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?

We had about £12k four years ago, mostly saved pre-kids, then I decided to retrain and took a big pay cut in the process. We also had another baby in this time so have hefty childcare bills (about £1.7k per month for one nursery and one primary child).

So our savings are currently at £0.

I am about to qualify in my new profession, and have a job lined up for the new year, and in the next couple of years we'll get rid of the nursery bills. But until then we are hoping no major, unexpected expenses come up!

Absolutely nothing. It is something I am going to work on after Christmas, as well as paying off debts which will make it a lot easier to save something.

I’ve got minus £40K
lost my job in April. My mum has had to help me. I owe her 40k.
clear employment tribunal win but wait time is up to 2 years.
job market has been horrendous and only just found one.

I was never able to save due to single parenthood and all expenses on me. Lived on an overdraft until 5 years ago, same time as mortgage was paid off
If I thought about the ifs and buts, I would never have been able to sleep at night

Wow! over 2 years worth of money! Well done, that is brilliant.

It's 6 months expenses for an emergency fund.

In response to the poster who mentioned saving for retirement.
That's exactly what we did.
Paid off our mortgage and saved as much as we could.
However once retired, income is fairly fixed and much smaller than earnings. We constantly worry about large repair bills - roof, windows, car etc.
Yes we don't have a mortgage, but still have all the other bills, with income of about half what the government class as a 'living wage'
Retirement is planned, saved and worked for, but certainly not easy or comfortable, which is why I get angry when pensioners are classed as 'rich'
The ones who are more comfortable are those that have spent and not saved, claimed and not worked, but are handed everything.
Rant over.

Actually, I forgot I use "impulse saver" to round up any debit card purchases to save into a Christmas account: £423

@Nellieinthebarn@GentleJadeOPit does help not having a mortgage though, but I do get ‘the looks’ sometimes from people in nicer cars. I just prefer to have savings instead.

£2,000 savings
£600 cash box for occasional treats like dinner out or day trips
£600 in holiday fund

This post is my eye opener.

Surely an emergency fund is the amount that sits in an account that doesn't need notice to take out ?
If not define ' emergency ' or do you mean a secret a/c no-one knows about except you ?

Forgot- also £800 in credit union with loan facility if needed that can be 3x

@Adooree
yes I wondered about that too. I don’t think any of my accounts require notice to take money out, so I see them both as emergency funds

About three months' salary. I've always tried to save, with varying degrees of success. I got a pay rise and a bonus about a year ago and save some of my salary every month. Put the bonus into my pension in the last tax year then got a tax rebate and added that to the savings. I'm not very savvy about this kind of stuff but my partner is.

I'm now a better earner but I always kept 4 months of household bills etc in savings as an emergency fund.

But my DH had a spell of 3 redundancies in the space of 2 years due to an industry downturn so the bills all fell to me. For this reason we keep a healthy rainy day fund as we have needed it in the past.

£5k in premium bonds & £1k in ready available cash.

£500 cash for emergencies.
Emergency credit card that has a £4k limit with nothing on.
15yr old car with a friend of my brother as a go-to mechanic and a friend of my Dad as a go-to plumb/spark etc. Makes a difference.

Move the premium bonds to a stocks and shares ISA.

I had premium bonds for about 2 or 3 years and they were absolutely woeful for returns.

We had absolutely no savings when family were younger. All, we have now is inheritance money that doesn’t really count as savings tbh ..

About £300 in savings

£1250 available on a credit card.

Parents with money because they lived in a time when you could buy a house, a car and have plenty of holidays all on one very bog standard wage.

We have more than £1000
BUT
we are older - that means mortgage is paid, house was much cheaper than whatever it would cost now and dcs have left home for Uni.
Before that? Same as you….

50p.

I’ve got about £3.2k now. Did have £4k but I spent out on some stuff. However, I’m a student and my parents, although WC, would help me if I really needed it so I sleep easy at night

€1000 I my emergency fund but various other cash envelopes with around another €1000. No debt, work part time, live alone in an expensive city.