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?

Around 2k in cash (I definitely won’t spend it if it’s not in my account!), and credit cards if necessary, but I haven’t had to use them for a good while.

£3,300. I have to have some work done in my house and Christmas, it’ll probably go down to £2k but I will continue saving.

Nothing , I live on the bank overdraft and even cards are now overlimit. Partner not working for years (health) and debt mounting, I can't make any debt arrangements due to working in sensitive category where credit arrangements mean no job. I'm learning to live every day being grateful for what I have and pushing harder to have a better situation soon.

Total benefit entitlement is zero, because earnings are not bad but everything goes to debt repayments.

I'm pushing harder to earn more, being self employed there are always margins of improvement.

I think the system is made to live on credit

We've almost always had savings, even when our kids were little and were on benefits / student loans. Then they were £500-1000.

Now, joint income of £70k before tax, so upper end of modest household income, we have about £7k in savings. I put in £250 each month straight after payday then top up the current account if needed as the month goes on.

We did have £15k, but new roof (essential, unplanned £12k) nuked our savings and I've been cutting back hard to build them up. I want £10k really as a minimum.

I’d like to have £1000 but am down to £500 in my instant access savings. We do have a little more in a non-accessible account though (about £2000).

You'll get there ❤️

Dave Ramsay really opened my eyes to how to deal with money.

His system should be taught in schools, I wish I'd known about him decades ago.

Currently about £450, Dh has I think about £1.6k. We have credit cards for absolute emergencies

£12,000
We have ‘normal’ incomes (one FT one PT)
Two young children (5 and under)

£7000 savings and no debt other than mortgage. I hate being in debt; like HATE it. So I prefer to save up then buy something rather than get it on credit or on a credit card. We are mid earners - I’m on £33,000 and my husband is self employed and earns about £16,000. We have 2 dc

Another vote for Dave Ramsey method. Before I had my daughter I had 20k in savings. Nursery fees and working part time ate them and gave me ~£6k debt. I was feeling really hopeless but now I am doing step one & saving £1k before paying of my debt. It’s given me the structure I needed to feel I can control things.

Not a penny

Nothing. Single mum , 2 teens, horrible divorce,

@Mitzuko is your partner entitled to pip as that's not means tested.

https://www.gov.uk/pip

You can apply for carers credit which is less than carers allowance as you work full time

Just under 5 months living expenses. I'm trying to get to 6 . This has taken me several years to get to this point

Nothing but we do save £400 monthly for an annual holiday and £100 a month for Christmas/car costs so I guess if an emergency came up we would use those funds first before a credit card. I'm a spender!

Both me and dh are mid range earners but managed to pay off the mortgage when I was in my mid 30s (dh is 9 years older and had a previous house so we had a large deposit) so that means we have managed to save a fair bit, once we got over the nursery years. We have just over £100k in various savings accounts, some with savings pots for Christmas/birthdays/holidays etc. We’re mainly saving for retirement but any emergency can come out of that unless we can manage to pay with our monthly earnings.

Oh wow I wasn’t expecting so many responses!! Thank you to everyone who has shared with me, it makes me feel a lot less alone with these things.
I think it’s hard sometimes to not compare and it seems like everyone else is doing so much better than me, e.g newer car, bigger house, etc it feels like I’m doing something wrong sometimes or that I’m just really bad at it.

We currently have around £400 saved for ‘emergencies’ and around £600 more saved but that’s all earmarked for Xmas/holidays etc

Its really bloody hard isn’t it 😅

@brownbearbrownbear123i feel exactly the same with the comparison. Sometimes it feels like everyone has thousands in savings and pays massively into their pension each month (which i know is not the case!) We have been repaying some debt and have a small amount of savings earmarked towards replacing my husband’s car in the next year (will need to borrow some - would love to buy a second hand car outright but its just not possible), but just been told we need a new boiler. So thats the majority of that gone! Its so difficult to balance long term savings/house stuff/car/holiday/rainy day fund etc etc as something always come along to wipe it out/have to take out credit for. Alongside trying to enjoy life & have some fun money too!

For most of our working life we had no emergency pot. Often overdrawn, or debts on credit cards. It was only when our mortgage was paid off in our 50s that we started to be able to save a reasonable amount.

£9500. I finally paid off £17k of credit card debt two years ago, had a thread here, and that’s what I’ve saved up since (plus I’ve paid for two summer holidays). I have never had so much savings. But… there are plenty of non-urgent things that need doing in my house that would wipe most of it out!

I think you are doing alright then lol

I’m in Australia and after a huge bill I need to pay at the end of this month I will have $2000 (thousand pounds) this worries me greatly. I just bought my first home on my own so am not used to having such little disposable cash having saved up for the last 10 years for a deposit. I am actually considering selling my car so the money I make can be put in an emergency fund.

Do you live in a shed? £5k won’t get you a roof 😬

About 17k

One nurse part time one tradesman full time. We have £25k. Out child has 10k thats been made up of child benifit, birthday, Christmas money over the last 4 years.Mortgage paid off but we" pay it" to ourselves 🙃