowledge how you feel, but you say you “can’t” move/get a new job. Unless you have some kind of prison tag is in your gift to progress.

Many people make sacrifices …. Waiting for children - their fertility, working long hours - no time for family, going back up education etc.

I know someone on benefits with more this.

The sums were £800, £1k, £2k and £10k.

I don’t think saving eg £1,000 is some huge unattainable goal for someone in work. Yes it might take some time to build up if they don’t have much spare money, but it’s not unimaginably out of reach.

As I said in my post - start with a pound a week, if that’s what she can spare.

This is what is wrong with country. People are so bloody jealous of others but not willing to put in the work to build savings. Theaccounts the op saw hardly represent wealth.

My mother was working class, did rubbish manual jobs her whole life but squirrelled away pennies her whole life and when she died had a lot more in her account than the woman in the post office queue.

How. She's need to be earning a shitload after tax to be paying over £20k in rent, and saving £13k a year or thereabouts, from just four shifts a week in a shop.

You sure she's not got an OF?

😂

You don't know the full story though
This could be me but I am still not well off
I have a current account
I have another savings for car stuff
I have a larger pot as I am saving for a house
Another which I use to pay bills if I'm short
We also have a joint but that is DPs money in there (joint cause it gives us AA, travel insurance etc..)

Do you own your house? If so you may be better of in real terms

I’m with you OP. I will never have money like that either….sigh

Truthful though. But people don't like the truth nowadays...

No I don't I have a council house.

So you’re annoyed someone you don’t know has access to £13,800?!
um…. Okay?

Yes, that £500 in 10 years time will be so useful.

Yabu OP.
But I get it. A week after my money goes in it has all gone back out. And I am left scrabbling around trying to pay for the basics. I wake up at 2am panicking that something will go wrong with the car, the dog, the house and I have nothing, nothing in reserve for it.

If i could earn more money, I would.
Unfortunately it isn’t that simple.

Sorry have not yet read the full thread but I wanted to echo this.

About 10 years ago I was hugely depressed because everywhere i looked people were taking their kids on holiday and i could not afford it. So i set up a separate holiday savings accounts and a standing order on pay day where i immediately transferred what I felt i could afford. By 'removing' the money I had to cut my cloth. The first holiday I could afford was a long weekend on the IOW. That motivated me enormously and I started looking at ways i could save. Little bits here and there.

Then I started picking up a little extra work here and there - writing up minutes to meetings for local companies etc (on top of my job). The second year our holiday was an AI trip to Spain. I have continued on and have become quite frugal in my spending habits. My actual salary has decreased for various reasons. But my savings have continued on and I top them up with extra work when i can get it. Before the summer holiday we just had I did a 6 week stint doing weekend work for a charity. I have been known to do seasonal bar work etc. All of this has meant that I have been able to treat my family to holidays, which is the most important thing in my world.

Now my accounts are pretty empty again and I have £407 to last until payday (with expected petrol costs of at least £150 of that).

What I would recommend, if you are interested in savings and living more frugally as much as is realistically possible, then watch youtube videos of people who have frugal tips etc. I have separate accounts which are all designed for different things- so an account for council tax - account for emergencies- account for holidays- account for christmas and birthday presents etc. I also have another account where I have a DD from my current account that puts in £14 every Monday. That's £2 a day. I don't usually miss £2 a day, but I try and leave that account untouched for frivolous spending. In a year that's £730-ish i would not otherwise have.

Playing devil's advocate the money might not all be hers - e.g. if you have an LPA for a relative you can view their balances within your own account listings with some banks. Or it could be funds from a house sale or mortgage etc. IMHO it wouldn't necessarily make a lot of sense to be holding that level of funds in a general bank account unless they had managed to achieve an extraordinary interest rate.

This is so tone deaf I’m embarrassed for you.

I have those kind of numbers in my bank account and savings. However I have a car loan with a balance of just under £7K and credit cards of just under £3K which on balance pretty much wipes out the £10K I have in an emergency pot in case my boiler breaks, the dog needs the vet, the car breaks down etc. I would rather have some debt and some savings as it makes me feel safer. I am a single mum with a mortgage. Your little snapshot into that person's business tells you very little about their financial situation in reality.

You have no idea what her life is like, or what the money is. At certain times of the year my bank accounts look bigger because I have put money aside for taxes, I put aside money for utilities/insurance every month and then pay the bills quarterly/half-yearly/annually. I have a very variable income so can't manage monthly direct debits. I used to be big on stoozing so had big credit card debts at 0% matched with big savings accounts earning interest. The money didn't really exist, but the relatively small amounts of interest earned made a big difference to our personal finances.

Just do whatever small thing you can to improve your situation and myob about other people's perceived situations.

I went to university with Richard Branson's kid. He was there beaming away at graduation. There are lots of people with more money than me. Not fussed.

If you want to make your situation better start looking into how to make it happen OP.

I have what might seem like a huge amount in my accounts at the moment. And as well as my accounts, my DCs accounts show up on my banking app as well making it look like I have even more. But it's all (well apart from the DCs money) allocated as a deposit for a house purchase and after we have purchased somewhere things will look completely different. Although I do appreciate how lucky I am to have a house deposit saved up.

If you saw my bank account balance you’d probably die of shock as it is about £12k. HOWEVER every penny of that is allocated but not yet gone out of the account, so credit card bill, car finance, mortgage etc.
And remember comparison is the thief of joy.

she may be getting money out to pay for funeral or something.