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?

Yes but just from saving. Though I have to admit saving these days is getting harder with the cost of living. Everything is so much more expensive, I just had my car serviced and brakes done and it was over $2000 (£1000).

Nothing but we do have house insurance on our house we also have it on appliances to cover break down's, including Electricity Gas & boiler break down if this helps with items breaking down at all

Omg how can a nurse part time and a tradesman have paid their mortgage and have £25k saved? How much do you make a month? Did you have an inheritence or got money for the house deposit to be able to do a 10 year mortgage instead of 25-30 years?
I am genuinely interested on how people can do that. My husband and I are in the top 10% earners according to the stats, normal life two kids and we had to take a 30 year mortgage to be able to pay it monthly together with everything else… we have savings but we would not be able to estinguish the mortgage any time soon!

Did have 8k but recently built older 2 kids a bedroom each, now at £800 xx

Approx £2000 between us but it's in pots for different things, a few months ago would have been 3000, car works cost 500, unpaid parental leave 500 salary top up.

I put a bit away each month for car works, clothing, Christmas, unpaid leave and longer term savings but easy enough to pool together if we need to. My aim is to have one account with 3 months wages so not part of our pots that we use but 5 years in no where near, lots of things cropping up. Nursery fees have just dropped with 30 hours funding, but eldest DD is about to start driving lessons, in one hand out of the other!

I don't have separate savings but I put money into different 'pots' on Monzo when I get paid. Car, house, clothes, dog, etc. Most of it comes out every month and then money gets put back in again the next pay day. I guess it serves the same function as savings but I don't have a separate amount of money that doesn't get touched.

I have £32 in my account and no savings. £20 of it I have to use for breakfast club for the kids next week. Your not alone.

And to follow on from my post last night about something always cropping up to wipe out any savings…. After being told we need a new boiler last week, this morning water from the bath leaked through to the ceiling downstairs! So deflating feeling like you’re never getting anywhere!

I have around 24k, I got a 15k payout in 2020 which helped that grow. Self employed now so earn around 15 to 20k around caring for my disabled childs school.
Dh earns around 50k, he around 11k in his touchable savings and investments are around 25k

I'd put us in the moderate bracket but all depends on perspective i guess.

I have friends who joke about how much savings we have. But they've also about to go on their 2nd cruise of the year and 4th holiday so, priorities lol

Hi there,

A really good rule of thumb is to have 3-6 months of living expenses saved up. There is a really good flow chart you can follow which is here:

ukpersonal.finance/flowchart/

Also another good rule for monthly budgeting is 50% of living expenses (needs) 30% on wants (treats etc - all non essential spending) 20% to be saved.

😂😂

I feel this.

£6k total savings
£1k for Christmas
£1k for car or house emergency repairs
£1k towards next year's holiday (£1k out of £3k saved so far)
£3k true emergency fund.
I did have more but I had to buy a new car as mine got written off by an unknown driver, just my luck.
Im glad I had some money put aside .

10 years ago I had nothing in savings. I started with saving for christmas and a £1k emergency fund first and then increased the emergency fund. We have not had abroad holiday for some time as I wanted to prioritise getting us in a stable position post divorce

About £16,000. But that would be me pretty much wiped out.
I'm hoping to do a "low spend" year in 2026, and hoping to take that amount up to more like £20K.

We have three kids, I don't work due to disability. Loosely follow the Dave Ramsey & trying to pay off debt. Have 4k cc & 14k home improvement loan back from when we had £0 emergency fund. Currently got 4.5k saved but some earmarked for wet room contribution & our front door broke so we are using the rest towards that. Plan is to save £1000 then get back to overpaying the debt

@AgileMentor@Fedup360 I feel this too, yes I have some savings now but DDs are at uni and life is definitely easier than when they were young.

I remember after paying rent and bills and food and petrol having around £10 each for spends a week.

Most of my salary back then went on nursery fees - I worked 2.5 days and did not want to stop working as I loved my job - which doesn’t come up as a vacancy very often - and knew I’d be able to increase hours when I could.

After school clubs were tricky financially too.

We did manage to buy a small property but not until I was 45 and it took us years to save for a deposit.

I look at my savings now and am pleased I have the money but there’s no easy way to do it, the problem is the more I save, the more I think I should save.

THose percentages are outdated now with the cost of living increases.

£19k and im so glad we have it. l have had to give up work, partner has been seriously injured and in hospital for 6 months , when its gone its gone but at least im not stressed a few months

Couple of reasons. We got £10,000 given to us as a gift for our deposit. We live in Scotland and our house is by no means big but it's fine for us. Three bed house. The mortgage was never a big mortgage due to us living in a "not so desirable area". We were both brought up here so it doesn't bother us. The area has actually got lots better and we would double our money if we sold it today.
husband got some money from when his grandparents passed away. <£20000.
husband is an absolute grafter as he has a really tough childhood he wanted to make sure he had some money behind him so the man can save🤣
neither of us are in to expensive clothes ect.

my wage is around £2000 a month, fairly average I think.

we met when we were young done alllllll the partying/holidays/ travelling ect then when we were 21 we bought our house. Paid of the mortgage when 33.had our child 4 years ago when I was 32.

so that's our little story. 😊

That is over 100,000 pounds sterling combined income. That is high income in the UK

€8000 in the credit union, €12000 loan against it.
I know it is stupid to have savings and debt, I'd never save that again, I am in the habit of saving 20% of the loan repayment amount each month.
So technically no access.
600 in bank, it is very hard to save, every month unexpected expenses crop up, new coats this month.

Not any more

We have around £14k in savings and no debt, BUT we don’t own, which means we have nothing to leverage if ever we do have an emergency that totally gobbles that pot up. 😭

The kids (9 months and 3 years) also have a few grand between them that we can access but I’d have to be literally starving to spend their savings, even if I knew we could pay it back.

I think if you’re a homeowner, a good rule of thumb is to try and have six months worth of household income in the bank to help weather any storm. And maybe some insurance to cover loss of income, especially if anyone is freelance. Anything more than that is really quite hard to amass these days without a lump sum finding its way to you, so I wouldn’t worry about that which is bloody impossible!

Yes, £4k in savings and £2k in credit! So I guess about £2k - something seems to happen every month (holiday, car service, Christmas, kids needs a bed etc.) which wipes out what we save

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