How much do you have in your emergency pot?

[brownbearbrownbear123]

Modest incomes only please! Kindly, I don’t need to hear that you’ve got £20,000 stashed away for a rainy day. Id love to hear from low/mid range earners please.
how much do you have saved for emergencies?
we bought our home 5 years ago and we seem to be spending any little savings we make on things that need doing to the house, I feel like we’re never going to get anything saved for emergencies and it makes me so so anxious.
im constantly worried that we’re going to be hit with a big repair bill for the house, like new roof, new boiler etc and it fills me with dread that we don’t have the cash in case this happens.
can anyone make me feel a bit better and let me know I’m not alone on this?

Our 'oh shit fund' is 5k on the basis that it would be enough to replace most big things that could go wrong ie roof boiler car etc

£500, and my mum has it for me.

We’re considered mid earners and have c.£12,000 - a bit uncomfortable it’s not more, but we are trying to save gradually.

Not a penny!

I have around £10K as easy access, the rest locked up in longer term investments etc.

(Edit to add relatively low £30K salary by MN standards).

Approx 500 but have just spent 3k on a new boiler. Some credit card debt that should be much more manageable in about 12months!!!

We have minus around £25k. Savings are for the privileged.

When we were in your position we bounced along using a 0% credit card. Would pay it off before the interest kicked in, but then need to use it again. We earn more now so things are a lot easier but for around 7 years we were financially on tenterhooks 😅

£0

0 emergencies end up on credit card or loans, making the ability to save even further away.

I’m a single parent on low income and have £1400 in one of those help to save accounts for people on UC but try not to touch it so I can get the maximum bonus.

We have £3.5k. £1k of that is untouchable, unless a dire emergency (death, not out of work). The rest is ideally saved but available for general emergency.

I have 2 kids and a disabled non working partner. I do feel the weight of financial responsibility for them, but looking after everyone is restrictive to well paid employment. I wish I had more emergency cash, but I'm not unhappy with what I've managed to save just in case.

Just under £5k in a MoneyFarm account that I put a few hundred in every other month or so. Credit card with £18k limit that I don’t use.

We have a house that needs a lot of work, so it’s savings for that rather than emergencies.

Not necessarily. Plenty of people have no savings because they spend all their money, including on non essentials.

Or they over pay their mortgage or make expensive choices for house, home improvements, car etc.

Often it's little differences in spending choices that mean having savings or not, such as if you have a spare £50 and choose to save it and have beans on toast for tea vs get a takeaway. Do that once a month and you've got £500+ saved after a year.

We have several thousand put aside for Christmas, rainy days, holiday, saving for a new car. We overpay the mortgage the maximum we're allowed each month as our mortgage rate is very low. If things became tight, we'd stop overpaying for a while.

If your mortgage rate is very low, you need to stop overpaying right now and save the money instead. You're potentially throwing away thousands in lost interest.

I have zero savings yet but in a true emergency I have sufficient credit id be able to get a loan or card of some type.
I also have family members who can temporarily help me out if needs be.

For lower/mid earners, it's important to build up available credit, as much as savings. There are weekly boiler schemes and even garages offer repayment schemes (via a third party). For the people who I know savings tend to be between £1-3k. They use interest free credit and book holiday etc a year in advance and pay it monthly etc.

Both earn about 40k each, two kids in primary school, one car. I’m saving hard at the moment to try and get a buffer, I’m trying to save £300 and month and husband the same. no holiday next year to try to achieve that. Currently have £2500 and husband has about £4000. Id really like to get £10,000 saved between us before we can relax it a little, so I think being frugal this next year will do it. We have an interest free kitchen loan, small amount in credit cards <£500

We have a few sinking funds for things like car insurance, Christmas etc so can dip into that for an emergency. Next year we are going to work at building up a bit of an emergency fund. We do also have a credit card that we can use for emergencies if needed.

Not enough. I think the issue is big things that come up. We currently need a new bathroom after discovering a leak. Not something we would have predicted.

Neo - that’s interesting. I envy you, though. Private education in the UK has gone through the roof. I would say it’s getting beyond the reach of middle class professionals now. It starts at about 30K in the SE and as for top schools…it’s ridiculous. I only mention it because friends in Oz have said their kids are at private school and I was baffled as to how they managed it.

(Misses point of thread…sorry!)

Just over £2.5k but now have to spend almost £4k on something unplanned so the difference will have to go on cc

I hear ya!

Absolutely 0. Husband earns nearly 50k, me 20k but we have 2 children ( 4 and 9) so im part time (26 hours)as he works away and I do everything. And I mean, everything.

Reason for being so hard up -we are up to eyeballs in debt. We downsized last year and bought a fixer upper. Biggest regret of my life. Have ended up taking on 45k in debt for the works ,(not the original plan but here we are,). This is added to joint debt of about 30k (bank loans no credit cards)We are currently living in a caravan on the drive.

We have enough to live off but no spare cash. Hoping neither of us gets fired/ made redundant in the next 4 years or are screwed.

My mouth dries up when I think about it. We have enough disposable income to pay for a mid sized unexpected bill, say up to £300 but that would skint us for the month. Anything worse than that it's a lot of robbing peter to pay paul/ temp use of credit card

Posted to show support. Anyone else been here and it was ok in the end?

Are you me?

We also bought a fixer upper. Same income as you pretty much. Had to get a 30k loan for essential work (heating, roof etc) which we are currently trying to pay off. Have a few hundred in savings and £700 on a credit card.

Cant sell as probably in negative equity due to the market and house not being finished.

Wish I had bought a new build!!!